Research lives and cultures

25- Dr Cristiano Malossi- Facilitating conversations for collaboration

March 09, 2022 Dr Sandrine Soubes Season 1 Episode 25
Research lives and cultures
25- Dr Cristiano Malossi- Facilitating conversations for collaboration
Show Notes Transcript

Dr Cristiano Malossi left his beautiful Italy to do a PhD in Switzerland. He comes from an engineering background and gained a PhD in mathematics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. His stellar path led him to get a position at IBM after his PhD and he has stayed there ever since.

I was interested in hearing about his collaboration experiences in the world of industry.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking about:

  • How facilitative are you in creating discussions between potential collaborators?
  • Can you remind yourself that your professional struggles are your best spaces of learning?
  • How do you use constraints as useful frameworks to develop your most innovative ideas?


Warning- getting a perfect transcript is really hard. This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. We hope that the transcript can be helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.

[music]

Sandrine: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. You're on the podcast, Research Lives and Culture. Today I've got the pleasure to have with me, Cristiano Malossi. It's an Italian name.

Cristiano Malossi: Malossi. Yes.

Sandrine: You are coming all the way from Switzerland. You work for IBM research. I came across Christiano via the ITN Network FIDELIO, which is a research network working on bone. Christiano, can you tell us to get us started, a little bit about your early career? What was your entry into the world of research?

Cristiano: Yes. Right. I think we go back after the university. I finished my studies at Politecnico di Milano. I was Aerospace Engineer. I was looking out for opportunities to work. Among the many things that I was looking at, I also considered Ph.D. because I thought that was a nice way to further develop my skills. I like the research field and doing things that are innovative.

I got a good opportunity at a PFL. That's where I moved to Switzerland actually, 2009. I did a Ph.D. with Professor [unintelligible 00:01:22], a famous Mathematician. Then, after that I thought, "Yes, would like to continue doing research, but possibly I would like to work in a corporate environment," because I really liked the fact of applying my research. I was really very applied scientists, if you want.

I had, if you want, luck or the opportunity to work at IBM Research as a Postdoc and then everything started. Then I remained from 2013 today at IBM Research. Today, I am very proud managing a group of researcher actually. I have a team that is now 15, very talented, young researcher, or more experienced researcher. It's a good mix of skills, of background, and we do, I think a lot of cool things. It's a very nice environment.

Sandrine: Can I ask you how did you go about choosing where and with whom to do a Ph.D., because it's a really critical step in research career? Often when we come to do a Ph.D., thinking of myself, we are quite naive in term of the topic that we may want to do the person we may want to work with or the location. What was your approach yourself in term of making this decision?

Cristiano: I think I have an answer for what I did, but I also maybe have even better suggestion for what I would do. To be honest, I was very lucky because I think I would not change anything. At the beginning I was, as you say, confused about the reasons why maybe I could a Ph.D. There was also this question about, "Should this be because I maybe cannot find something else, or maybe I just want to remain a little bit longer and idle?" Thinking about what I could do next.

Overall, I made, I think a very good decision in what I choose because I choose to go abroad. This I think I recommend everybody. If you are studying in a country, whatever country it is, it is good to go abroad for a period of time because you would be exposed to things that are very different. Switzerland is a very nice place, but there are a lot of other countries that can offer really important experience that can form up a person.

I think just going abroad and changing a little bit environment, you will be exposed to different cultures, different ways of doing things, and you will learn a lot. That's the first suggestion, and I think I did, was very good. Then also and this may be more a posterior thinking, you need to think about what you will put on your CV after the Ph.D. That's something, I think not a lot of people do because it is not so easy to summarize three years of research as a Ph.D. in a CV and make this relevant.

You need to do research on something that it's very close to what you think you might want to do, and could be really appealing when companies are going to look at, even maybe if it's not exactly what you would like to do. I think I did that as well because I wanted to do, personally, since I was an aerospace engineer, I wanted to do simulation of aircraft and aerodynamics and fluid dynamics. Reality is that there are very few companies that do that because it's a very specialized field.

