Advise
a Successful
Career
What on
I Think
Will Bring
a
inCareer
Asia in Asia
Successful
Anthony K. H. Tung
School of Computing
National University of Singapore
We are
from Asia!
Asia
National University of Singapore (NUS)
Asia
Singapore
••44,900,000
Benefit immensely
km2 , covers
from the
8.6%
Cosmopolitan
of the
the “little
red dot”,of
nicknamed
by an
ex-Indonesia
••nature
Large
number
database
researchers
Earth's
oftotal
Singapore
surface
with
area
in term
(or 29.4%
of student
of its
President
2, i.e. 0.00154%
land
area)
For
modest
reason
(and also
for
the sake
•intake
talent
sources
database
• Important
Area:
692.7 km
offor
Asia
••almost
Population:
4.5 won’t
million,
i.e. 0.11%
Asia
‘s(too
population
of
peace),
we
hype
onofgroup
the
fact
that
Have
a 4very
billion
large
people,
database
i.e.
more
than
research
•large
Resources:
location,
human
brains,
reserve
of US$115
these
two
guys
in fact
come
from
60%
of
to the
put
world's
on the
red
current
dot)
with
human
lotsaofmore
•billions
Let’s do a spatial analysis on that
specific
region
population
visitors
every
year of South-East Asia!
• Focus on research to maintain it’s competitiveness.
••Attracting
largeofdiversity
Lots
funding
for
in languages
emerging
area
andimportance
and
talented students
is of utmost
cultures come free
students
We are
from Asia!
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
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”
You
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
Integrated Mining of Biological Databases
Graphs, Trees, Sequences, High Dimensional Search
• Road is not always smooth
No. of KDD/VLDB/ICDE/SIGMOD Papers
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
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 ?
We are
trained
in USA!
That however is not the right question to ask.
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!