‘Pure’ versus ‘Applied’ Science

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Athene Donald

When I started this blog, more than ten years ago, I imagined I would write about physics, and specifically about physics at the interface with biology. Perhaps, I thought, I would write about exciting papers I’d read; indeed, I asked a couple of other researchers in my field to join with me in doing this, to be met with little enthusiasm. In practice, things have turned out very differently. The science itself has not featured greatly here; I’ve largely written about the doing of it – who does it, how it should be done (and equally important, how it should not be done), and how it is funded; the political landscape for science; and the diversity angle. Interdisciplinary work – of the sort I was doing at the time – has certainly featured, particularly in the early days. So have its challenges, not least around funding, but not much about the science itself. I don’t regret that. I’ve had fun with writing this blog. I’m sure it has helped my writing skills (never too late) and I’ve enjoyed the interactions I’ve had, initially through posted comments although now much more usually over Twitter. But today I want to revert to something closer to my original concept, although still without detailed science.

I am prompted to write this by reading an editorial in the newsletter of the Institute of Physics’ Biological Physics Group written by my Cavendish Laboratory colleague, Pietro Cicuta, who is stepping down as Chair. I was instrumental in setting up this group nearly fifteen years ago, and I was its Chair for the first few years. As far as I can tell, this editorial is available to all, and not just IOP members, so I encourage you to read Pietro’s thoughtful views. He says

‘Today, many of us capably handle living systems within our physics departments, or in genuine cross-disciplinary environments, making entirely new research possible, for example integrating new tools and designing experiments that are as systematic as many other areas of condensed matter physics.’

In the early 2000’s, physics departments did not expect to have cell culture facilities, for instance, nor to teach material that might be called ‘biological physics’, although the field has various equivalent names (e.g. biophysics). Things have undoubtedly moved on; many departments are now well equipped with facilities for working with live organisms and with teaching relevant material.

However, I absolutely share Pietro’s concern

‘that despite the excitement of our field, the new teaching courses we developed, the fundamental progress that it is possible to achieve even with relatively small teams, the relevance to real challenges that matter to the public…. despite all this, we are still seen as one of the various sectors of “applied physics”. We have not impacted the “physics culture” very much: particle physics, astrophysics or cold atoms are not considered as physics applied to particles, stars or cold atoms… they somehow are still “the physics”.

Readers who are not physicists might wish to consider what the topics are that they immediately think physics covers, and it probably wouldn’t involve malaria (I wrote about Pietro’s work in this area in the Guardian, back in 2014 when that paper was committed to science blogs), or Covid (more on that shortly), or tumour evolution (to cite the work of another Cavendish colleague Sarah Bohndiek). On the contrary, their thoughts are more likely to turn to black holes and the Higgs’ Boson, or perhaps how to manipulate single atoms at ultracold temperatures. As Pietro says, the rest is, somewhat derogatorily, described as ‘applied’. Dirty stuff, that might be useful….not seen nevertheless as differently exciting and full of wonder.

Back in 2010, when this blog was still largely on the topic of biological physics, I asked ‘Where’s the Wow Factor?’ for this very reason: mainstream physicists think there can be no beauty or amazement in areas away from the sorts of topics I list above. Pietro’s editorial indicates how little things have changed in the last decade. Yet, physicists working in this area can contribute very substantially to our wellbeing, potentially to ‘healthy ageing’, as through work on cancer. If physics is being applied to cancer, why does that not attract a sense of amazement? It baffles me why our culture, and this includes the media in the way they report stories, see so-called applied physics as less worthy of interest than black holes. It isn’t that everyone believes ‘applied’ is bad in all disciplines, because they have made so much – rightly so – about the work of Sarah Gilbert’s team on vaccine development. ‘Pure’ (as that must be the opposite of applied, I suppose) work may have underpinned the development, but its current wow factor sits in enabling it to be applied to our real world, in moving us gratefully on from total lockdowns.