I got the opportunity to do simulations on cardiovascular problems, which was not really what I wanted to do, but it was very good enough to learn the problem, to get the skills, and to get a good university name, good professor name, and good background, and something to talk about for my next step. Sometimes you must choose something which is not really exactly what you want, but that could bring you there. It's more important.

Sandrine: What was your approach in convincing your professor in Switzerland to the take you on as a Ph.D. student?

Cristiano: Actually, it was a little bit maybe the opposite way around because I was already working for him part-time now, although I didn't met him before because he had a group also in Milano. I was doing early research contract where you can do research even if you're not a Ph.D. or if you're not a postdoc. I just do that because after I finish my studies, I wanted to continue doing something, I didn't want to stay idle.

That was a very easy thing to find because I had a good connection with professors there. I said, "Okay, let's get this contract. I know it's temporary. It's just maybe could have been for a few months." Then it lasted for, I think almost a year. The head there was actually at some point calling me and asking if I would be interested to come within the PFL and doing a Ph.D. there. I thought about it and I said, "Yes, this is a very good thing."

I was considering US universities at that time, but it's more difficult because they have a completely different system. You need to align with their deadlines. You need to do this very early to be able to not lose too much time, and also could be expensive those countries. At the end, I think it was really very good offer, a very good decision to me. The environment was very good. I must say also was not too far from home. All these things add that.

Sandrine: What's interesting about it is that sometime we don't necessarily know what we want to get into, and actually accepting that taking a short term contract, working as a technician or on a research contract is a way to give ourselves time to figure things out. In a way here you created an opportunity just by doing this contract and being exposed to an academic who then provided you with an opportunity. Often, I think that a lot of researcher have a sense of urgency. As soon as I finish my Degree or as soon as I finish my Master, I need to move straight into something. I don't know, it's like trying to spin the wheel too fast and not giving time to reflect and giving a chance to opportunities to arise.

Cristiano: Yes. We all need a dose of luck, but we can't create the luck. Maybe we don't create what we thought we wanted, but actually we can create the very good opportunities, doing decision that are not too far from where we are. I think also getting to work with IBM was partially luck, but I created this luck as well. I can tell you how it happened. When I was writing my Ph.D. thesis, I decided that I wanted to try to win the best award at the PFL for the teams.

I decided that I wanted to try, of course, I could not decide to win the award. I put really energy in writing the best thesis as possible. I took a lot of care in writing the text, the figures, the caption, everything to make it really nice. The content I think was there, so was also putting everything together, I think very nicely. At the end, during the examination, one of the advisor was saying that this was one of the two best. I was very happy about that.

At the same time, another in the commission asked some questions which were, let's say going to deep dive in a corner area of my thesis. I think he was trying maybe to be very critic or was just thinking that there was something fishy in my thesis, I don't know. I think I didn't respond very well during the question and answering. For this reason, I think they decided to not put me in the list of candidate for the best thesis of the PFL. My plan go backside. What happened later is that my co-advisor put me in with the same thesis, of course, for the award that IBM was giving for Computational Science Thesis at the PFL, and I won that. At the end, I won an award for my thesis as I wanted. When I discovered I won that, I thought, "Okay, some people there has read my thesis and think it's not bad. Maybe I have a chance to apply and get position there."

I did that and it was successful. You see, also in this case, I created my luck. Winning an award is a luck, but trying is not luck. If you try seriously, you create the opportunity. That's something that people can always work on it. Maybe you will not win the award, but doing that you will do something that will create for you the opportunity.

Sandrine: What you just described, there is the thing of setting an intention for ourselves. Saying, "Okay, I want a new award for my thesis." Then, the award isn't given in the context that you had planned, but there is another opportunity. Also having a Ph.D. supervisor who puts you forward, but I guess having shown your intention of having an award in a way enabled him to say, "Okay, I'm going to put him for this other award."

Because often we don't necessarily communicate with mentors, or supervisor, or boss, what we aspire to. In a way we don't necessarily enable them to help us to the best of their abilities. In that case, you had set the intention and your supervisor was able to create an opportunity to putting you forward. Then, what was the transition moving into working for IBM? I guess as a postdoc originally, and then the transitioning to more senior roles within the company.

