Prof. Stéphane Bordas is an academic at the University of Luxemburg who has had a globe-trotter career, starting in France before working in the USA, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales and more recently Luxemburg.
Stéphane’s transition to a Professorship was quite rapid considering he obtained it just 3 years after his first lectureship. Stéphane is keen to mention the critical role of several mentors, but also of key team members in his research transition. His drive, energy and competitive nature are felt throughout our discussion. Pushing himself to do the hard stuff is core to his approach in navigating his research life.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
Read my reflections following this discussion:
tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/stephane-bordas
Find out more about Stéphane:
https://wwwfr.uni.lu/recherche/fstm/doe/members/stephane_bordas
Prof. Stéphane Bordas is an academic at the University of Luxemburg who has had a globe-trotter career, starting in France before working in the USA, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales and more recently Luxemburg.
Stéphane’s transition to a Professorship was quite rapid considering he obtained it just 3 years after his first lectureship. Stéphane is keen to mention the critical role of several mentors, but also of key team members in his research transition. His drive, energy and competitive nature are felt throughout our discussion. Pushing himself to do the hard stuff is core to his approach in navigating his research life.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
Read my reflections following this discussion:
tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/stephane-bordas
Find out more about Stéphane:
https://wwwfr.uni.lu/recherche/fstm/doe/members/stephane_bordas
Warning- getting a perfect transcript is . This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. I hope that the transcript is helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.
Sandrine Soubes: Okay. I'll make it start.
[music]
Sandrine Soubes: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, dear listeners wherever you are. This evening first, I have the pleasure to have with me, Professor Stephane Bordas. Stephane, like me, is French, and we have a few common points because Stephane has spent time in the UK. You've spent time in Wales and Scotland. Also, you did your PhD in the US and I did as well. I was registered in a French university, and you were registered in an American university. You are a professor of Computational and Data Sciences, and you are currently working at the University of Luxembourg. Welcome on the show, Stephane.
Stephane: Thank you very much, Sandrine. It's really a pleasure to be here.
Sandrine: Can we start with you talking to us about your overview of your career? You've had a really extensive career. It was really interesting to see your CV. I may actually use your CV in some of my workshops, if I may because it's a really, really extensive CV. Almost a little bit scary because you've really achieved so much for some early career researchers. Looking at this out, "Oh, my God. How's this guy done so much in his career?" It's really, really impressive. Can you take us a little bit through some of the stages of your career?
Stephane: Yes, thanks. If I do it the French way, I'll start with kindergarten because that's probably the first thing that would actually be written in your CV, but I want to wait. [laughs] Yes, I was wound up in France until age 21. I went through these French preparatory schools, which we call [French language] in order to get into the so-called [unintelligible 00:02:01] engineering school, essentially. Then I decided to select the school based on its agreement to exchange with American universities in particular with Northwestern University, where I did my master's in the third year. I had an equivalent which meant I got two master's degrees.
It was in Civil Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering at that time and then when I was in the US, I met my wife, and then I decided to stay in the US for a while. To do that, I looked a bit around thinking of maybe I can do industry, but I was convinced or rather rapidly that I would be more fulfilled in an academic setting because I was very curious, and I realized once arrived in the US that I was in the really good university. I hadn't noticed that when I left, I went almost blindly without really knowing what was special about this place, but then once I arrived there I realized the level of the stuff was really high, and the amount of stuff I could learn was endless.
I sat in all the courses that I could sit in. I really, really learned a huge amount because I realized that my peers were much higher in their technical skills than I was, so I needed to catch up. At least I thought so. Then I met my advisor also, Byron Moran, who was a revelation for me from his teaching perspective because he's an excellent teacher and was really a huge motivation. I also met Ted Belytschko who is at the time, he's now deceased, but he was at the time one of the world leaders in the field. I didn't even know that, but just by listening to talks, I realized that these people know what they're talking about. I learned a lot. I wanted to do that so I stayed.
I did my PhD and it finished in 2004. Then I moved to Switzerland, my country by marriage because my ex-wife now, is Swiss. I decided to go there because it would be nice probably to try to settle in Switzerland. I did a postdoc at EPFL for three years. Little did I know that to go and become an academic at a university, the worst thing to do is to get a postdoc in that university because usually academics are recruited from outside, but I didn't know anything. I just went out of intuition so I stayed there for three years. It was a turning point because I started working with Vietnam and India and Belgium. I started to internationalize my work, mainly because I realized that I needed to work with other people.
