My story by Anna B.

This my hystory, it is a bit too long, but it could not get it shorter. Anna

What is your research topic?

I work in material and process technology. In particular I simulate the creep behaviour of cast aluminium alloy. My project is in collaboration with foundries and car companies.

Would you like to write down a story answering to some of the following questions?

Sure

First of all I would like to tell you that at the end of my master thesis I still did not have any clue of what I wanted to do. In that period I had a very smart boyfriend who graduated in physics and who had a very strong dream: to obtain his PhD in USA. So, I guess he partly influenced me. I am not saying that he pushed on me, but I also wanted to give the try, would I have been able to obtain a PhD? Even if I liked studying I did not consider myself a laboratory rat, so I was not sure I would have succeeded.

So I decided I had to try at least.
I ended up at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It is not a very famous university, but my advisor was and he still is a very unique person.

He did not teach me how to do research, but he taught me how to be successful. I am not saying I am a successful person, but I would say that I have a good insight about how to be a successful person. So, I am not aware of methodologies in how to do research, I just know how I do research.

I think the best way to describe the way I perform research is to talk about my experience. When I ended my PhD I got this job in DTU. It was on a completely different subject with respect to my PhD thesis, so I almost did not have any clue about the modelling of creep behaviour of aluminium alloy.

What have I done? First of all I read! I started reading the fundamental things about creep things that I studied during my master degree, but that I did not remember.
Then, when I got the basic knowledge, in particular, when I learnt the terminology behind the creep theories I started looking in the e-library (I think e- libraries are fundamental for doing research) for available articles on creep of aluminium alloys. At the beginning I felt like I could not really get some important concepts. The problem was actually the different terminology that all the authors were using. Fortunately I had a very good colleague who always had the patience to listen to me and to discuss with me about different theories and different ideas. He had some kind of experience regarding the subject, but he also had some problems understanding the different theories.

However, since I am a quite stubborn person, I kept reading and wondering.
When I really felt lost I also talked to some other professors. They gave me some hints, but not the solution. By reading, trying to apply several theories, being critical about the obtained results and trying to imagine how really the material behaves finally understood (at least I think I have understood) what it was all about.

I think that it is important also to try always to keep things simple at the beginning. First a person needs to be sure that the theories, the equations, the methodology work for very simple cases that are easy to understand and to test.

Hence, my suggestion is: ''If you try to reach the stars, first make sure you can fly''.
I have studied in three different Countries: Italy for my bachelor, France for my master, USA for my PhD.

My experience is that in France people give very much importance to mathematics and analytical methods/solutions. They are very good in mathematics and I have a great respect for them. However, they treat mathematics like if it was God! I saw cases during which students/researchers did reach a solution and they did not wonder if the solution was physically possible, if the mathematic says that it is so,then it MUST be so.

As everybody knows, in USA there is a lot of money dedicated to research, this led to develop much more the empirical methodologies. If a researcher wants to find some kind of correlations, a particular law etc. usually he/she does not look into the physics of the problem, he/she just buys million of dollar equipment and make thousand of experiments.

Unfortunately I have never done research in Italy, so I do not know exactly how research is done.
In my field now, since we are developing a simulation code, we first start by developing the necessary equation (constitutive etc.), implementing them in a numerical code and then comparing the obtained solution with analytical cases as well as with experimental results. In conclusion, we use empirical, analytical and implementation methodology. I do not think one is more important then the other.

What is my idea regarding the choice of a topic?

I think it depends on the level of research. A student (master, PhD) is more limited on the choice of the topic, he/she needs to be paid by a professor, hence he/she must study the subject of the project for which the advisor has money.
It is my strong opinion that a duty of a professor is to get money for maintaining his/her students and to get a continue research funding. For this reason I believe that a professor should be influenced by the funding procedure, in the sense that he/she should knows what is hot in this moment a direct his/her research towards that subject.

However, a person can not just jump on something that he/she does not like, so there must be also a genuine interest.

Personally I am interested in everything that is new and challenging. After my PhD I wanted to learn something more about biotechnology and do research on that. Unfortunately I did not find a job in this direction. It will remain a dream, maybe one day I will be able to learn more about it. Nevertheless, I am happy also with the topic I have got. It is totally different, but it is also challenging.

Another way to decide a new topic could be discussing with colleagues or people during seminars. For example, if I attend a seminar and the speaker shows experiments and empirical results, maybe I could suggest him/her a collaboration regarding also the simulation/prediction of the experiments.
But I definitely think that these kinds of collaborations are quite seldom. However they can bring a lot of further research.

This is why I believe it is important to have many seminars in a department, but this is quite impossible when there is a lack of money.

Once the topic is chosen, then you ask me how the research progresses.

I have seen different ways of doing research during my master and my PhD.

Some of mine colleagues had an advisor who told them EXACTLY what they had to do, and how they had to do it. Afterwards they also checked that the work was done as they wanted. On the contrary my advisors, both during my master and my PhD, were quite busy, so they never showed me what and how to do something. They discussed with me the topic of my thesis and then I had all the freedom to do how and what I wanted. I must say I envied my colleagues very many times. I often felt lost and without direction. I almost gave up sometimes, but fortunately, as I said previously, I am very stubborn!

Even if my advisors did not give me real directions, they were there to help me if I needed. I mean, since they were busy, I could not just go there and say:¨I do not know where to turn!¨, however, if I met them saying:¨ I have done this, this and that and now I need to know how to find this other property¨ Either they gave me an advise, or they told me who could answer me.

Now that my PhD has ended, I am glad my advisor was as he was. I had the freedom and the duty to choose by myself the way to do it and I can say:¨ I did it! I have been successful¨. I have learnt my way through and now I feel much more confident than my colleagues who were doing only what they were told to do.

Anna