Cristiano: At the beginning, I was assigned to a project where, to be honest, I was not an expert at all. That's how things work in corporation. You need to do what they need to do. It's a challenge. It is also nice because you can learn a lot. It was a project on energy aware computing and, again, I really didn't know anything about that at the time. I know about computing, but I never really considered about saving energy and computation or things like that.

I, of course, started to study. I had the opportunity to work with the professor, which was visiting there exactly when I started from Cassilon in Spain. This guy teach me a lot. This guy was very keen, very kind, and teach me a lot of things I didn't know. Thanks to him and thanks to this project, I started to do something which was interesting. I started to have a publication submitted and things like that. Then, of course, over time, it moved to many more projects, different activities.

It was a continuous learning experience, like to show that what you know can be applied or you can transfer it somehow to something you have not worked before. I think that's the main thing. That's where you really, everybody needs to think always not about becoming just an expert in a field, but really being able to reuse what they learn in a broader context. Because you are never going, apart from a few people, you're never going to work exactly where you plan at the beginning. Not working the aerospace in the field, as I said.

Sandrine: One of the things that you said that I think is particularly interesting because you said you started working on a project that you didn't really know much about and having the confidence to still go for it. Because if you're starting a job and you say, "Well, I actually haven't got a clue how to do this." Some people will feel quite lost, "Did I do the right thing taking that job? How are they going to judge me?" How did you negotiate that time? "Actually, I need to learn and I'm going to ask." What was your approach in building your confidence and your skills to actually be able to do that project?

Cristiano: Well, when I entered IBM Research, to be honest, I was feeling a little bit intimidated by the skills of the people around me because I really saw a lot of people that were really cool. Even my office, there was researcher of my age more or less, who was very brilliant in programming. I was considering him better than me, to be honest. This was also like non permanent position.

I was thinking, "Ah, this is going to be very hard for me to convert my position to a permanent position because it's very challenging. They are very selective. People around is very skilled." You can be good, but maybe you are not good enough. Then I said, "Okay. You come here, look, I do the best I can. I take whatever I can out of this one year, two years, whatever the last and let's see." I think I build trust in the people I was working with.

One thing that my manager at that time told me that later convinced him about myself was that, he told me, "I gave you this project and you take care of it. I didn't have to care about it anymore." It's not just that I did the projects. If there was an issue in the project, I take care of the issue. If there was a problem, I found a way to solve it. That's the mentality that you need to have.

It's not somebody give you a task and you need to always to ask help. You can ask help, but you also need to find yourself out of the problems. That's the most important skills you want to develop. You need to be able to be independent and address issues on your own. Of course, sometime you need to ask help. I was asking him suggestion, input. When I found the problem, I was going to include the problem, but also with my proposed solution. I was more asking for a confirmation if he likes that I do this.

He told me that this was the reason why I was convinced about me because I was really taking care of it. He didn't have to do anything about the project anymore. That was important for him, and the same for other things I did. It's really about understanding the others, even if they are skilled and they're talented in aspect that maybe you don't. At the end, what matters is really how you put yourself in something.

One person could be extremely skilled in programming, but if it's able to do only that, maybe is less reusable or is less valuable for the company than you because you can do many more things. They find you have the flexibility to take a lot of more things. That's an aspect that is not relevant. It's something you should develop.

In other words, I would say, the lesson that I learned is that you need to put yourself outside of your comfort zone as much as you can because when you do that, you have the opportunity to learn the most. Try to do something that people maybe challenge you to do or give you to do, and you are not happy because you feel that you are not adequate. Maybe you have not the skills or never been drawn before, doesn't matter, try to do it. Most of the time, I think people can succeed.

Sandrine: I like to move our discussion on the topic of collaboration. When I have workshops with researcher, I often say to them, "Well, we need to know what it is that you bring. If we are going to collaborate with you, we need to have clarity of what is your expertise, what is the niche." How do you portray that to a potential collaborator? Early on in your career, how did you get people to want to work with you?