I couldn't develop all my ideas on my own, and I needed to work with others. That's when I really realized that I have too many ideas, and I could not make them come to fruition on my own. Then came another turning point when several options came after the [unintelligible 00:05:05] for permanent positions one in Nottingham, one in Glasgow, and one in the US. Finally, I decided to go to Glasgow, and it was a lecturer position at the University of Glasgow and that went really well. I had fabulous mentors in particular, Nenad Bićanić, who is also deceased now, unfortunately, and I'd like to send him awards. Also, Chris Pearce, who is still there and really helped me a lot.
Then 2006 to 2009, I met Bhushan Karihaloo, another of my mentors. He somehow told me that there would be an opening in Cardiff and that I should think about it. Then I moved to Cardiff and I jumped directly from assistant professor let's say, so lecturer, within three years to full professor. That I think was the step in my career which were really made a difference because of the academic system in the UK, which is really based on trust. I think I'm really hugely grateful to Cardiff University in particular for trusting me at that time because that was really the most critical time probably because the other alternative would probably have been to stay as a lecturer for a long time.
I think that really was a springboard because founding councils started trusting me a lot more because of the title and the fact that I had this title quite early. I think that has a lot to do with it. It made a big difference. In 2009, I started there in Cardiff. In 2013, I got an offer from University of Luxembourg to move there under the advice of a few of my friends who are already here that I knew from conferences in my field. Then I moved and I had an ERC grant at the time when I moved to Luxembourg from Cardiff. I continued to be in both countries. I still now hold a joint appointment between the two universities.
It has probably is going to come to an end soon, but this has been something quite positive in order to continue to work jointly between the two countries, which are relatively different. Then in Luxembourg, I continued my work. Every time we move there is quite a lot of overhead in terms of getting used to the new place, learning the funding streams, finding out what's important, what's less important, and so on. That took probably two years also. Afterward, I think my growth now is flowing relatively continuously, mainly because of the immense resources present in Luxembourg for research. This is just outstanding. I've never come across so many resources in one place to do research.
It's absolutely extraordinary, and the support from the universities is stellar as well in terms of starting packages and so on. That is basically the summary. It's a bit long I think.
Sandrine: No, no, but it's quite a complex career. What is interesting about it is going from a place as probably a master's student and an engineer coming out of France to landing in a place where we are very naïve at that stage. Sometimes you may land somewhere that is outstanding while others you may find an exemptional institution that's not very supportive of actually being supported by mentors to be offered opportunities at the later stage. Again, the role of the network is interesting. In a way what is interesting is that every time you change institution and country, you have to relearn the culture of the institution, the culture of the country.
What do you think has really driven your career in the sense of been daring to take these opportunities in lots of different locations? Because in a way some opportunities may seem-- we have to balance so many things when we make choices. In a way, what for you has been the driver in deciding, "Okay, I'm going to uproot myself and go to that new place," because you've done that several times and some people are not prepared to do that?
Stephane: Yes, definitely. I think it's a huge toll on the family nights, for example, because it's both exciting, but it's also stressful for everybody. If you have children, for example, if you have a partner, then they also have to change. Although it's not necessarily for their own career or for their schoolwork that you actually changed. It's always been very-- not always, but so each move you think-- when the first one to go to the US was very simple. It was just to broaden my horizons because I had never left France, and I really needed to see what the world was about. It was an intrinsic need. It had to be far away from Paris because I didn't want to be tempted to constantly come back.
It was between Australia and the US. Finally, it was the US because somehow I was convinced by the place and Chicago was very attractive. Switzerland was mainly to try to go closer to my wife's family. That was relatively driven, I would say, by family reasons because I probably could have gotten a postdoc almost anywhere in the world. The next move was, okay, it's a permanent position. There were several US, we didn't want to anyway because we decided not to stay in the first place, so why go back because it was illogical. Nottingham and Glasgow, the difference between the two was basically the feeling when I went to interview. It's difficult to exactly explain, but it's very personal.
It's some sort of chemistry with with the colleagues that clicked immediately in Glasgow and made me think that this was a place where I would be happy, actually. I think it was quite a thoughtful thing for my family, at the time we had two kids, but they were very young. For them, it didn't change much, but for my wife at the time, I think it was quite a difficult move because she was in her place, it's in the country she knew, and she had to relearn everything from scratch, stopped the job that she had. Probably from her point of view was not the easiest thing to do. Cardiff was a no-brainer, because having a full professorship after three years, is extremely rare.
When I saw this opportunity, it was extremely difficult to turn down. On top of that, it was also a move for the whole family because we would be more comfortable, it would be also closer to home compared to Glasgow. Of course, in a flight, it doesn't change much, but it was easier to drive. All in all, I think it was it was a logical move. The move out of the UK we predicted, so we knew we wouldn't stay until high school for the kids, at the time we had four kids when we left the UK. We knew we wouldn't stay and the main reason was the education system, which we would have liked to have something a bit closer to what we were used to.
