Ah no, I'm not talking about a Ph.D. in Exotic Dances. Science. Research. Paradigm shifts in technology. These are things people care about. That I'd think they'd care about anyway. You'll end up reading about what your tax dollars are going to. Some of them.
Sequestration (BCA cap is already there) is going to hit the amount of money that funding agencies have to grant to research proposals. I rely on research funding (given via submitted proposals that are recommended for funding) to pay for my 40k/yr tuition, my stipend, my health insurance, my conference travels and my research supplies and equipment. I currently rely on an an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund grant... this is seed money that will help me with all those things. It's not forever and it's meant to be the seed money for larger proposals. So what to do when I'm a 4th year? My professor will wonder too... Write another proposal? Hm, sure. Get a company on board? Maaaybe. We probably need to hold a patent first. After all, we would let lawyers talk to each other. Start a company? I would need my Ph.D. first.. and maybe some training in management/business school (I am so tired of taking classes). Give up and start a ramen shop? I wouldn't put myself through a Ph.D. program if in the end all I'd do is open a ramen shop.
Funding agencies like DoE, DoD, NIH, NASA... tend to be application oriented with the results of a project intended for immediate commercialization or use. DARPA (subset of DoD, I think) funds projects that are WAY out there with pretty crazy goals. I think one of them was like growing a single layer of graphene on a substrate. $1mil. Go.
Fundamental science is still there, somewhat... but you still kind of need it to understand exactly the mechanisms behind the fruits of your research... so while you might have a cool theory, you should have just as cool and widespread application to justify your time and spending other people's money. The politics and business of self-serving interests are very complicated. I don't think I could clearly talk about them without being shot to pieces. I'm naiive and optimistic. Good luck to me, I suppose.
So taxpayers like you, through the taxes you pay (or rather, the money you don't get back every year from the IRS), take some of the risk on the science adventures. I'm in energy storage, so I am indeed quite applied. If you ask me if I've come out with a battery that lasts longer, I will tell you that I am working on it.
Some information you might find interesting and no I'm not someone paid to post these links who do you take me for:
Summary: Federal R&D and Sequestration In The First Five Years
The AACS churns out Science journal. Actually I'm not sure if that link is the original, original source... but anyway.
US Energy Information Administration
Nice handy source of information, statistics and graphs... I like taking information from here when making introduction to presentations. The information is available to all so why not? I think it's enlightening stuff. It is like okay so we know this and this will kill us yet we use so much of it... what should I do to advance a front that counters that? Will the counter leave a different kind of poison trail?
So maybe I can highlight some of my time as an engineering Ph.D student. It might be helpful for others when they consider engineering/science graduate school. I'm too big of a weirdo for my department to post my experience on their website for recruitment.
I don't think names are THAT important so I leave them out for the most part.
I went to an engineering school in California... I came out with a BS (cum laude) in materials science and some research experience. I got a lot of flack from my parents for choosing the way of the engineer until the day I graduated. Apparently, engineers are failures or something.
2010-2011 I was wondering what I would do... should I work for a company? How the heck am I going to even get an interview? My networking is lackluster even though I've invited some companies over to showcase themselves to the dept. students.... so I do have some HR contacts. Some of my classmates work for Intel or companies that use material science and engineering. Some... not so lucky but I'm not on facebook so there's quite a bit of snooping I lose out on. The economy then was still sluggish.
I'll apply to graduate school... just in case there's nothing for me. 3 schools. What? Was I crazy? Probably. To be honest, I just didn't want to fill out that many applications... so yeah I'm lazy. In the end, I was 2 for 3. Northwestern said something along the lines of, "We just don't have the resources to support so many outstanding applicants." Yeah, yeah... Just say it a bit straighter like: dude, we don't waste money on stupid people like you. Like you're going to hurt my feelings because you didn't let me into your research experience for undergrads program when I was an undergrad.
I received admissions to my first choice school Jan 3rd, 2011. I still have the dated letter. I was like okay, my future for the next 5 years is decided. My parents begged me not to go.... I just said, "I earned it. You don't need to worry about paying for my schooling anymore. You can save more for retirement now and retire sooner." Aren't I such a good kid? :P
Each school/dept is a bit different when you match with your adviser (pick the boss). Sometimes you pick a school based on the professor you want to work with and have the connection set up and ready to go. Some departments say okay, go do some small projects with a few professors of your choosing and then decide who you will do your thesis project under. In my case, I had to talk to quite a few professors to see what they were like and if they had money. You really need two things: Someone you're okay with overseeing your progress in research and that same person has enough research grants to support you. If you come in on a fellowship (FREE OF STRINGS), it's easier because then you worry less about money... you and the adviser will have to piece up where the money comes from after the fellowship runs out. Usually get research grants. Or... you become a teaching assistant. My department requires I be a teaching assistant for one semester... because the money here comes primarily from research grants, it's preferred that we keep working on research projects. My friend over in chemistry... well he had to do way more semesters of teaching to keep his tuition and stipends paid. Who the heck affords 40k/yr tuition without going into debt?
The boss I chose moved up from another university to get closer to his collaborators here. He was interested in expanding into energy storage but had no funding available... it was a plan that was 2 years later after he had secured the students that came with him. He wasn't even going to take a new student. I came in on a 1 semester fellowship, so that was my ticket in. We have very similar views on work ethics and cleanliness. Usually you get the money first and then the student... this case was the reverse. Student found... he now needed to rush for money.