Cristiano: Well, maybe I can talk about the experience of European project that just finished it end of last year. It was called OPRECOMP. Basically, I started writing the proposal. I think it was 2016. It was just three years after I started the proposal. At that time it was already permanent, but very, I would say inexperienced in many sense still. I met this Professor, Luca Benini from ETH. He was giving a talk at IBM, so was talking about approximate computing.

Basically, it was, for me, a good opportunity to extended work. Since I invested time in it, I could do something maybe with this professor, which looked to me very clever. He was very clever. When I saw his speech and what he was going to say, "Wow, would be very nice to work with this guy." I approached him after the talk. I got 30 minutes to talk with him. I told him about what I'm doing, and what I have in mind, and what we were discussing. The discussion went well, so we started to think about first doing more SNF project. We tried, and, unfortunately, we failed. When you fail, you always have to think, "Okay, then let's go bigger. Let's do an European project."

[laughter]

Cristiano: We succeed. From a small project, we got the big project. I, actually, was the coordinator of the project, which was a role I never had before. I never knew how to coordinate an European project. Again, you find yourself in a position, you are not comfortable, or you don't know exactly how to handle it. The project was with nine partners plus IBM. We're starting to work with people that's new, and they don't know me. They maybe don't trust me, and maybe they see me too young or whatever.

What you do is basically to try to do your best. I think what was very successful in this project was the fact that we found common interests, and I made my best efforts to get all of them engaged. That's what you can do to make a successful collaboration is not just to do a discussion, but go to the discussion with a plan, which means set up an agenda for the meeting, set up the goal, and set up action items and drive the thing. If you want it to be successful, you need to drive the thing.

When you do that, if there is a common interest, the collaboration will happen because people like to do things together. At the end is better than working alone. That was an example of my being, we ended up with a very successful collaboration, which was, of course, a framework project. It was not obvious that 10 partners work well together. I think all of them really contributed at the end a lot in the project and was very successful.

Sandrine: In terms of the way you built this interaction, what do you think that you did that really enabled people to be effective collaborators and really get to actually create the collaboration after the forming is there? Because often when things are on paper, it's one thing, but when you actually start writing, it's something else.

Christiano: I saw in the previous project I participated as a contributor, the way things were organized, especially during the partner meeting was that every partner was coming and presenting his work and then there was a Q&A. What impractically happened is that it's just a series of presentations and not too much interaction, some question, but not too much interaction.

Of course, we had some presentation in our meetings, but the meetings was around discussions, not about presentation. It was not asking people to come with tons of slides, at least in the first half of the project, the second half, okay, because we had so many results, I think we're going on, so you don't need anymore to force too much. The first of the project, I used talk in roundtables.

People were put on a table to discuss about this topic and to make all of that. No presentation, no fixed agenda, and you are forced to speak with the others and to come up with something. I was trying every time to come up with an agenda for the next group meeting, which was life different. It was not obvious, so people had to do something to prepare for that. It was meant in the direction of creating this collaboration.

It's not about you present your work on your work package, but it was more about, "What we do in this problem, okay, you three, four, because you are experts in this field, sit together and decide what we can do that makes sense." Of course, is aligned with what you promised to the commission, and all that. It's a way that helped to enforce this dialogue. Then, of course, as usual, they're partner that do more and they're partner that do less.

You cannot expect the success of a collaboration is 100% on your side. It's always 50-50. The other part also want to do that, right. I think you can have maybe 51% responsibility because you can push to happen, but there is still at least 40%, 49% on the other side. If the other side doesn't want, doesn't want. You can try to make that debt. You can do your 51%, and I think that worked very well.

As I said, I think is about engage, not just limit yourself to something standard that is easier. Making an agenda where you go to a presentation is easy. You as a person, you just have to kick off the meeting and say, "Yes. Okay. Good morning," blah, blah, blah. "Oh. Now let's start with what package two, package three, or package four." Easy, very easy.

