Welcome to the latest in my series of quarterly updates on my life as a postdoc and university spin-out company co-founder. For previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
I’m now home from my summer research visit to Norway, and have been right back into the thick of deadlines for grants, papers, and projects.
Read on for more details on academic and spin-out work, plus life outside of the office.
Work
Postdoc job
Norway
In July I got home from Norway. I had such a good time there, and am so happy I went for it. I’ve since written a new post in case you’re interested in doing a research visit too: How to Plan a Research Visit
I’d really recommend the opportunity to anyone working in academia.
Reduction in hours
Until August I was working 4 days per week (80%) at the university as a postdoc and [at least] 1.5 days per week (30%) leading a spin-out company I co-founded last year.
In reality I was spending far more than that amount at the company, sometimes at the expense of my academic work. It was becoming unmanageable to keep working at the university for four days per week.
Therefore, in August I rebalanced my working hours between my academic work as a postdoc, and my time. I’ve now switched to 2.5 days for each (50%). I still fairly often end up working more than this for each job, but it’s definitely a better balance than before.
Grants
Over the past three months I’ve been involved with submitting a number of grant applications:
- Co-Investigator for an exploratory research award (~£15k). We were successful and the work will begin early next year. It’ll be my first time working with this person in the research group.
- Co-Investigator for a healthcare project through a new Digital Health Hub (~£100k). We’ll find out the outcome in November.
- Co-Prinicipal Investigator for a twin fellowship through the same digital health hub (~£80k). Again, we’ll find out by November. If successful this’ll pay for my part-time salary for 3-4 months next year. I’m not particular hopeful that we’ll be successful but we’ll see. This is with the same person with whom I was awarded the exploratory research award. They’re great and do quite different research (reinforcement learning) to me, so if we get it I’ll be excited to learn some new techniques.
- I helped support an application to the natural environment research council (£1M). I’m not officially named on it, but I’m very happy to say that we were successful. So this is available to pay a small amount of my salary for the next few years.
Papers
- We submitted a paper to an environmental workshop and I’m a co-author on it. We’ll find out the outcome shortly.
- We’ve been busy preparing a paper I’m leading, for submission to a major human-computer interface conference. It’s been an interesting project because it has gone in a very different direction to what I intended, meaning learning lots of new techniques.
Podcast appearance
Recently I appeared as a guest on a podcast at the university. I was interviewed about my work, background, how I got into AI, and this website of course got a mention!
Having never been on a podcast before I was unsure about what to expect, but I think it hopefully went alright and the hosts were really welcoming and supportive. I’m not sure if I’ll get to listen to it before it is properly released, but I’ll (probably!) share a link here once it is available.
Lectureships
In the previous post in this series I decided to not apply for a lecturer position which had become available in our department. Recently, two more have been advertised, and I’m becoming tempted to apply. The application deadline is near the end of October, so I’ll be able to provide an update in the following post.
Spin-out company
Things are progressing at pace in the company. In addition to the work of our existing team, we’ve brought in some new expertise. This includes a part time member of staff, some consultants, and soon an “extern” will be joining us too.
We’re also starting to participate in a few different support programmes for different areas of the business such as funding, marketing, regulatory approval, routes to market. In addition, we’re starting to prepare a few big grant applications.
All in all, there is a lot going on and it is keeping everyone very busy! Hence why I decided to rebalance my working hours between the two roles.
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Since the last post in this Beyond the PhD series, I’ve posted three articles:
- The Five Most Powerful Lessons I Learned During My PhD
- A Week in the Life of an AI Postdoc Researcher: Insights and Tips
- How to Plan a Research Visit
Website traffic
There has been a decent increase in the number of visitors to the website both compared to earlier in the year, and the same period last year. In September we received 25,533 views. Traffic is cyclical, which I guess it to be expected with the academic cycle every year.
Time off
DIY – new dishwasher
After having a dishwasher in Norway, I realised how much time I could save by having one at home.
Figuring out how to install one from scratch was a bit complicated, as we didn’t have one currently in place – or even the space for it. This meant that we had to alter our existing cabinets, add a new electrical outlet, and make some changes to the kitchen plumbing.