I mentioned physicists’ contribution to Covid. Here I will cite theoretical physicist Mike Cates (educated in the Cavendish, but now Lucasian Professor – the Chair formerly held by Stephen Hawking – in Cambridge’s Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics) who, early on in the pandemic, kickstarted an initiative known as RAMP (Rapid Assistance in Modelling the Pandemic) under the auspices of the Royal Society. This brought together, essentially via crowd-sourcing, over 1800 scientists who felt they had something to offer. Mike’s latest co-authored paper from this programme Efficient Bayesian inference of fully stochastic epidemiological models with applications to COVID-19 takes tools from other areas of physics to apply to this current problem, relying also on the late Dave Mackay’s (another professor at the Cavendish) work on inference. Why is all this work not seen as mainstream?

It seems to me right and proper that fields should evolve. We should remember that James Clerk Maxwell was fascinated by light and colour, but also how our eyes worked to perceive that colour (see, for instance, Basil Mahon’s biography The man who changed everything). In 1855 he presented a paper Experiments on Colour, as perceived by the Eye, with remarks on Colour-blindness to the Royal Society, and five years later he followed up with On the Theory of Colour Vision  to that same august institution. People back then were much more open-minded about what ‘physics’ might be. Certainly his work in this area, along with all his other notable achievements, did not stop him becoming the first Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge – when the Cavendish Laboratory was first opened – in 1871.

Somehow, in the intervening century and a half, scientific culture has become much more narrow-minded, putting us into boxes unless we fight hard. This is the problem for researchers attempting to break down disciplinary boundaries. The interface between physics and biology is one which has become much more blurred; for those of us working at that interface the work is fascinating, intriguing and infinitely worthwhile, and comes in many different flavours. But some of our colleagues seem stuck in a time-warp and, inevitably, that message may rub off on those they teach. I look forward to the world of physics in this country (other countries do rather better as far as I can tell) losing its hang-ups about pure versus applied, what is ‘proper’ physics, and what is not. I hope many members of the Institute of Physics read Pietro’s editorial and consider their positions.

 

 

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Name-calling, Favourites and Bystanders

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Athene Donald

Name-calling of any kind is painful. My first experience of it that I recall, dates back to primary school when the other kids used to call me teacher’s pet. Probably deserved as an appellation, in so far as I undoubtedly applied myself more to my lessons than some of my more troublesome peers. Nevertheless, looking back I feel aggrieved that I was so castigated because of the teacher’s slightly creepy predilection for me, obvious even to my eight or nine year old brain. Indeed, that probably upset me as much as the name-calling. I had no time for the teacher, not least because he was so ignorant he classified bats as birds.

That was merely a mild form of childhood bullying, albeit one which certainly left me feeling isolated amongst my classmates. There are many worse ways in which bullying can occur; name-calling is just one of them. I wrote previously about Jane Willenbring, who was repeatedly referred to (amongst other things) as ‘slut’ by her then PhD supervisor David Marchant during a season of fieldwork in Antarctica. Although on the surface impervious to this – according to a fellow student present at the time – it ate into her, so that a decade later she finally filed a complaint leading to his dismissal from his faculty post at Boston University. But comments eating away inside are immensely damaging. The facile statement that sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you, is just rubbish. Words can colour who you think you are and, if you are a researcher may mean you simply turn your back on research because the pain is too bad. Mentally, the labels that are applied in the insults can become part of your inner being.

Labels come in many forms. I don’t recall ever being called a slut, but I’ve had plenty of comments fired in my direction, derogatory and dismissive of me simply because I’m a woman.

“You only work on starch because, as a woman, domestic science is all you can do”

may have no explicit word of insult in it, but the message is still insulting to receive (this, after I had given a talk about several years’ worth of cutting edge physics research on starch).  PhD students who are repeatedly demeaned by peers or more senior members of their team or department are, in far too many cases, going to quit, whatever their intrinsic abilities may be. That is why I believe observing such behaviour – say, in a group meeting – and doing nothing makes that individual complicit. It is so much easier for the person who isn’t the one being bullied, or otherwise verbally attacked, to step in, than for the victim. Too often, if the latter attempts to speak up, they are accused of not being able to take a joke or, worse, the severity of the attacks increases. Such a ‘bystander’ intervention is much easier done when all that is under consideration is verbal abuse, not unwanted physical attention, but practice always makes perfect.