So knowing that money issues will come in, he gets to work on a proposal to ACS PRF... In the meantime, I'm working on what was written in THAT proposal while pulling money from another source dedicated to different projects. The results are kind of iffy and my personal opinion is that the idea is nice but the implementation and verification is difficult. Sometime last summer, we made an interesting discovery with respect to a certain material (manuscripts are in progress, so no I can't talk about it) and my professor thought... well go shove some lithium in it. OKAY. Change of project.
After quite some months of tweaking and testing, it works. Yay. It's better than the usual lithium cobalt oxide that is used in current Li-ion batteries. It is capable of holding 3x the charge for the same mass, which just means it will last longer on a single charge. Stuff like this gets reported in literature quite often so it's not like my observation is unique. I can't talk about specifics but once papers/patent is there, then I can. I still have yet to fully explore its limitations. I mean I have one channel on my potentiostat so I can only measure one experiment at a time. :P
A day can go like this as long as stuff doesn't break:
Get up, get ready... walk to school.
Check experiments. How do the results look on first glance? Record stuff in the lab notebook. Did it work? Why did it work? If it didn't work? Why didn't it work?
Those questions sometimes can be hard to answer, especially when working on something that is truly in that "unknown" realm. You are forced to look into the scientific literature of what could be or what isn't... or try to alter different parameters and retest if there isn't anything in literature to go off of. Sometimes the questions can't be answered in a day or week. There's always some snag getting in the way of the goalpost.
Load new experiment on the instrument. I primarily use are the powder x-ray diffractometer and a single channel potentiostat. Plot the data that was just acquired. Make sense of it. Explain the behaviors of the system. Talk to colleagues. What do they think? If there are collaborators on the project, talk to them. Discuss with adviser if he's around.
Synthesize more of a composition or a new composition. We measure chemicals on a balance that is precise out to the milligram with uncertainty in tenth of milligram. Takes patience to get it right. Some reactions are unforgiving if you give it too much of one substance.
Clean up of things I've used: the Teflon Swageloks, my glovebox workspace, the x-ray sample slides, beakers, jars, etc.
As safety officer, I make sure the hazardous wastes are taken care of. I also yell at my colleagues to wear their labcoats and safety glasses.
If I see my adviser, I give him a heads up on how things are going and if I need to buy anything... re-supply, order for new experimental parameters...
I'll always ask for better equipment but right now the priority is to keep money around to support the students' tuition and stipends. The first thing we will buy with excess money is our own powder x-ray diffractometer. We use so much of this one instrument and the one we use now is managed by the department and to some extent x-ray microanalysis lab (related to the electron microbeam analysis lab). It is $30/hr to use and I probably log in around 10 hours per month.
And in all of that, go to class, do homework, study for exams, repair stuff, write abstracts for conferences, prepare presentations for conferences, write papers, make sure the undergrads aren't dying, do the bidding of the department (part of student self-government in the department - not everyone does this), ask companies for samples of some product and promise them you'll give them acknowledgement in the paper you write when you use their stuff...
That would be the mishmash of a typical day without the responsibility of being a teaching assistant. If I were to be a teaching assistant as well, I'd have to hold office hours, conduct/prep discussion section, answer student e-mails, and some grading depending on the course. I did skip out read daily kos while waiting for things to finish cooking or measuring... so let's not forget that bit. Guilty as charged, yes. ;)
Sometimes I will come in on evenings and weekends to change experiments out or conduct them. Takes maybe 30 minutes to an hour or so to make a new experiment for the potentiostat. Not like I have a family right now or anything. Children are too expensive to have and raise properly. Sure there is Mr. Gazer... but he's napping at the moment... or he's building cars! He works 3rd shift for the 10% shift premium.
It's clearly not glamorous. I have 3.5 years to go. Eventually there will be papers, supervising undergraduate students in their projects, patents, a data meeting (pre-defense), a defense... a PhD hooding. And then perhaps I will finally get around to being officially married to the man I have called Mr. Gazer.
Sequestration won't really affect me that hard (my previous, now unpublished, diary made it sound like desperation woe is me). My tuition, stipend and health insurance can come from being a teaching assistant - that is the safety net that is available to me. When it comes to resupplying, repairing or buying new equipment... I don't have as many options for that. Some students may have it harder than me, I don't know. When I was an undergrad, someone came from a lab whose adviser 'ran out of money' and asked for parafilm (basic lab supply). Of course I gave him some parafilm to tie him over... Another professor had a proposal that was recommended for funding and then the funding agency called him back and told him, "Nope, we don't have money to give to you." What was he going to say to the incoming student? It's this last scenario I think will happen more often if not outright way less proposals being funded.
Doesn't it make your blood boil that someone like me is going to school with all kinds of support? This is such an outrage! I should be paying my own way... well except I can't afford that - even the loans. If all I had were loans to fund my academics, then I would not pursue a Ph.D. The return is not worth it.
Bonus information (it's come to my attention that I'm an idiot when it comes to accounting or I suck at writing/math but it's just fine guys): universities take a cut out of whatever funding you apply for unless there are contingencies against it (ACS PRF is like that but the amount is puny compared to the larger grants). My university takes 55% of the funding that is brought in. If the proposal is written for 600k, 270k will be left. They tell us that money is used to pay for the building operation and administrative staff, but I can't verify that. Sometimes you and others aim big like when the DoE was accepting proposals for Electronic Frontier Research Centers... then the grant is huge like millions and spread over a number of professors/students.
This comment discussion wrt that 55%
Edit 1: rewriting bonus information. Cut is not a synonym for overhead.
Edit 2: The comments were enlightening
Edit 3: I did some proofreading/content addition but there are mistakes still escaping me.