How to become a scientist (astronomy)?

Here are some suggestions on what you should and should not do in order to get a position in astronomy.

First, get a doctor!

All professional astronomy researchers have doctorates in astronomy or related fields. About the best place to study for a PhD, you can learn through the Internet or communicate with others. Be bold and choose a university different from the undergraduate course to study PhD. This will let you experience different ideas and broaden your horizons. This is also better for potential employers. You can even consider studying abroad. Its advantages include shorter class hours (3-4 years in Britain and Australia and 5-6 years in the United States) and no need for GRE scores.

The qualities of a good doctoral student include enthusiasm for research, high-level research motivation, well-organized and excellent vocabulary and writing skills. As a student, you may have to work more than 40 hours a week (think of apprentices), so it is very important to work efficiently. The old adage "Work smarter, not harder" is crucial here, especially when the amount of data increases exponentially. Here are two good articles about what a doctoral student should do and how to get a doctorate: How to be an excellent graduate student and Goodbye, thanks for PhD! 》

Choose your doctoral supervisor carefully. They will be your guides and mentors for years to come. It is a good idea to check their publication records to understand their recent interests and ask current students what they think of tutors and research groups/departments. Teaching styles range from "Hey, this is a research topic. Go back to work and call me in three years "to" I want you to report the progress every five minutes ".

Some tutors may be very harsh, possibly for two reasons-their own research reputation is also guaranteed here, and they want you to prepare for the "real world" of independent research. Richard Rice published many interesting articles in Chronicle of Higher Education, including Choosing the Right Research Tutor.

When you are studying for a PhD, you should devote yourself to writing a thesis (and publish it! )。 This will make the actual writing of your graduation thesis much easier. My suggestion is to try to publish all the time research into an article every year. Some students try to publish more than half a dozen papers during their doctoral studies. The bad thing is that you will compete with them in the talent market in the future! Don't forget to read other people's papers, because "understanding the literature" is extremely important.

Another good idea is to explore the "big picture" outside your narrow sub-field. I suggest spending 10% of your time in seminars every week to talk to colleagues outside your field about their work. When preparing letters of recommendation and applying for a job, some projects that cooperate with foreign departments will look better.

Warning: spending too much time observing or writing computer code will have a negative impact on your chances of getting a doctorate! Although this kind of work may become the basic skill of your research, be careful not to let it become something that consumes everything-in order to get a doctorate, you still need to prepare and submit a thesis.

Networking is also an important factor in your career, so you should hone your skills during your PhD. Make a research report. For career prospects, the ability to demonstrate research will become a key factor, so a lot of practice is needed. Finally, consider applying for small grants and rewards, which can improve your resume.

Become a postdoctoral fellow

At the end of the doctoral work, it is time to apply for a post-doctoral research position. The best place to find a post-doctoral (or staff) position in a university or observatory is to update the AAS work record once a month. About 200 short-term postdoctoral positions (and about 80 permanent staff) are released worldwide every year, with the peak activity of 1 1.

Postdoctoral students can be divided into "named" and "unnamed" positions. Title positions include Hubble and Chandra researchers in the United States, and researchers funded by the National Research Council of Britain and Australia. Usually, these positions will give you the freedom to find your own research direction, (moderately) adequate research budget and decent income. Similarly, they also enjoy a high reputation and are quite competitive. Generally speaking, unnamed positions are related to astronomers or university departments, who provide financial support for these positions through research funds, and the research topics are likely to be predetermined.

In either case, you may be invited to join a larger research group. Being a member of a large research group allows you to solve important scientific problems and work with top people in your field. However, it is difficult for people outside the group to estimate your contribution to the plan.

First of all, good news! Although in most countries, the number of astronomy doctoral graduates is too much compared with the job market, the number of post-doctoral positions in the world is roughly equal to the number needed (excluding those who are unwilling to continue to engage in astronomy or do not intend to live abroad). In the latest Australian Astronomy Report 10, about 70% of doctoral degree recipients applied for postdoctoral positions (mostly abroad), 20% found jobs in enterprises, and 10% did not reply to the questionnaire.

So in general, if you need it, you can find a postdoctoral position in astronomy. Postdoctoral research is a critical period. At this stage, you should show your work by publishing the quality and quantity of your papers. In Britain, the average academic astronomer writes 4.4 papers every year. Aspiring young postdoctoral students should pay attention to making their high-quality papers meet or exceed this index. A typical research career requires two or three postdoctoral researchers, each working for two to three years. The next step is to apply for an entry-level lecturer or assistant professor position.

Then there is the bad news. In astronomy, it is difficult to find a permanent position. It is not unheard of that a department of a university has received more than 100 job applications. Although the figures change every year, a recent report by the Royal Astronomical Society concluded that only 65,438+0 of the five students who have obtained doctoral degrees in astronomy can get permanent positions in this field in the medium term-the medium term means that the "students" will be 40 years old by then!