While, if you put yourself in the center of the room and you say, "Okay, now we discuss about this," you're putting yourself in the driving seat, you will need to drive the discussion, you don't know how the discussion is going, and you need to say something. You put yourself in outside comfort zone, but it makes also the others a little bit outside of their comfort zone. They have to come up with some ideas and discussion.

Sandrine: It's really funny what you're talking about because basically, it's using a facilitative approach. I often work as a facilitator to, basically, get people to converse, and going away from the format of just a seminar, basically, which is completely rigid and doesn't really-- Even with the Q&A, it's so formatted and rigid that the conversation are not freed, and you don't really engage.

In a way, saying, "Okay, forget the presentation, they'll come later," and actually driving the conversation with the partner. In a way, it's an obvious approach, but it is rare that researchers, research leaders take this approach, and there is comfort in the format of the presentation because that's what we're use to. What do you think that's so few people use this approach?

Christiano: Yes, because I think is more difficult. [laughs] That's what I said. I mean it's not easy. I was thinking really, "How can I make this work?" Because I'm the coordinator, so I want this person to be successful, not just a partner. I put myself outside of this comfort zone, if you want. Yes, I think it's easier to go the other way around.

We did also presentation. We did absolutely and not that we are just discussion. The presentation maybe sometimes the agenda was saying, "Okay, look, we have this topic. I know this partner has done work on this, so 10-minute presentation, 20-minute discussion." The presentation is really just the opening or the context, and it's not like 40 minutes presentation, and 5 minutes of question, which people get to sleep, and the only few of them jump in with a couple of questions.

That's not what you want. I think it's just because it's more difficult, require more time and energy, but also bring better results. At the end, I think if I go back up, I will do the same, or maybe we'll do some changes, but I think that was something. Also, the other partners at the end of the project were very keen and kind with me. They said, a lot of good words, more than what I expected to be honest.

Sandrine: That's very satisfying, yes. I'll be interested in an example of collaboration that you had that you found painful, frustrating when you reflecting on what wasn't working. What could you have done differently? Because again, every time we enter in the working relationship the only thing we control is yourself and our approach, we don't control the other person. Reflecting on these previous experiences, when things just were not going the way you wanted or were just really, I don't know, it's just too difficult. What do you think that you did, or what do you think you could have done to ease and to make them better collaboration?

Christiano: Well, I don't know. This is not an easy question because I think every collaboration is different. It depends a lot on the setting. We need to enter in one example and because the setting why that goes wrong. I think most of the cases things can go wrong because either one of the side does not have real interest in the collaboration. Bringing on the spot for other reasons, could be just that somebody asked to do that, and you have to do that, and you're not really interested in doing that.

That could be one major reason. The others could be that completely divergent views on something that it's very difficult to mitigate. I would actually say, it's not that you need to collaborate almost with everybody. If you see that this is not happening, sometimes you can just get it. Just say, "Okay, doesn't work. Let's not waste both of our life next year for collaboration is not working. We'd like to do something different," or, "We have divergence."

You can invest your energy in another collaboration that will work. You don't have always to try to make things work away where it's not because there are so many opportunities at the end to make it working with something that really matters for you. Yes, maybe I would give that advice. You cannot commit yourself to do all and if you see that it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Sandrine: In the context of working for IBM, obviously, people that you work with will be clients and in some ways they are collaborators, but they are also clients. Which is a little bit different from when you work in academia where you're building collaboration with somebody where you're not forced to collaborate. In your case, you may have to collaborate with the client and you may have less flexibility.

One of the things I was thinking is, what is the space for the interpersonal stuff in terms of working on the collaboration? I'm thinking about some projects that I've been involved in. For me, it was just like, "I like this person, I want to work with them. I don't really care about the project, what the intention is. I just enjoy the conversation with this person, and it makes me think in a different way. I find it really exciting." In a way, it's like the human relationship was at the core of the relationship. How do you deal with that in the context of collaboration within industry where it's maybe a different type of collaboration?

Cristiano: Yes. I think it's a lot about the person. In particular with some customers, the person is more important than the name of the company. I think they get more excited about our world where they find a person where they have a trust because they see the person as some eminence or some credibility inside the field. They see the skills, so they see the skills of the team or the skills of some of the members of the team. They just actually decide to work with these persons rather than working with the company.