Probably the only thing we did which was quite conservative, [chuckles] but at least that we wanted to know, and Luxembourg was super attractive. It was a mixture, I think, because from a purely academic point of view it was a risk because Cambridge University in Civil Engineering was number one in the UK, ranked internationally. I was moving to the University of Luxembourg which at the time, I was the first ERC grant holder, for example. Now, we are 15, only a few years later, so meaning that the university is skyrocketing in terms of reputation. At the time, it was still in the early times.
It was a bit of a gamble, which is also why I kept a foot in Cambridge thinking that who knew what would happen tomorrow, and we never knew. It was always a mixture, except maybe for the move between Glasgow and Cambridge which I think was obvious.
Sandrine: One of the things that you said earlier, which I think is interesting, is this idea of having a feel for department and using your intuition. Because often people say, "Well, I need to be strategic. I need to think about the next stage," but just because you have a really good feel with the people who are interviewing with or people take you for dinner and you get to know people who are going to be your colleagues and not dismissing this. Because in a way, you could be moving to an institution that on paper looks less prestigious, but actually is a place where you're going to be happy as a researcher, as a lecturer, in terms of the interaction that you have with others.
I saw that was quite really quite interesting. Can I ask you more generally, in terms of the research that you do? What is really what drives you to do this work, and in terms of your driver motivation in terms of the type of work that you want to achieve?
Stephane: It's very basic, though. I think it's simply to try to do the thing that's the hardest. I think that's been the case [unintelligible 00:15:04]. Since I was a kid, I've always been driven by trying to overachieve and do things that I cannot do. That's basically the underlying driver, and then there is a lot of curiosity as well. I just had a discussion with a colleague from LISER, Luxembourg Institute For Socio-Economical Research, talking about environmental pollution, and I know nothing about pollution at all. I realized that as he was speaking, the more he was getting into the topic, the more I wanted to know, the more I was asking questions.
This is always what I'm looking for. These moments when you talk to somebody who knows something that you don't know that you can learn, and you can interact with them, so that's always there. I've always tried to get out of his comfort zone, where I'm in control of what I'm doing, to try to get outside of there. And to try to ask the right questions. That has been, at least lately, the driver. At the beginning, it's not an intrinsic driver, it was more of an extrinsic external driver, the idea to excel, to try be better than others, to try to get to the goal first. That was also a driver, but not intrinsic. I think at the beginning, it's a stronger maybe driver because you have to make it basically.
You're in the first stages, you need to show that you're fast and faster, if possible. There is always this other [unintelligible 00:16:41] idea, which may be prevents us from looking at the really important things, which are the curiosity, and the why and the questions we ask, and why do we do what we do. It forces us to step back and instead of doing what we really like, which is, in my case, coding, developing software and tackling mathematical problems, we ended up doing more of a scientific oversight, trying to figure out which directions to work in, in order to get as fast as possible forward.
I think the whole career is a balance between trying to do what you really like to do, which is curiosity-driven work, trying to understand things, work with other people in my case, and really try to excel, but include yourself, really. If other, which could be competing factor, which is the extrinsic driver to try to be better than others. Probably, by doing the first, you automatically do the second because if you focus on the right things then eventually it will be noticed until you don't need to worry about being noticed if you do the right thing.
Sandrine: One of the things that through a lot of the conversation I have with early-career academic is the notion of what niche do I need to sit in, what research do I need to start doing after my postdoc or my first or second postdoc, in terms of the type of fellowship I'm going to apply and what research am I going to do to be able to be competitive, to be able to be funded? There is a lot of anxiety about deciding what that niche is. In a way, what you're saying about being the first because it's about being competitive, being funded, and being recruited, what is the risk of losing some of your sense of curiosity, of really doing the type of work that you want to do?
Because maybe the work that you want to do doesn't sit where the funding lies. You're somebody who's had massive amount of collaboration, maybe because of your discipline with collaborators with people from lots and lots of different disciplines. The question that I have for you on this is about how have you approached initiating this collaboration? How do you get people to really want to work with you? Because you may have lots of conversation with people you meet at conferences, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a collaboration. What's been really your approach over the years to use this curiosity that you have to get other people to be curious about what you can bring and to bring the two together?
Stephane: I really don't know what made it work. I remember the first industrial conference I went to in Glasgow, and I remember giving a talk on a purely academic topic, but I remember choosing in my mind, I remember thinking how I would present this such that the industry people there would actually follow what was exciting about it. I really tried to the rest of the public that was there and not to speak in a way that was comfortable to me. For me, it has always been a natural thing. I always try to communicate as clearly as possible to the audience that was present.
