The Inside Story No doubt you have heard the stories both good and bad of life as a graduate student. Your decision to pursue a PhD in Vision Science has likely been a milestone to your academic career and to your future. If so, you will find much value in the words of Professor Marty Banks. The "Inside Story" walks you through the challenges and triumphs that arise from the Offer of Admission to the Granting of the Degree.

"Completing a PhD and Securing an Excellent Job Post-PhD: The 'Inside Story' told by Marty Banks"

The process of going through graduate school and then on to an excellent postdoc, academic position, or position in industry is very different from what you did as an undergraduate. As an undergrad, you took classes and basically did as you were told. You read the readings, attended the lectures, did the homework, took the exams, etc. The measure of success was primarily the grades you received. You were rewarded for following the rules laid out by faculty teaching the courses you took.

It's very different in graduate school. There is still some coursework in the first and second year, but once you're past that handful of courses, you will be working on research and scholarship, mostly independently. Successful graduate students are the ones who develop their knowledge and skills to the point where they can conduct research at the cutting edge. And the cutting edge is, by definition, the place where there is no course or textbook to refer to. You are, to a very large extent, on your own. Self-initiation becomes extremely important.

What does a professional vision scientist do? Well, you think, read, write, and talk. You produce useful research outcomes, designs and constructs useful algorithms or instruments, etc. You become professionally what your skills are. You can think of this as a tool kit. Just like a good carpenter has a good set of tools, a good vision scientist has a good set of intellectual tools for the work you do. You have a good base of knowledge in their chosen area of scholarship. You reason well in that area. You can communicate well orally and in writing. You are adept with computers and other technology that is used in the chosen area of scholarship. You also have a publication record.

There are some benchmarks along the path through graduate school that you can use to assess your progress. These are tough benchmarks, but the career you've chosen is demanding, so they are appropriate. You are doing very well if you achieve these benchmarks.

End of the first year. You should have completed your basic coursework receiving primarily A's in those courses. You should have completed two or three lab rotations and in so doing gotten to know two or three faculty members reasonably well. You should be fairly clear on what general area of research you will be pursuing when you settle into a lab for your thesis research. You should have attended a scientific meeting.

End of the second year. You spent the second year taking a small number of courses that are directly relevant to expanding your toolkit. You have settled into a lab (or possibly two) and are working on a regular basis on research. By the end of the year, you should have completed a research project that is leading to a publication; you are an author on the publication. You should have presented research at a scientific meeting. You should have chosen your three topic areas for the qualifying exam and your five committee members.

End of the third year. You completed the qualifying exam in the Fall semester successfully. You have decided on a thesis topic and chosen your thesis committee members, and had a thesis proposal meeting. You've been actively engaged in research and should have completed another project or two that will lead to publications. Again you presented at a scientific meeting. You now know a handful of people in the field who are familiar with your skills and accomplishments.

End of the fifth year. You have completed your thesis and have had it approved. You have three to five publications in all. You and your work are known among a handful of faculty at Berkeley and among players in the field outside of Berkeley. You have applied for and landed a position as a postdoc or assistant professor at another university or a position in industry.

Students in the Vision Science program typically choose one of three career paths: being a professor in an academic setting (e.g. teaching and research), working at a research institution (e.g. focusing on research), working in industry. If you are aiming for one of the first two, the most important measure of success is your publication record. There is no doubt about this. Don't kid yourself into thinking that it's ok to have some great things in the works that haven't yet been published. Lots of people desire such positions and you won't compete with them successfully if you don't have a good publication record. The 2nd most important measure of success is the people you've gotten to know professionally and what they think of you. They will be writing letters of recommendation and you want them to think highly of you and your work and to have specific knowledge about what you have done and plan on doing. Many graduate students make the mistake of getting to know only one faculty member well: their research advisor. If you're going to compete successfully for a good academic position, you'll need letters of recommendation from three or four faculty. Make sure that more than one established person in the field gets to know you well enough to write an informative letter of recommendation. If you're going for an academic position, the 3rd most important thing is teaching experience. It's a good idea to have potential referees watch you teach so they can comment specifically on how you do in the classroom. It's also a good idea to have the students in a class evaluate your performance separately from the performance of the other teaching assistants or the faculty member in charge. Save those evaluations (presuming that they're positive!) and you can always show copies of them to a search committee who would like clear evidence of your teaching skills.

If you are aiming for an industry position, it's still important to have a publication record and to have contacts in the field who know you and think highly of you. But an equally important criterion is clear evidence that you have well-developed technical skills that are relevant to the company's mission.

Marty Banks, PhD, is a Professor in the UC Berkeley Vision Science Program. See the Banks Lab Website and Banks VS Page.

Suggested Reference:

Robert A. Day (1998): How to write & publish a scientific paper? (T11.D33 1998)