Advise on a Successful Career in Asia

Anthony K. H. Tung

School of Computing

National University of Singapore

What I Think Will Bring a Successful Career in Asia

We are from Asia!

We are from Asia!

Asia•44,900,000 km2 , covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area)•almost 4 billion people, i.e. more than 60% of the world's current human population• large diversity in languages and cultures

Asia• Large number of database researchers

• Important talent sources for database research

• Let’s do a spatial analysis on that

For modest reason (and also for the sake of peace), we won’t hype on the fact that these two guys in fact come from a more

specific region of South-East Asia!

Singapore • the “little red dot”, nicknamed by an ex-Indonesia President• Area: 692.7 km2, i.e. 0.00154% of Asia• Population: 4.5 million, i.e. 0.11% of Asia ‘s population• Resources: location, human brains, reserve of US$115 billions• Focus on research to maintain it’s competitiveness. •Attracting talented students is of utmost importance

National University of Singapore (NUS) • Benefit immensely from the Cosmopolitan nature of Singapore with in term of student intake• Have a very large database group (too large to put on the red dot) with lots of visitors every year• Lots of funding for emerging area and students come free

Context Enough of chest beating! The points to take note is as follow Singapore ’s situation at most represent only 0.1% of Asia.

Will try to make things general with you doing the customization

Working in Asia mean working near a very large student talent pool. How do you benefit from it?

As a new researcher, things can be separated into categories No choice: Where you are born. How high is your IQ. How handsome/pretty you look. Where you graduate from etc. Have choice: How hardworking, honest, nice you are etc. How you manage yourself and how you manage others.

The fun part is to optimize within the space of “have choices” under the constraints of the “no choices”

The main difference after Phd…

• No more Phd. advisor to guide you

• Beside doing the technical stuff for your research, you need to

– manage yourself

– manage your students

– manage your bosses

– manage….

• The technical part is easy as long as you can find time away from the management part!

Managing Yourself

You

Finding your own identity

• In case you are unaware, you have been living (and taking shelter) under the shadow of you supervisor. It’s time to find your own identity in order to grow

• If building a career is like drawing a circle, then your must first ask yourself where is the center. On then can you define “success”

Finding your own identity(II)

• Lots of choices on what type of researchers we want to be. The important thing is to do a self-assessment on

– you abilities– your personal constraints– your ambition

• What is your research directions– do I want to stay in an “old” area and try to pick the fruits higher up the tree? – do I want to follow others into a hot, emerging area to find low hanging fruits?– do I want to try to identify and lead the community into a new, important area?– don’t care, just published approach is not advisable though

Finding your own identity (III)• How do you see your students?

–are they there just to help you get tenured ?– are you obliged to train/prepare them for their future ?

• What type of collaborators do you want?– a friend who can go for a drink/chat? Or strict professional relationship?– should you work with senior/junior collaborator– do you see yourself as a nurturer?

• What is the role of professional activities in your career?– Reviewing duties always there– Tutorial/Workshop advisable only for well defined area which is the focus of your research– The last thing you want to have is to be seen as a professional “professional activities” organizer– professional service with good research can made you famous, professional service without research make you infamous

Finding your own identity (IV)

Eventually, you need to ask yourself what you want to stand for and develop a set of

principles for actions that is consistent with what you represent

Moving Forwards (I)

• “Short” term papers with long term plan

• Road is not always smooth

Graphs, Trees, Sequences, High Dimensional Search

Integrated Mining of Biological Databases

No. of KDD/VLDB/ICDE/SIGMOD Papers

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Initial idea of many papers from 2004-2007 started in 2001

Quotes the have inspired me

• “We can’t choose reviewers but we can choose to write good papers”

Raymond Ng, UBC

• “If you think your idea is going to be published by someone else tomorrow, then probably it is not too innovative”

Philip Long, Google

Managing Students

First things first, will we get good students in Asia ?

That however is not the right question to ask.

We are trained

in USA!

Can you train them

like us!

Are there good students ?

• North America/Europe recruitment system have high precision but low recall

• Chelsea FC vs Arsenal FC

– Chelsea is rich and can get good/talented players easier

– Arsenal is poor and must spot unproven gems and groom them based on their talents

– As a new, junior researcher, which one can you follow?

• Guiding and training students is part of an academia’s job. You miss half the fun (and success) if you don’t do that. Bottom line, you should try to

– convert weak student to strong student

– convert strong student to stronger student

Selecting students

• Interest and Curiosity• Persistency

– Refuse them three time and if they come back again, they are probably persistent enough

• Honesty and Integrity• Open mindness• Diligent and Discipline• Intelligence vs Patience

– Examination take 2 hours, solving a research problem might take 20 years. Think fast and think deep are two different things sometime.

Continuing with the football analogy…

• In many ways, you are player/manager of your research team

• As a manager, you must

– believe in their potential,

– motivate them

– put them in the correct position

– plus handle all the admin of course!)

• As a player, you need to continue with your technical development in order to assume the playmaker role to create goal scoring chances for them

Standard leadership techniques applies…

• Leadership by example

• Think win-win,

– prepare them for their future

• Clear guideline on the do/don’t etc.

• The “chip on the shoulder” motivation

– “they think you are not good enough, prove it to them!”

– “people with a chip on the shoulder need to work harder”

• Most can be learned in a leadership course, but practicing them is a different stories

• The resultant impact on your career if successful is however immense

Final words

• Two things not taught during Phd. training

– Managing yourself

– Managing students

• Being in Asia, you are near to a very huge talent pool. These talents can help you in your research, but remember to fulfill the other end of the deal

• Some of those things here might seems idealistic. Unfortunately, I have decide that this is what I stand for

• Finally, I have volunteered to Ihab to give this talk with the belief that I can provide something useful for the new researchers. If this is not the case, I offer my sincere apologies!

Jonathan the seagull…

May your career soar like him!