Catherine Sanderson has written a whole book, The Bystander Effect, about when people do and do not speak up against a bully or harasser (looking across many sectors and situations, although education is one she mentions). It provides both information on the psychological responses people experience when watching bad things unfold, and insight into how you can improve your toolkit to do something when things do go wrong in front of you. She certainly believes in the importance of practice; having ready phrases at hand makes it easier to intervene in the heat of the moment. It is always frustrating when, with the best of intentions, the moment slips by and your mind remains a blank and what you should have said only comes to you some minutes later when it’s far too late. But, as she reminds us, you can always go and give support to the victim later, even if you haven’t actually confronted the aggressor.

Bullying is well recognized, even if rarely well dealt with. It’s a problem in academia as in any workplace. But I also want to highlight a second kind of demeaning behaviour from the lead in any team, something I certainly was on the wrong end of during my first postdoc. That is, the case of a supervisor/Principal Investigator who has favourites. If you’re the blue-eyed boy or girl, you get all the attention. Any others in the group are all but ignored. This is the situation in which your work gets presented at a conference by someone else while you stay at home kicking your heels; your name does not appear where you feel it should in the list of authors on a paper; and you are not tapped on the shoulder to apply for a relevant postdoc the PI hears about, or some major fellowship scheme. This is insidious and can be quite hard to spot.

In my case, I really only worked out what had been happening much later. I am quite sure, in this specific case, a lot of the fault was down to the fact that, at the time, I was completely unmotivated. That is, however, a vicious circle. I was unmotivated not only because it was not a project that I felt any enthusiasm for, but also because, being ignored a lot of the time, there was nothing to stimulate me coming from my supervisor. I was not inspired to try harder, but just spiralled down. Luckily for me, my second postdoc was utterly different. Not everyone is so lucky.

By the time I was back in the UK with a Fellowship under my belt and grants to hand, I hired as a postdoc a student from that very same group I had worked in a few years before, with whom I’d overlapped. He regaled me with how he had been so fed up with Professor X because of the favouritism he had shown to another student, while he and others had been given very little attention, and how he’d seen that happen to me compared with another postdoc. That was a lightbulb moment for me, albeit the other postdoc had accomplished a great deal more than I had (and went on to join the faculty in the department and thence to have a very successful academic career in various US institutions).

The constant passing over of one student in favour of another is all too common, as is the unevenness with which academic benefits of any kind are handed out. I am not sure though whether it is always the case, as my freshly-hired postdoc opined in the case of our mutual professor, that this is because the supervisor only feels they can handle one student and one postdoc at a time, regardless of the size of their group. I think, too often it is simply that they respond more to one person than another, someone, perhaps who is the one that reminds them of the student they once were. In other words, they are swayed by affinity bias. Here gender and race are undoubtedly likely to play a role. All kinds of bias – against a woman doing physics, against a woman or black researcher in an otherwise all male/white research group and so on – can come into play. The upshot may be the kind of favouritism I am describing. Like name-calling and bullying, it can be immensely detrimental, but even harder to put a finger on let alone counter.

Academia, like any work-place, has a long way to go to be a truly fair and comfortable place to work. Each of us have our work to do, to support others being unreasonably treated and to make sure we are not ourselves guilty of these sins.

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Getting Universities’ People and Culture Right

Posted on August 27, 2021 by Athene Donald

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed there has been nothing to read for some time, regularly or irregularly. As for so many of us, this has been a tough year culminating, for me, in a chest infection (non-Covid) that knocked me back for weeks. I haven’t felt so ill and weak since I had ‘flu in 1990! Hence, I have lacked all energy to do anything on top of the bare essentials. A blogpost was well beyond me, even walking off the College site defeated me for quite a while. It is no doubt wholesome to be reminded of one’s fragility, particularly in the middle (or perhaps towards the end?) of a pandemic, but it is depressing to realise how much one’s physical and mental state can go into precipitate decline without warning. I am looking forward to my ‘get up and go’ being back in full strength soon.