Maybe that explains a bit why sometimes people catch fire and like certain directions because they are maybe touched by the fact that they are spoken to in a way which touches them in the way they approach their problems. In that case, I chose not to give any details about the theory but focus on the impact that this could had on industry. What happened was amazing because someone from Bosch, the big German company, came to me and they said, "I would like to fund a PhD student to work with you on this," during the conference. That has never happened to me anymore. [laughs] This was the first time and the last time, but it was completely amazing to me that this had worked so well.
I think enthusiasm for what you do and sparkling eyes and motivation in the voice, dynamism, energy, and so on is a big factor when I listen to people, at least. I don't know if the other direction works too but at least if I speak to someone who seems really genuine, like this colleague just a few minutes ago talking about pollution, then I'm taken away myself, and I forget where I am. I get into the train, and I start dreaming. I think this ability to make people dream is really something that makes it or breaks it really. For me, it's very clear when I listen to someone who's keen-- for example, when I arrived here, Rudi Balling, the head of the LCSB at the time gave a talk. Everybody gets for induction.
He's a very busy person, took the time to come to talk to us for 20 minutes about his [unintelligible 00:21:58] on Parkinson's disease. I was really flabbergasted because I was speechless, so motivated was he about what he was doing. Then, of course, what did I do? The first weekend I went there trying to find people to work with in that center because I was simply so motivated by the way he explained it. Yes, that's the way I would summarize [unintelligible 00:22:27].
Sandrine: You've had collaboration with people from lots of different countries as well. It's funny because today I was in a meeting with some other trainers, and we were talking about the cultural dimension as trainers of how we engage people. As a lecturer, as well, the way we engage people from different cultural background is important. One of the things that we were discussing is that we may share the same values as others, but the behaviors that we have may be different. How do you think that the different cultures that people have in different countries and different ways of doing research, how has this influenced in the way that you've been able to engage with others in the research process?
Stephane: France to Luxembourg, Luxembourg to Belgium, Belgium to Germany, or Luxembourg to the Netherlands, France to Switzerland, these countries may be very close geographically, but the way they do things it could be and is quite different. Vietnam is one of the countries I worked with first because I was contacted through my website by my first master's student with whom I worked remotely who is now a professor in Australia. I saw that he was so thirsty for knowledge and thirsty for learning, and I really wanted to help him. We started working together and I saw in that case, the work culture.
Maybe not the research culture, but the work culture that this person had and still has, really took me by surprise because I saw such eagerness for learning and so on. I was really motivated by this. Then I saw that repeatedly through my career with very different countries, such as India but also China, where you have a different way to approach things. Mainly different ways to approach hierarchy as well, because there is a lot of respect in these countries for the elders, which makes it sometimes a bit awkward for us because we're not used to being talked to in such a reverent way, with such reverence.
That was something that I also had to learn and had to also teach my students to be more natural with me because I was not super-genius professor, but simply a human being, and I would rather be spoken to in normal terms. I guess this goes even further in Japan when you work with people [inaudible 00:25:11] the sense of hierarchy is very strong. In terms of research culture, I think I was really, really taken by the African culture also goes to a certain extent in UK, where if someone approaches you, you will trust them a priori and then only if they prove that they cannot be trusted, you will stop trusting them.
A priori idea is that you will trust and you will give them a chance, maybe two chances, three chances, and then you really need to go awfully bad such that people will stop trusting you. I think this is something which I really liked and this ultra-hard work culture that I discovered in US really worked with me very well because people were in the lab constantly at night, during the day, sleeping in the office. That was really every day like this, and this is something that I kept and that resonated with my own way of approaching things anyway. This is why [unintelligible 00:26:22] in other places. For example, in France, there is a very close-knit community of people which support each other.
I think this is also something that you don't necessarily see in other environments which are more individualistic. In certain countries, you see more of the camaraderie, which is something that I really appreciate as well. People going for lunch together a lot more, having evening drinks or parties and so on, in order to make closer ties. This you don't see everywhere, and I think it has a lot to do with the atmosphere that you get in the [unintelligible 00:27:03]. Here in Luxembourg, it's really mixed because the number of nationalities is immense. [unintelligible 00:27:08] we probably have 50 nationalities, I would say, and that means that it's very rich, and you can see all the differences.
You can see the differences also in backgrounds, mathematical backgrounds. You start seeing who is better at what, you can see the links between Iran and France in the way of teaching math, for example. Also France and Vietnam, very close in ways that math is taught. Yes, so very interesting, let's say, rich environments to think about.