This happens. This happens absolutely. For instance, we have now this partnership with a company in Denmark that do maintenance of bridges. They have a very interesting problem. The bridge they are maintaining are beautiful, are some of the biggest and most complex in the world. It's nice to work with them. We built, I think reciprocal interest in working with each other because we were interested about the field, they were interested about what we were doing.

We saw potential of doing something for them that could really radically change the industry in division inspection for civil infrastructure. This is going very well and I think it's a lot based on the person. Even more than the company itself, is based on the person that there is really a climate of collaboration and exchange of ideas. I think everybody want to work with each other in this context.

Beyond the fact as a client or the contract is really about a person. We are researchers, so a lot of the things we propose them, we're not sure. I'm not sure they work. They know this and they accept it. I think they are happy because they get ideas and sometimes our ideas are very good, sometimes they are not, but overall, they see a benefit.

Sandrine: How do you approach working across discipline because, obviously, the core of what you do is working with people whose research problematic or real world problems are very different? How do you approach collaboration with such a diverse range of people from so many different disciplines?

Cristiano: I think it's about really being very open. Not coming with too many boundaries and prejudice or pre-concept, "Oh, this is not going to work. Oh, this is too difficult. I know already it's not going to work. It's too difficult." You just get rid of all this pre-concept, get to discuss with them, see if really there is something cool that you can do together, and then make a plan. You can make a plan. I mean everything is easier when you have a plan.

What it means to make a plan? The plans means you define some scenarios which means, "Okay, best scenario. These words were successful. What we get both of us? What we get?" Then you have a scenario where the thing will not work well. Okay, then what? When we decide to do something else, when we decide to stop it, or when we decide to change it?

When you're planning you are more comfortable because you know what is going to happen, it's going to happen one of the two things or the three things that you plan. I think if you define a plan with the other partner that you are working with and the both agrees that this is valuable, the outcome are potentially more valuable than the drawbacks or the risk of failure.

At the end of the day, is a risk reward. You invest in a collaboration, you invest your time, invest your experience. You cannot do everything, but you can do one, two things or more. You decide to do something, you need to be convinced that it could work. Make a plan, have a good discussion, make a plan. Maybe that's what I do well, I try to make a plan.

Sandrine: What you're describing is having, basically, different scenarios and having the end in mind, and the end in mind could be different things and getting people to discuss that end point of-- Whatever happened in the collaboration, what works, what doesn't work doesn't really matter in the sense that we all know that we have different endpoints and we are happy with what it could be in some ways for the start.

Cristiano: Exactly. Exactly. It helps you because it removes a lot of uncertainty.

Sandrine: I mean one of my last question is going to be about what is your approach in maintaining your creativity and your innovation as a researcher? A lot of innovation comes through collaboration and interdisciplinary collaboration, but in your case, what do you think that you practice, if I may-- I don't know maybe it's a weird term to use, but to in a way keep yourself on the edge of always being prepared to be more creative and to push the boundaries of where you are at right now?

Cristiano: Yes. I think this is very personal. What applies to me maybe it doesn't apply to others, but for myself I think I want to work on real problems. What is a real problem? Very tangible problem that people have today. Since I want to do that, I think for me the way to be innovative and creative is, as I said, for example, in this project of civil engineering work with this customer that have a real problem today, they want to improve the safety and the maintenance of their structure, learn what they are doing today and try to think, "What I can do better than they don't do?"

I somehow constrain myself in a use case that is very relevant that I am interested to work in, but then I try to come up with something new. We do this with the team. I discuss with the team, "Okay, so what we can do to make this working better for this use case?" Then you can have a lot of creativity because the use case gives you a lot of information that maybe in other settings you don't have.

Rather than coming out with a new completely revolutionary idea, which some people maybe is better at than me, I try to come up with maybe a revolutionary idea, but more applied to a field because I find it easier for myself to come up with something meaningful in that way. I think at the end it also brings to a result faster because you can immediately try to see if that works or not in that field, and so that's the way I make it for me, but not necessarily this is the right way for every person.