Burnout is, of course, to be seen across academia. Our lives have been upended as we have been caught between government requirements to protect staff and students and the imperative to teach and otherwise support the student body and staff. I have not had to teach during this period, but the number of additional meetings (Zoom, naturally, occasionally broken up by Teams or even Googlemeet) required to ensure we complied with everything demanded for an establishment such as a Cambridge College, has been astonishing. I am looking forward, perhaps too optimistically, to my diary reverting to something less horrendous as we learn to live a new normal existence, whatever that may look like.

Around the time I got completely knocked off my feet this summer, BEIS published its R+D People and Culture Strategy, long trailed by Science Minister Amanda Solloway, with its sub-title ‘People at the Heart of R+D’, so here is the blogpost about this that should have been written weeks ago. How could I not be in favour of such a document? Putting people at the heart of the R+D enterprise is exactly how it should be. But…..full of laudable sentiments though the strategy is, it appears to lack any clear indication of the path from where we are now to where BEIS aspirations would take us.

It has always been heartening to hear the minister talk so passionately about the importance of people and their well-being, with her own first-hand experience of bullying in the workplace (not in the university sector) to spur her on to find ways to improve the situation. Likewise, over many years I have heard – indeed more than once shared a platform on this topic with – Ottoline Leyser talk about the importance of improving our lab culture, to eradicate the bullying and ensure all members of a research team are treated fairly and the breadth of their work respected beyond mere numbers of grants or papers. Nevertheless, fine words butter no parsnips, as my mother was prone to say.

The concluding statement about the whole document, headed ‘Making it a reality’ says ‘We invite and encourage institutions, businesses and the people who work in them and the wide range of other partners in the sector to work with us to drive change, making a difference in their own sphere of influence and thereby contributing to change across the sector.’ Such a statement would appear to lack any teeth, although one cannot argue with the intent. However, what is likely to change on the back of it? Universities should be already striving in this direction – as schemes such as Athena Swan (however unsatisfactorily revamped) and the Race Equality Chartermark highlight. These are schemes, note, that have been demoted by Solloway’s and her pair Michelle Donelan’s (Universities’ Minister) own actions, so that they cannot be linked directly to funding. So what we see is an overall plan of action that hopes for wide buy-in without any explicit mechanisms or levers attached. In this context, it is perhaps worth pointing the reader to a recent paper by Alison Phipps and Liz McDonnell in which they talk about ‘institutional polishing’ and ‘airbrushing’ as ways to look as if ED+I issues are being addressed in a university without any structural change ensuing. It is a depressing read that should give all of us wanting to work in this space pause for thought.

I would highlight two particular aspects of the BEIS paper that are admirable and need addressing, but where I can see nothing spelled out that is likely to lead immediately to change and improvement: the issues facing early career researchers (ECRs) and bullying and abuse of power in hierarchies within universities.  A consultation process with ECRs is envisaged, yet their problems are well-known already and I wonder what more will be gained from such a consultation. Many of the problems relate to the lack of permanent positions, meaning that the majority of postdocs end up not in the tenured ranks of faculty. Unless some dramatic reconstruction and expansion at the top of the academic pyramid is envisaged, or a radical decrease in the number of funded PhD students and postdocs to reduce the supply, it isn’t clear what solutions there are to this conundrum. (Neither, of course, are envisaged in the strategy document. Neither are likely to be popular.)