Modifying the kitchen cabinet was the job I felt most comfortable with, but even this wasn’t trivial since I didn’t want to disturb the worktop (countertop). Anyhow, after some trial and error I managed to get it all done with no issues.
After speaking to my partner’s Dad (who’s a former electrician) I also decided to tackle the electrics myself. This was a bit nerve-racking as I’ve never worked on electrics before, but I was exceedingly careful to make sure the power was completely off before starting. I felt quite proud of myself when I switched it all back on and it worked!
My original plan was to also do the plumbing too, but I had a potential issue so had to bring in a plumber to deal with the mains water input whilst I dealt with the waste drainage pipe myself.
All in all it was great to learn some new skills, and I’m so pleased we’ve now got everything up and running!
Pizza making
This summer I found myself looking up outdoor pizza ovens, but I felt like I couldn’t really justify it. After all, with the weather in the UK, it’s not quite so tempting to cook pizzas outside in the cold and wet.
This led me down a rabbit hole of searching for ways to make better pizza in my home oven and I discovered that there are A LOT of thoughts about this on Reddit!
Surprisingly the answer seems to be to use a pizza steel (not a pizza stone!). I’d never heard of one either, but it’s effectively a thick piece of metal which holds the heat better than a stone. A great way to avoid the dreaded soggy bottom.
After buying the steel and a peel (the thing you use to get them in and out of the oven), we were all set.
I expected the first few to go wrong but they were great and we’ve now made pizzas most weekends, yum! I’m still learning but have been really happy with how they’ve been turning out. I didn’t expect to be able to make pizza like this in a normal kitchen oven.
This is the recipe I’ve been using to make the dough in case you fancy giving pizza making a go yourself.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. This has helped me to realise that I need to carve-out time myself for ‘deep work’, as I often find myself confronted with a diary full of meetings. Going forwards I’m going to block out time-slots in my calendar for specific activities and will continue trying to minimise meetings where possible.
Films
Ready Player One. Enjoyable film and thought provoking about where VR technology could be leading us.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. This was surprisingly deep for a children’s film and I actually really enjoyed it.
Personal finances
Income
My current monthly salary is £1581.18 for my research fellow role at Bristol (pay scales here, I’m currently spine point 39 or 40) and I also earn £1456.49 through my work with the spin-out. Over this period I was paid a bit of backpay for a few recent months where I hadn’t been on the payroll at the company.
Over this period I also received a £202 tax refund for last tax year. I’d expected if anything to potentially owe some money, and had set some aside just in case so this was a nice surprise!
In addition, last quarter I received the TAILOR funding through for my research visit to Norway. As mentioned last time, I had to pay for everything (including 6 weeks accommodation) upfront, so it was a relief to have this come through and pay it all off.
Savings
Over the past three months I’ve saved £8,216.86.
To be clear:
- This is definitely not typical, especially since my total normal income for jobs over 3 months isn’t much more than this, and I donate several hundred pounds per month to various causes. This anomaly is largely because of the extra company income as mentioned above. Last quarter I saved £2517.53 which is more typical.
- I have some existing savings and I’m also starting to feel the effects of compound interest on these existing savings. Compound interest really is a wonder. Currently I’m focusing on filling up my ISA (tax-free savings account) as much as possible for this tax year.
Summary & plans
I’m really happy that I finally went on a research visit and that I’ve also dropped my hours to better balance work at Bristol and the spin-out. This has meant that I haven’t made much progress with submitting the work from Norway to a conference, although I have moved forward with the research I was funded to do on another grant.
I am also really happy to have the dishwasher installed which should be a great time-saver going forwards!
Looking forward to the next quarter I already have lots of deadlines on the way, so I’m going to need to be careful to maintain a work/life balance and stay healthy. Some of these deadlines could be very useful in the long-term, so they’re definitely worth a short-term push to get them over the line. I also have some leave planned for October which should help.
If you enjoyed this post be sure to take a look at previous updates in the Beyond the PhD Series.
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