There is a growing realization that pursuing an academic career is now the exception rather than the rule for PhD scientists. Training in academic research provides valuable technical skills, but often does not prepare graduates for the very different world of the private sector. Science PhD programs have not evolved much to embrace this new reality. Recent articles have highlighted instances where this gap has led to graduates spending many thousands of dollars of their own money for industry career guidance, some of which turned out to be of questionable value.
Some PhD advisors have found that industry collaboration is a great way to expose students to the pace and expectations of the private sector, while also providing their research groups with additional funding and other benefits.
Joseph (Joe) Shaw, a distinguished professor and director of the Optical Technology Center (OpTeC) at Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman, provides a great example of this innovative solution. To learn more about his approach, I interviewed him recently for my upcoming book, Shaping the World: The Vital Role of the Scientist in Industry.
Shaw arrived at MSU after a 12-year stint at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He was recruited by several MSU professors—a physicist, a chemist, and an electrical engineer—who were launching a new photonics research and education center. The plan was to hire new faculty members from a variety of technical disciplines, with research programs ranging from fundamental science to engineering. They also envisioned that encouraging the faculty to collaborate with local startup companies would promote development of the local industry and create jobs for their graduates. “That laid the groundwork for what became the Optical Technology Center I direct now,” says Shaw.
During his interview for this new center, Shaw told the founding team that he didn’t know anything about how to grow companies but was open to promoting industry collaboration: “That was apparently good enough for them to hire me.”
Shaw welcomed a role that would let him explore his interests in both science and engineering: “My father was a classic curiosity-driven scientist, and he instilled in me a tremendous respect for the scientific method and the seeking of truth. But he also spoke very favorably of companies and engineers,” Shaw says.
After three years on the new job, Shaw was appointed OpTeC director. He knew that achieving the founders’ vision would require addressing three challenges: Building a group where fundamental and applied research would coexist, establishing productive collaborations with industry, and ensuring researchers who work with industry that they could still publish their work.
For Shaw, the easiest challenge was building a program that supported basic and applied research. He welcomed the opportunity to build a group that solved practical problems but still engaged his interest in pure science: “(My group) contains an interesting blend of disciplines,” he says. “It’s very interdisciplinary and strongly driven by curiosity.”
Applied research is helpful for building industry connections, but active collaboration requires working directly with companies to solve specific problems that they face. Shaw brought the skills for developing optical remote sensing instruments that he learned at NOAA to his new role at MSU, and discovered that he and his group could build optical sensors to solve “all kinds of bizarre problems” for companies.
That realization greatly expanded the breadth of projects within Shaw’s group, and a significant portion of their funding now comes from developing the optical systems, methods, and algorithms for solving a company’s practical problems.
Shaw relayed an example where one MSU PhD graduate started a company that develops hyperspectral-imaging systems. “We collaborate with them on developing new calibration methods for their imagers and show them how we’re applying the imagers in various applications, such as river ecology,” Shaw says. He is now working on a new instrument-development project with the company.
But while practical problem-solving capabilities offer most of the opportunities for industry collaboration, Shaw says that some very important partnerships have come from fundamental research as well.
One of OpTeC’s early industry collaborations was with a company that needed to understand the physics of crystals that had potential for use in lasers. One of the MSU research groups performed very fundamental materials research using powerful laser spectroscopy techniques, and they realized they had capabilities that this company needed. They worked closely with the company to study crystals of interest, and those collaborations resulted in very practical things, like new types of lasers. “That company is now a world leader in laser crystals… and it all happened because a faculty member working in fundamental research was willing to help with a more applied problem.”
Researchers who consider industry collaboration often worry that it will be difficult for them to publish research results, since companies tend to carefully protect their intellectual property (IP). I asked Shaw how this was handled at OpTeC. “IP has always been a big challenge,” he says. “The way we handle it now is to carve out portions of the project that the university can do and let the rest of the funding go straight to the company.” This arrangement creates a win-win solution where the company can protect their critical IP, and the university can freely publish results from the portion of the project that they handle. But Shaw’s team has learned that it’s very important to communicate the intended arrangement clearly and openly up front so that there are no surprises later.
Shaw gave a more specific example: “Sometimes we will alert a company to a new commercial opportunity that we think they could address with their hardware if they had the proper calibration, which we happen to be experts in.” In this arrangement, the system IP is still owned by the company, but Shaw’s group owns the calibration method IP, which they can publish and license to the company if there turns out to be a market.
Shaw and the OpTeC team have been very successful in their mission. The center now boasts 17 tenure-track faculty, 17 research faculty and staff from five different departments, and two cross-college research labs/institutes, all working together to advance photonics research.
Shaw has built a career that allows him to combine two career directions that are often considered mutually exclusive: fundamental research and creating real-world solutions for people.
“It’s been a lot of fun, because we get to do the basic science when we want to, and we also get to solve practical problems and do something useful to help the world.”
David Giltner teaches scientists about the private sector so they can become employees, entrepreneurs, or academic collaborators. Learn more at TurningScience.com
Editor's Note: Shaw's story will appear in Giltner's Shaping the World: The Vital Role of the Scientist in Industry, from SPIE Press. Learn more at shapingtheworld.tech