Sometimes people talk as if the answer was to create a new tier of permanent positions, lab managers or senior researchers with responsibility for key equipment, for instance. For those who got such a position it would be a satisfactory outcome, and there are many good reasons why research overall would benefit from their creation, instead of the hand-to-mouth, or rather grant-to-grant, uncertainty PIs face with keeping their research going on a steady basis. Nevertheless, looking back to the lecturer jobs bonanza of the 1960s, when a new swathe of universities was created, and how that led to stagnation in the job market for decades thereafter as those appointed at the time sat tight for years and practically no further jobs opened up, it is clear that such a ‘once in a lifetime’ job creation scheme would not provide a lasting solution for future generations of ECRs.

To my mind part of the needed solution is a much more honest dialogue about the nature of the pyramid, so that those embarking on a PhD have realistic expectations of what is likely to come next. The Royal Society (through a piece of work I was involved with) tried to set out such expectations and responsibilities on the sector some time ago. I’m not sure it got much traction, but it holds true. Students should be aware that, for most of them, moving swiftly, or even slowly, up the ranks to professor is an unlikely outcome, but that there are many other enticing opportunities for which their research training will stand them in very good stead. Their PhD supervisor is probably not the best person to inform them about these, given that the vast majority will only have worked in a university themselves; I would myself fit into that category. There are of course careers services available to researchers, which they should avail themselves of early on. Nothing of this gets a mention in the recent document, unless it is the idea – a good one – of facilitating porosity between academia and other sectors including industry.

The other issue, of bullying and harassment, is something I have often written about on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. see a rather personal account on this). We can – and should – all deplore this, but what does this latest document suggest should be done about it? As a colleague rather unkindly said, it is sadly vacuous. There are no teeth or levers provided, just that the sector should work together to stamp it out. That, one could argue, is how it has been for decades and that much-desired eradication shows no signs of happening. Again, to quote the document, we are told BEIS will ‘encourage the recently established Forum for Tackling Bullying and Harassment to develop sector-wide definitions for all forms of bullying; and to establish clear guidelines to inform future policy and action.’ I don’t need a definition to know when bad behaviour is going on; on the other hand perhaps some people want to hide behind formalities rather than tackle the issues; I refer the reader again to the Phipps and McDonnell paper illustrating just this point.

Sexual harassment should already be covered by clear guidelines in place in every institution. The trouble is more usually the inability to create an environment in which people feel safe bringing forward allegations, with confidence they will be appropriately treated. For every Fred Marcy convicted of such outrageous behaviour (and eventually kicked out of the National Academy of Sciences) there will be plenty of others who either are permitted to slip beneath the radar because no one feels willing to speak up for entirely understandable reasons, or whose behaviour is nevertheless tolerated because the leadership does not want to see a major player be disgraced. This is the reason why Non-Disclosure Agreements are so pernicious (as argued here by Mark Geoghegan), since a complainant can be paid off without disgrace being attached to the perpetrator, who then feels able to continue their appalling behaviour without restraint.

Bullying is perhaps harder to identify with confidence, since what a PI feels is legitimate language addressed to a researcher about ‘pulling up socks’ or working harder may feel to the recipient like unreasonable pressure. However, I am not convinced definitions will help get round this, as much as appropriate dialogue between the parties. There are times when pulling up socks really is the only way a PhD will be accomplished, after all! But this is where I believe sector-wide reconsideration of incentives is important.

The pressure an organisation puts on all its staff – multiplied during the current pandemic – can be excessive and that pressure can be onward transmitted to researchers in the spirit of the office boy kicking the cat. If all that matters for progression is the value of grants, the impact factor of journals published in (and it is surprising how many DORA-signatory organisations at the highest level still permit panels to factor IF’s in decision-making, even if it’s not written down as an explicit criterion) or size of group, then there is no incentive for a PI actually to worry about their students’ wellbeing. Narrative CVs, which UKRI are introducing, may allow panels – appointment or promotion – to assess whether an applicant has worked towards ED+I initiatives or shown particular interest in mentoring ECRs, but if no value is actually attached by the institution to such actions, such assessment may carry no weight. Expectations should have been set higher in this space in the People and Culture document, even if mandating all institutions should always pay heed to such factors might have been a bridge too far.