Sandrine: One of the things that you said in term of your own approach to working based on your personality, and the exposure of working in the US. When you moved from different countries, different universities, and then start working with people who may be very, very different from you, who may expect much more of a relationship approach to the interaction and less of a task and focus on deliverable. How have you learned with that? Because building a research team is about also accepting that people work very differently than you. It's hard too, because sometimes you may get very frustrated because people are not like you.
What's been your approach to in a way accepting that others work differently than you and learning in a way to work well with others who maybe very different, have very different motivation and very different perception of what it means to work well?
Stephane: That has been very difficult for me because I think that when something works for you, or at least you think it works and so you get used to the way that you work, and then you think at least I got used to the way I was working. I have a hard time sometimes seeing that you could approach a research career in different ways, but still make it. For example, one difficulty lies in defining how you leave your career at the early stages. For example, you have always this balance, what we're talking about between doing what you really like to do, which means being hands-on.
Which is one end of the spectrum, where you do everything on your own and you work with very few people if any. The other end of the spectrum where you are more managing a team, and you do not have the time anymore to do what you started this job for, but you manage others who have the chance to do that and you manage more ideas. You have this idea leadership, but you do not do anymore, which has the disadvantage of, of course, forcing you to lose touch with the technicalities, which are not merely technicalities, which are involvement and fundamental to making things work.
I think the most difficult discussions I've had with people who would like to go for the approach of being hands-on without making sure that their visibility globally is ensured and that people will recognize them for being an expert in that field as you were saying before, how do I find the niche? How do I make myself different from others? How do I excel? How do I get to the finish line, which is even undefined? How do I move forward as fast as I can so that others recognize that I have these ideas? There's a fine line between the two has been the occasion of quite a lot of discussion. Sometimes these can be very difficult because I think it's a very personal way of being a career.
The problem is that the way that the careers are evaluated is mostly quantitative. There are, of course, quality is obviously, a key component but people still look at NDCs on numbers and where did you publish? How many papers? Who read you? Who use your work to do what? Is it implemented in industry? Is it taken up by people in completely different fields? Yes. When always your software downloaded? How many times? Can you show it? Can you prove that what you're saying is true because everybody says that their work is revolutionary, but why is yours really revolutionary? What does it mean to be a revolutionary and so on?
These discussions are difficult. I think what's true is that if let's say the numbers speak for themselves when they're high enough, I think it's certainly not sufficient. Having people who have huge amounts of publications and huge amounts of citations, this is by no means a proof that the work of these people is valuable. Let's say at least more valuable than the work of someone sitting in his office with pen and paper, doing one paper every two hours, but doing everything on his own or her own without the support of anybody else, because they could maybe find the thing that's going to unlock a problem that maybe this guy with other papers could work [unintelligible 00:32:41] live without even seeing.
It's not easy. I think these were the most difficult discussions I've had, and maybe to some extent also about what it means to make an effort. What it means to try hard. Some people define trying hard differently. For some people, trying hard is sitting in the office from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. For others, it means not leaving the office until the problem is solved, and that's a different relation to things. There is a marginal judge because we all have different backgrounds, we have priorities which, of course, are different, and we make ourselves happy in different ways. If someone is happy doing things in a certain way that maybe it's okay.
Then the difficulty is that one [inaudible 00:33:37] is part of a team, and this team is part of a global effort of a university. Each individual member of the team should think that they are also part of the team so that we cannot each be too egoistic and thinks that we should burn out, carry on the way we like because we have also to have the environment, the team and people that trusted us to do that job. I think that's a difficult thing for many to understand, myself included because when you get used to a way of thinking, getting out of this needs strong motivation.
You need proof that doing it differently could also work because otherwise, why take the risk to move out of what you think works? There is a lot of issue in this question really.
Sandrine: What do you think helps you in a way, improve or reflect on your approach to leading others? We get promoted mostly, yes, on the quantitative stuff. As you become a research leader, you make lots of mistakes and you work with lots of people, but in a way, we can carry on making mistakes in the way we lead others if we don't reflect. Reflection is not necessarily something that scientists do a great deal of. [chuckles] What do you think has helped you the most in getting into a position where you feel, "Well, I'm doing better now than I did 10 years ago"?
Stephane: It's experience with different people. I think I was very lucky to experience people from completely different backgrounds and with very different approaches. I think every time I meet someone who let's say does well, does it completely different from me, that reinforces the part of my brain that thinks, "Okay, we can do it differently." I think for me, it's exactly this because let's say, three or four years ago, one of my collaborators told me, "Okay, Stephane, I know I'm not going to be able to be very productive for the next two years because I would like to crack that nut and this thing is difficult.
