Saverio Bolognani
Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich
RISK
in research
Risks in academic life
Learning
- enrolling in difficult courses
- challenging master thesis projects
- tough questions in class
- multiple attempts at difficult tasks
Safe environment
students TAKE risks
Students learn
Risks in academic life
research
doing your PhD on a long unresolved problem
postponing the submission of a paper because you think you can improve it
diving into a new topic/application
transferring your research to industry/start ups
submitting your paper to a tough journal
(truly) high-risk high-reward research project
supervising a student on an open problem
working alone or join forces
Bias in public storytelling
how every successful researcher is a risk-taker
"I jumped into this new field because old problems require new unconventional solutions"
"Everybody kept saying that my idea was stupid but I kept going"
"After my PhD I went to do a postdoc in a completely unrelated field"
"This problem was open for decades but I became obsessed with it"
How do these stories continue?
...we usually hear them when things worked out well...
"photo portrait of a full professor smiling at the camera, recollecting that time he published his best paper, with an inspirational quote about taking risks in your research, black and white, grainy"
So cliché that a deep neural network can produce more.
let's talk About risk in research
A safe space where we can
assess how risk tolerant we are
compare how we approach high risk / high reward tasks
share honest stories of risk in research
the best antidote against Impostor Syndrome
not something we do often when working from home
PROGRAM
- A short test to assess your risk tolerance (10 minutes)
Saverio - A game to see how we handle risk! (50 minutes)
Alberto and Francesco - A self-reflection activity on risk in research (30 minutes)
Verena
Assess your risk-tolerance - COIN FLIPPING
- You will flip a coin as many times as you want.
- HEAD: your winning increases by 1 CHF.
- TAIL: you loose all your winning (buy you can keep playing).
- The game ends after 2 minutes.
WAIT BEFORE YOU START
GAME TIME
Make groups of 4 people, based on the winning in the test (people with the same reward in the same group)
Try not to group with the people you work with every day.
Move around, sit together, get ready for the game.
Winning teams
Risk takers or patient calculators?
self-reflection activity
Think of two moments in your research life and answers these questions on the index cards that we provided.
That time when you took a risk and it paid off
Did you have a backup plan?
What contributed to make it work? % you vs % external factors
That time when you took a risk and things didn't work out.
What contributed to the failure? % you vs % external factors
What expected/unexpected consequences did that have?
If you could go back in time, would you warn your "past you"?
STORY time
key Take-aways
-
Risk propensity is a trait of you as a researcher
- try to understand what level of risk make you creative and productive in your research
- experiment with challenges outside of your comfort zone
- identify and manage risk (see: risk management strategies)
https://www.coursera.org/articles/how-to-manage-project-risk
-
Talk about risk and risk mitigation (what if...?)
- with the people you supervise (MA/SA)
- with your mentor / advisor / supervisor
- with colleagues that you trust
Risk in Research
By Saverio Bolognani