Maybe I’m too pessimistic. Maybe the very fact that BEIS has mentioned such thorny issues at all is a hopeful sign our institutions will change. But I, for one, will not be holding my breath that any change will be consequent on its publication, much though I’d like to be proved wrong.

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Picture a Scientist – Who Do You See?

Posted on June 26, 2021 by Athene Donald

I am often asked who inspired me. I feel embarrassed to admit the answer is no one, it seems like the wrong answer. Certainly there was no female scientist who triggered my love of science at an early age; I was far more inspired by my reading matter. In this category I would single out The New Science of Strong Materials by JE Gordon, I’ve written about the significance of this book at length before. I am not alone in recognizing the importance of this one book in triggering a desire to understand the behaviour of materials; friends and colleagues in my field have said the same. But inspiration by personality – no, not for me.

However, having watched a striking film about women in science, Picture a Scientist, perhaps I feel, had I known about Nancy Hopkins a long time ago, I’d have felt differently. It was not the research she did – or at least not in the conventional meaning of the word, though that was impressive enough to get her elected to the National Academy of Sciences – that has (indirectly) had lasting impact on me, as no doubt on many others. Nancy Hopkins is a molecular biologist at MIT, whose efforts to establish the evidence demonstrating systemic disadvantage at her institution in the 1990s led to a seminal report A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT. Hopkins was the woman who – as the film makes clear during extended clips of interviews with her – crept around the buildings at night with a tape measure, establishing just what the differential between the lab space allotted to male and female faculty was. Evidence matters in science, and her work provided this. Having compiled this data, when she shared it with other women on the faculty, they all wanted to add their signatures when she took it to MIT’s leadership. And, impressively they, the leadership, responded with the full study which led to the 1999 report I mention.

I touched on this study, when a follow-on was published just over a decade later in 2011, in one of my early blogposts. The original study made me reconsider my own situation, even if realising the problems I faced weren’t necessarily of my own making did not cheer me up. Rereading that early post I note how many of the issues that struck me as significant and perhaps even unexpected are now so mainstream: gendered reference letters, the dangers of positive discrimination (legal in the US) or even positive action, expectations of stereotypical feminine behaviour such as sweetness, and the overwhelming burden of good citizenship. Interestingly, Hopkins’ name does not feature in my write-up of the time. It has only been slowly over the years that her remarkable tenacity and determination to seek out evidence and not let future generations of women suffer from the disadvantage she felt she had laboured under, dawn on me.

I learned more about her from reading the late Ben Barres’ The Autobiography of a transgender scientist (for which she wrote the foreword), and more again from Rita Colwell’s book A lab of one’s own: one woman’s journey through sexism in science (both books I have written about on this blog, here and here). Finally, seeing her ‘in person’ as it were in this film, I was overpowered by her modesty, generosity, fun and strength. The recognition, at around the age of 50, that if she didn’t do something about the slights and disadvantage she was operating under at MIT she would have to quit science completely, resonated with me. At around the same age I had felt I either had to quit Cambridge (for another university) or fight on to make things better for those women who came after me. Like her, I chose to fight.

Clearly Hopkins didn’t inspire me at any point in my career, but she is an inspiration now and I hope many early career researchers will be able to access the film and admire everything she’s done and the warmth of character and commitment she exudes. However, she is not the only star of the film. Also included centre stage are the geologist Jane Willenbring (Boston University at the time of the filming, now at Stanford) and the chemist Raychelle Burks (St Edward’s University, Austin then, now at American University, Washington DC). Their stories are differently striking, their testimony equally moving. The former describes the foul sexual harassment she suffered during fieldwork in Antarctica while researching for her PhD under the ‘guidance’ of David Marchant. She sat on this corrosive experience for 17 years before filing a Title IX complaint against him, with the support of a male colleague who had watched her during this fieldwork. The trigger for this was a comment from her three year-old daughter that ‘she wanted to be a scientist’ like her mum. Willenbring realised she did not want her daughter, and those like her, to suffer as she had. Anger is a powerful driver of action.