"I need to learn and I need to sit for a while maybe nothing happens for that time, but I really need to learn this because then I can do this, and then I can do that, and then I can do this." I was hesitant because, of course, it takes time, you don't know, it's risky. Three or four years ago, if someone had approached me like this, yes, I was quite resistant. Today, if someone comes to me and tells me this, I would think again. I was okay, maybe that is the right way. What is your next steps? How are you going to proceed and so on? I think for me, it's really by experience but also about my mentor in Cardiff, my mentors in Glasgow.
I thought about people I was looking up to at Northwestern, and I was thinking, "How would they approach these difficult questions?" At some point, some idea comes, and this governs my behavior in the next meeting that I have, basically. It's already very much based on experience. I don't really think there is any recipe. I think maybe their recipe is to try to be as open-minded as possible but still not diverge too much from your own intrinsic values such that you stay in balanced and in equilibrium. Because being open-minded such that the brain is so open, that everything goes in and everything comes out as well, is maybe not so positive because you lose track of your bearings.
You don't know where you're going anymore because you don't have any charts or in chartless territories, and you allow the wings to just push your left and push your right. If you have your own principles and you know what these are and you know why, which I think what's important there is to try to learn and to know yourself better, to know what's really important for you, then you can confront, let's say, any high seas and any waves and any storm because you know what's important to you. Then you meet people, and these people won't necessarily change the way you see the world completely, but they will enrich each direction that corresponds to one of your key values. That's the way I see it.
Sandrine: As follow-up questions, I'm interested to hear about how you've managed the resilience of the waves of funding and the waves of challenging institutional contexts because resilience is something again that is hard to define. We all have different way of being resilient in our professional and personal context. There are lots of reports about the well-being and the mental health of people working in the academic context. In your case, how have you managed to be the happiest you could be in the research environment?
Stephane: That's again a very rich question. I like about it is that there is no single answer. The one thing is that once you agreed to fail, that's the first thing. To see failure as just an opportunity to learn and that's it. That's the one-sentence answer. Then there is a problem to that backlash I think that comes from the fact that if you fail too frequently, which happens a lot in academia, 90% of proposals are rejected, 2% of PhD students won't make it to permanent positions. That means you are bound to fail repeatedly. You need to somehow tell yourself that it's okay to fail but at the same time, there is a negative effect to failing too frequently because you could get used to failure.
Then when you do get used to failure, it could also mean that you allow yourself to submit grants, let's say, which are not optimal in terms of their quality because you tell yourself, "Oh, anyway, it's stochastic, it's based on luck, so it doesn't really matter. It means that that indirectly could decrease the quality of what you're counting and therefore decrease your success rates which would then feed back into this, it is anywhere random type of assumption, because it's not really around them. I think there is something to be said about this. That one should not be too complacent about being wrong and failing.
I think what's really helped me is to always take each failure as, yes, okay. I failed. It's okay. I'm going to read the reviewers comments now, I'm going to try and figure out what I could have done better to understand the system in which on a blindfold runs because if I do that in the UK and France and Germany, in the States, or in Luxembourg, the rules almost are always slightly different. What people expect is always slightly different so I need to tailor this path.
It's also easy to become opportunistic. Let's say, you're in a certain environment and you're going to try to use all the opportunities you have in this environment and will strike again a low key values, or let's say research directions, the things that you already want to do. The way I try to figure it out is by talking to people as many of them as possible. As before you were asking, how did you learn to manage difficult situations and so on?
For me, it's simply by talking to as many people as possible to get as much information as possible but I never sit down and tell myself, "Okay. What is going to be the strategy for next year's funding?" It just somehow comes and it doesn't mean it works, but it means that, but I have to say at the beginning of the career, it's easy to fall into the trap of trying everything. That's what I did.
I think I could have done better. I was talking to my daughter yesterday about this. I told her, I think at the beginning, I could have had a better work-life balance by trying fewer things, but selectively trying them and trusting people that know, not that I didn't trust them, but maybe I didn't ask them enough. Maybe was too much on my own, working day in, day out at night and day and so on and I could have used more of the opportunities to talk to mentors and advisors that I should have talked to. I did it, but I could have maybe done with the more, I think.
Sandrine: I guess also in periods of transition early on in your career, there is a sense of wanting to prove that you can do it and again, because often we talk about research independence and people have a perception of research independence is about doing stuff on your own away from your PI, which it isn't, it's using the power of your collaborators, using the collective intelligence to be able to achieve the best that you can and being open to the support of others.
You could have had a completely different career in industry and probably become very rich from working in industry. What kept you going in the academic world?
Stephane: All right. I think it's simply because it worked out very well. I've always been very happy. I met people that have huge amounts of deep thinking about things that reflect about what they do. They do not go randomly, but think, and they can discuss topics that go from philosophy to mathematics and so on and that's so rich that the environment, in terms of people and cultures and so on, and in the teamwork and finding new topics that are always interesting, always challenging, always new, always tickle my curiosity.