Sandrine: No. I think because in a way it's about saying it's working within certain constraints and not thinking about creativity and innovation in terms of having a revolutionary solution, but actually having an equipment within a constraint but through small increments of creativity, that's how you change the status quo of how something is solved in some ways.

Thinking about a conversation I had with a researcher who wanted to apply for funding for a big grant, and he was almost scaring himself because he felt that he had to be a world leading researcher in his field. He was creating this monster of who we needed to become instead of thinking the next research step instead of this massive things that seems really unattainable. In a way maybe your approach to innovation is seeing starting points and step by step moving beyond what is possible, instead of something completely revolutionary.

Cristiano: You can make great discoveries even when you constrain yourself in a use case. This doesn't really limit the potential of what you're doing. You can end up with something that is applicable to many other things and even taught about. The reason why I prefer this approach is because also, I think in today's society, the expertise in each domain is so deep that it's very difficult to do something like groundbreaking immediately for a lot of fields at the same time.

It is possible, but it's not really simple. Rather you should get some good knowledge of one domain, you see that you can do much better things there. You see that there is really a reason for doing that. You can have an impact in the society, then you can invest your time there. You will come up with something and it can be very, very innovative.

Sandrine: If you were starting all over again, what would you tell to your younger self to ease your career journey?

Cristiano: I think I would try to not ease my career journey in the sense that I think the most challenging experience I had were the one that formed me more. I think maybe, I would just tell myself to feel more confident about what I can do because I always, maybe I was conservative approach and I say, "No. I think I cannot," but then you discover you can do much more than what you can do.

Maybe just tell myself, "Really you should not put too many boundaries on what you can do because really is a matter of working and getting the experience." I would not make my life easier because I think some of the things I remember the most are indeed from situations that were challenging and difficult and stressful.

Sandrine: It's almost telling yourself don't be scared of the challenges and embrace them.

Cristiano: Yes, exactly. Put yourself out of the comfort zone.

Sandrine: If you had some final tips for researchers who are starting on their research leadership journey, what would be these tips?

Cristiano: I think, the first one is exactly what I said. Put yourself outside of your comfort zone and you will always grow faster than what you can do in your space. Try to be ambitious because, basically, if you don't try something hard, you will never succeed in that. If you don't apply for a top company, you will never be selected by a top company. If you don't apply for an award, you will never win an award.

Be ambitious. It doesn't mean you need to be crazy. Be ambitious and try things that maybe you think you have low chance of success because this is temporary part. I think, the next is that fail is part of the process. You try difficult things, you will fail. It's part of game, but when you fail you can still understand a lot about what you could have done better. Don't be scared about failing. It's something that can happen.

You can, as I said, you apply for a small project, fail, you get a better project. Or you submit to a conference, maybe you're rejected. You submit to a more prestigious conference, you're accepted and then you know-- [laughs] All these things really happen. You need to really have this mindset.

The other thing I would suggest is, sometimes people say, "You need to develop a lot of different skills." If you're strong in one area maybe develop other skills, it's true. I think, when you find something you're better than others, you should also continue to develop that because at the end of the day, you cannot be excellent in everything. If you find you're better than others in some aspect of the work, do that also.

It doesn't mean that you cannot grow in other skills. It just means you should not just force yourself outside of that because you think otherwise probably. You can develop there and you will be better than others because there's something you can do and others cannot. I think, the last maybe to listen. Get feedback, ask for feedback because feedback is the reality you get by somebody and you know you're not doing well. Asking feedback is important, getting-- especially the bad feedback is even more important.

Sandrine: Okay. Well, these are very wise words. Words of wisdom for our research.

[laughter]

Cristiano: That's just my learning. I know it's easier in words than in practice.

Sandrine: Sometimes we need to be reminded about these things. Cristiano, thank you very much for the conversation. It's been really a pleasure to meet you. Thank you.

Cristiano: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure for me as well.

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[00:45:34] [END OF AUDIO]