Even having had the bravery to file her complaint, resolution did not come swiftly. The complaint did not lead to instant action. Initially, after an investigation, Marchant was simply put on leave for three years, a decision that was overruled by the President of Boston University, Robert Brown, who fired him – a man who had been Provost at MIT when the 1999 report was published and who also appears in the film discussing the conditions for women. Willenbring’s testimony is powerful and moving; she relives many of the emotions as she speaks about her ordeal and subsequent ongoing feelings, often with her daughter in the background. As we know, speaking out about harassment – sexual or otherwise – often leads to bad outcomes for the complainant, while the alleged perpetrator continues essentially untouched on their path and, often, with their harassment. The UK is certainly no further on, and possibly less advanced, than the US, as women like Emma Chapman can testify from their own experience.

The third ‘star’ is Raychelle Burks. She is a black chemist, growing up in classrooms and labs where there was no one who looked like her, and who was dismissed as unprofessional because her hair ‘was not straight’, along with other remarks stimulated by her appearance and heritage. Although I don’t recall her mentioning anger, clearly for her the way she coped with this barrage of negativity was to speak up; to use her difference as a platform to reach out to wider audiences, so that she is now recognized as a gifted communicator, both in terms of her science and also on the subject of diversity. Listening to her speak, it was easy to see why she was so appreciated by audiences, with a fluency and sense of humour that was bound to attract favourable attention. She was determined not to allow people to categorise her simply by the colour of her skin, or allow that difference to diminish her.

Three brave women, whose stories are powerful and moving and, one also hopes, transformative in their different spheres. I was able to watch this film through the work of the Cavendish Inspiring Womxn group, who run regular events to inspire and encourage womxn in STEM. In the end I was unable to attend the discussion they held to discuss the film, but I am really glad they made that film available for a few days. If you get a chance to watch it, I thoroughly recommend it. It will make you think, make you appreciative of the bravery of those who came before you and help you recognize that inspiration may come in many guises. Think about this, even if you can’t get access to the film, and think about how to make your lab a better place for everyone. Be an ally if you can; don’t let the bullies and harassers win.

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The Imperative of Skills

Posted on June 15, 2021 by Athene Donald

Whereas academic scientists too often only think in terms of producing the next generation of academic scientists like them, the reality is many would-be PIs would be lost without the technicians who keep the equipment running, train newcomers and generally make sure the lab is in a fit condition for work. They aren’t always visible, but they are crucial in many areas. Last week an article appeared in the THE by Mike Hughes, the teaching laboratories manager in the department of chemistry at the University of Manchester, challenging universities to do more to hire technicians from their local area. I am all in favour of this, and I know Cambridge does use the apprenticeship route to facilitate this, but all the issues I mentioned recently about the challenges of the overheating economy definitely acts in opposition to this desire: Manchester may have reasonable transport infrastructure to bring a technical workforce into the university, but Cambridge is less fortunate in this respect, and the places a technician can afford to live may be those from which it is impossibly hard to travel to the University.

The importance of technicians – in universities or, equally, in many branches of industry – is not going to go away, yet the supply is falling, as a recent Royal Society report highlighted. The TALENT project is currently looking in much more detail specifically at the technical workforce in universities. Sadly, there is a lack of awareness in schools, not least due to the somewhat patchy careers advice teenagers are able to access following cutbacks in provision, about what a technician role looks like, or what qualifications might be useful for those not contemplating a degree. As the Government considers its funding decisions around FE and HE, it would be helpful if they would consider a joined-up approach instead of pitting the one against the other when money is being carved up. However, this would require different government departments to talk to each other more than all the evidence indicates is likely to occur.

As we face a post-Brexit world and, hopefully, a post-pandemic world, the UK still faces the ‘productivity paradox’ it has been facing since the 2008 crash. We need to think hard about adult upskilling as well as school leavers. The Government’s plans for lifelong learning are all very well, but they need cash and they need to be coherent. That BEIS and the Department of Education don’t comfortably work together – something I saw for myself ten years ago, something that still applies, as two recent conversations with those at the sharp end have confirmed – is a major worry. The education system needs to run smoothly from early years education (which sets the scene for so much of what happens to the individual in later life and is anyhow underfunded), through secondary school and on to whatever comes next, be it a degree or not.