It should also be remembered that the field prestige of astronomy students (and the demand for related positions) will change at any time. In the survey of Australian astronomers (covering the period from 1995 to 2000), the proportion of astronomers who claimed to be engaged in Hanoi astronomy decreased from 4 1% to 24%, while the proportion of those who explored related problems outside the river increased from 26% to 42%.

climb up

If you want to climb the career ladder, you will evolve from a doctoral student like an apprentice to a research leader or manager. You will find that you have made a smaller contribution to more papers. Your grasp of the overall situation is getting better and better, but perhaps at the expense of technical details. Careful selection of collaborators is an important aspect of successful research. At the same time, you will have more and more tasks, such as juggling teaching, industry service, management, management, personnel, economic issues and student affairs.

The first step of evolution is to leave the post-doctoral world and seek a permanent position. Of course, you need to apply. The better your resume, the more opportunities you have. Your written application (including letter of introduction, resume, research interest and recommendation letter) is very important for getting an interview opportunity. Think about who to ask for a letter of recommendation for you. Obviously, it is a good thing if the author is respected by your potential employer. But equally important, let someone who knows you very well write a weighty letter.

When the job application comes, you are likely to be inundated with suggestions and opinions. Then let me give you some advice and tell you what not to do.

-Use the "shotgun method" to apply: many and wide.

-Don't read the application notes.

-Apply on the last allowed day.

Spelling is wrong.

-Not accompanied by a properly guided letter of introduction.

-Your application has not been read by senior colleagues.

-You didn't tell your appraiser. You mentioned their names.

-Or tell them, but before the deadline.

When you attend a job interview, you should be prepared and think about this question carefully. Think about why you want to apply for this job-maybe this is the first question you are asked. Maybe you will be asked some tricky questions, such as "What is your career plan?" Or "If you were offered this job today, would you accept it?" Another good idea is to sort out some of your own problems. There are many websites and books that introduce the skills of a successful interview, so read some in advance.

On the Internet, astronomical job-hunting websites provide the latest job rumors and gossip (as well as work in different research institutions), adding interesting new aspects to the application and recruitment process. On the other hand, employers may Google you. So you can consider cleaning up your personal homepage, including public MySpace or Facebook entries.

If you are invited to visit a potential employer, you may be asked to do a research report. This will be a key part of the job interview, but how to conduct a research report is another topic.

Paper publications: quantity and quality

Once you apply for the permanent position you dream of, your life will revolve around teaching, research and publishing results. Why do you want to publish a paper? As scientists, we need to exchange research results. Published papers are our "products". Whether you like them or not, papers are a measure of our productivity. If the results are not published, the result will be a very short astronomical career.

The number of papers published on astro-ph preprint server has been increasing steadily since 1992, and this growth shows no signs of slowing down. One of the reasons why astro-ph is popular is that if you only publish your papers in magazines and don't upload them online, your citation rate may be halved.

In 2007, the number of papers published on astro-ph has exceeded 10000. This means that 40 new papers are published every working day! Even if you only choose articles in your own sub-field, it is difficult to keep up with the progress. Some astronomers won't even try to do this.

Although many sponsors and employers only pay attention to the number of your papers, the quality of published papers seems to be a more critical measure. The expression of quality here usually refers to the influence of your published paper on other astronomers, so we will use the number of citations of the paper.

Since so many papers are published every day, what can be done to make other astronomers pay attention to your work and quote papers? One solution is to tell them what you have done in their department in the form of research report, make a speech or put up posters at the meeting. Similarly, you should carefully consider the words used in the abstract of the article so that those who search for the abstract can easily find your paper.

Although Scopus and Thomson science can track citation records, for astronomers, the latest data source is Astrophysical Data Service (ADS), which can provide the original citations and the number of citations normalized by the total number of authors. In 2004, Frazer Pearce edited and sorted out the relative distribution (the number and influence of astronomical citations) of the original citations of astronomers and ADS normalized citations, and found that in the past five years, 10% of the most active astronomers in the world generally had 382 original citations and 74 normalized citations.

Do this.

Generally speaking, the trilogy of success in astronomy (sorry Nike) is:

1, study it.

2. publish it.

3. Tell me about it.

1 year, repeat steps 1 to 3 many times, and the long-term work of professional astronomy is waiting for you. In this process, if you find something important and become famous for it, so much the better. Don't forget the internet, always remember the overall situation in your mind and enjoy it.

This paper is based on my discussions with doctoral students, postdocs and senior colleagues over the years, especially in the United States, Britain and Australia. I hope that I can sort out the job-hunting process in astronomy and help those who are interested in seeking long-term astronomical research.

Duncan Forbes obviously made some mistakes in the astronomical talent market, but he survived. He has been a lecturer in a British school, a postdoctoral fellow in the United States, and is now a professor at Swinburne University in Australia. His research interests include globular clusters and galaxy formation. He thanked all those who participated in the discussion and helped write this article. He especially thanked Anna Russell, Alister Graham, Frazer Pearce and Jay Strader for their input.