Yesterday again with my daughter, we're talking about work-life balance, what to do later. She's wondering med school or not med school and where, should I go research? Should I do more practice? Should I do what? I was telling her, this is the best job ever. You cannot find anything better than this because you're constantly challenged. It's really fun, you meet people that are fantastic.
You can decide to read on a topic you've never read before for a week if you like, and you teach people that are on the next generation. You are taught by people so constantly all the time, people send you ideas. I think this is wonderful. However, in industry, I think the nice thing also is that in my particular field, and this doesn't go for any field, but at least in my field, we interact with industry a lot and we have probably at the moment, 20, 30 industrial collaborators, if we put them all together it's a completely different fields, from aerospace, to chemical engineering, to materials, to space.
That also is nice because you see that your work is actually taken up by people, they use it and they implement it in their everyday lives and there's nothing better than this for an engineer, because that's why we chose that job in this first place. I think, basically when you have contacts with wonderful individuals, your brain is stimulated all the time. You meet different cultures and you learn constantly. I think it's difficult to find anything more fulfilling.
Sandrine: It's a lot of hard work still. [laughs]
Stephane: Yes.
Sandrine: Yes. Throughout your career, you've had to make lots of challenging decision at different stages in your career, whether it's project, who to work with, where to work. Do you think that there is a particular interaction, a particular event, a particular decision that you've made that was absolutely critical and influential in the way that you position yourself as a research leader in your area?
Stephane: Yes, I think the key turning point was when I met Bhushan Karihaloo at this IUTAM Symposium in 2017, and when he told me that it would be nice if I visit him in Gavage because he had an idea that maybe I could join a university there. I think this was the turning point. If you assume that stuffing to the patients is not the turning points, of course, because that would be the first turning point but once that had been decided, I think that was the real major change.
After that, everything, I'd say that without that particular moment, I think things would have looked pretty different and maybe I wouldn't be in industry. I don't know. I think that's really, really changed things a lot and also the experience of this person, Bhushan and his very rich background in terms of understanding of mechanics, understanding of the academic world, he's a rectitude in the way he's thinking and the way he interacts with people has been really extremely beneficial and has really changed the way I did things.
That would be probably one, it's going to be people basically, because it's always, yes. The decisions have always been steered by who I met and when. I think another person who was very important was Jack African who's now a professor at Academy de Paris who decided to join my team in 2009, and because of that, I think a lot of things happened afterwards.
For example, the ERC grants that we got, I say we because it's under my name, but it's basically we, and he appears there as a key researcher, but I think he did much more than that. We develop the ideas together. He was very influential in my way of thinking, in my way of criticizing myself, criticizing the way I work and improving it, looking at the problem from different eyes, looking at the academic life from different angles.
That has been really key and I think also my first master's and PhD student, Natarajan who's now a professor at IIT Madras, my first PhD student, more or less and [unintelligible 00:48:57] whom I mentioned before. I mean, sheer amount of willpower to make things happen because I thought I was hard working but it was very humbling to see these two guys because both of them in their own way, stood out with working for let's say like an engine company GE, General Electrics in India, designing aircrafts engines.
On the sides in the evening, in his free time, he was starting to work on projects, although we had hadn't yet met physically. We worked like this for a year then we applied for a fellowship and he came to Glasgow, but I mean, it was incredible. Fu in Vietnam was a similar person. I think that gave me already that motivation to say, "Okay. I have ideas and there are people that are so motivated that they will work 12, 15 hours a day to make things happen.
That gave me a huge boost of energy because you need that at the beginning. You're on your own, you don't have funding at all. Basically need to find all the ways you can to keep motivated and keep pushing forward. I think that was for me, these two people were really key. I would say.
Sandrine: It's an important point because, in a way when you are establishing your first research group, the people that you recruit are completely influential in terms of your success as a new PI. At the same time with my equality, diversity, and inclusion hat, I'm thinking. Yes, but not everybody can work 12 hours a day. Not everybody wants to work. Even people who are highly motivated and really want to do well.
How do we balance that? In terms of who you are recruiting in your team and also enabling people to work at a pace that is maybe slower than the ones you would to have- who have yourself, that still enables people for background or different way of living to still be a contributor in the research environment. How do you build research teams that are diverse in a way of acknowledging different ways of working and still when your own job is on the threshold of, "Will I get probation? If my Ph.D. student or my post decides to go part-time?"
Stephane: Yes, that's enormous question. I can see that these really rest a lot on experience, because I think these are the key questions really. Now I'm going to answer as if I were a university or a research institute, and I was trying to come up with a structure, which allowed this diversity to take place because I think that's where the problem is. At the moment, I believe and it's changing a bit at, okay, that everybody is evaluated in the same way.