Yet, when it comes to adult upskilling, what is needed is also likely to be somewhat regionally dependent, according to what industries once were present or are currently trying to bed in. Clearly that makes it harder for top-down, one-size-fits-all policies from Whitehall to be effective, but the promise of new funds to allow more people to access higher level technical skills is to be welcome.  Throwing away the impossibility of accessing funding for an equivalent or higher level qualification (ELQ) would be an important measure too. It ought to be possible to retrain in these areas if one’s first foray led nowhere, for whatever reason.

However, the gulf between the rhetoric of white papers and government pronouncements and what works on the ground in any given area, can be huge. Trying to bring together employers, funding and those who might deliver the skills’ training, is no mean challenge. It is interesting to note that in the USA, since these matters are left to individual states, there is the possibility of many experiments in different localities, each still with large populations, still potentially very heterogeneous. Experimentation is clearly proceeding apace.  This is a point underlying the recent webinar involving the University’s Institute for Manufacturing and the authors of the book Workforce Education: A New Roadmap, William B Bonvillian and Sanjay E Sarma, two MIT professors. There are potentially 51 states which can try (at least) 51 experiments to suit their particular structures and local issues, something not quite so easy to do with England’s educational oversight and funding arrangements. Nevertheless, a state is still a huge and disparate region to find a single solution for.

If I turn specifically to the East of England’s challenges, I discussed a couple of posts ago, it is worth pulling out the 2018 Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Economic Report. This report highlights the actions of a Chatteris based manufacturing company, Stainless Metalcraft Ltd, an old established manufacturing company, that now specialises in metal-working for advanced technologies, such as the Large Hadron Collider. It has succeeded as a hi-tech manufacturing firm in the middle of the fens, absolutely not in a cluster of similar firms or a science park. The answer, according to the report,

“lies in the strength of the company’s training programmes. Just under half of the company’s 150 employees have been through its apprenticeship training programme, which has been recognised as one of the top 100 apprenticeships on offer in the UK.”

This particular company may be thought of as comparable to the successful suite of, often family-run and German-based, Mittelstand companies, which also invest heavily in training and have survived over decades despite remaining relatively small. An interesting comparison between such companies and some UK counterparts can be found in the book by Tom Brown, Tragedy and Challenge, based on his experiences as a senior manager of engineering companies in different countries. Of one in the Tyrol he says

“Although it was a small company there was a full-time trainer, and so not only were raw recruits trained rigorously, but also the experienced press setters and other skilled employees were regularly retrained and had their skills updated.”

I fear that would not be common in the UK.

Stainless Metalcraft may be a successful ‘experiment’ of one – and key questions about the experiment must be where are some of the classroom-based activities for these apprenticeships occurring, and how much interplay is there between company and educational establishment in ensuring these activities are effective – but it is worth thinking what it may indicate for other places outside knowledge-intensive clusters. Education should be as evidence- and data-driven as any other sphere of activity. If it works for them in Chatteris, why not something similar in Cromer or Skegness, Wisbech or Dudley? Each will have their own specific and local issues to address, and with greater or smaller distances to cover to their nearest further education college. Nevertheless, so much will reside in the willingness of a firm to invest in training, and the ability to fund this. I would like to think the government may facilitate the funding aspect at least, through its new plans.

So, if we are to move forward towards the hyped ‘global Britain’, if our workforce – denuded of many skilled pairs of hands as Brexit bites – is to deliver enhanced productivity and economic growth, we need to join up many aspects of our education and training so much better than we manage currently. We need all relevant parts of government to speak to each other, to fund adult upskilling as well as training for those coming straight out of school, in straightforward ways that everyone can understand. And we need companies, whatever their size, to believe that  (re)training really can make a difference to their own bottom line and their locality.

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