There is this sort of one size fits all research model. You have to teach, you have to do research, you have to do a third mission, talk to industry, talk to the public, talk to policymakers, create spinoffs, get huge amounts of funding and publish four papers a year in the top journals. That's it and supervise four PhDs. Apart from that, you can sleep whenever you have time. It's really impossible.
I mean, what I told my colleagues at the time, my younger colleagues is, okay, this is the formal stance of the management, but everybody including management knows that you cannot do that and stay sane because that would require if you just add up the hours, which the workload models actually compute that would add up to 15 hours a day easily. You barely can sleep and I don't think this is very good for health.
Clearly, you cannot do it. You have to choose your battles and you have to learn to do certain things more efficiently and do others, maybe at the required level of, let's say perfection, that makes you feel happy, but others, you have to say, okay, these, I will do a little bit less well, which may be very well still, because I think we are all perfectionists in that job, but you will still do it a little bit less well.
Then maybe you will have time to do things that people ask you, but some of them you will do just a bit faster. I think for the management, of universities, we need to figure out that there are different pathways for careers. Some people are maybe more keen to do research. Others are better at teaching or maybe want to do more teaching and do less research and maybe they don't want to get an ERC grant, because they're not interested in this.
Maybe they don't have frontier ideas, I mean, maybe they're very good at doing things, but they don't have these overall overarching view of the field because their mind works in a completely different way and they are super good at their very well defined problems, but they're not so good at seeing the big picture and so what, it's fine, it's just that they are different.
I think we need a place for everybody, but then it should be understood that the carriers are neither inferior or superior. It's like saying that the carpenter, is a job, which is less useful than being a medical doctor. That makes no sense, it's just different. Then comes a question of how do you make people go grow in the-- in the environment and in the university and I think that has to be also solved because what does it mean to be an excellent teacher?
What does it mean to be an excellent researcher? It's kind of not very well known, but at least there are some quantitative measures. How do you measure that in terms of teaching? That's, that's another question. I think we just need to be more open in the way we assess the performance let's say, and therefore the wellbeing of people and-- because if we could do that.
In France, for example, there are concepts of research engineers, which I believe are, is a very useful concept because people who are research engineers do more technical things, but they do not need to come up with new research ideas. That's not part of their job. Their job is who make research happens through their technical skills. I think many people answer to these requirements today, but I are asked to perform very well in terms of research. But in fact, it's not in their genes because they don't like this.
They want to make things work. They see things like Lego blocks that they assemble and they want to see the final product. Without them, telescopes would not work. Half the things that we work on today would not be there. HPC would not run. We would have no supercomputers, but these people are not researchers, but they are super skilled and without them, there would be no research.
We need to have spaces for these people and not try to fit them in a box in which they don't fit because either the box will break or they will break. That's not good. I think it's really completely a cultural shift which we in many places we need to address.
Sandrine: To finish off a conversation, one of the thing I'll be keen to ask you is, if you had one thing to contribute, a legacy that you would want to have yourself in the work that you do now as a research leader on the research culture, what would be the thing that you would want to make happen? Even just within your research team or your institution. What would be the thing that you say, okay, well, if I can make this happen, I'll be happy and that would be job done well.
Stephane: Yes. If I have only one part to pick in. [giggles]
Sandrine: Yes, just one.
Stephane: Again, it has to be around people because that's the only thing I think that matters. I think we-- I would like to build an environment in which the team finds itself happy to work together and tries to have one global goal, but where everybody can rise. It would be trying to make the research team a smaller medium enterprise with a certain goal, and then reaching that goal would become the goal of each person.
I think that's difficult because all Ph.D. students have their own PhDs to finish. Each postdoc is thinking about their permanent job. It's an-- it's really inherently an individual sport, like in running, when you're on your marathon, you are not watching your neighbor running the marathon you're just looking at your watch and figuring out that you should accelerate by one-second per, per kilometer otherwise, you won't make your target.
But at the same time, it should be like trail running, where if your fellow runner forgot to fill the water pack, then you will not let them desiccate and you will help them and give them water to continue. To me, I would really like to make this a trail running team where everybody is trying to reach the end of the ultra endurance challenge, be it 100 kilometers or 200, whatever it is, and climbing the hills so that they can discover the nice, beautiful scenery behind because every time you crack a research challenge you see so clearly that it's a revelation, but at the same time, not let the other people die along the path and help them along when they move forward.
I mean, this is what I think is really, really helpful. It's difficult to get this culture in because it's a competitive environment at each level, at the university level, at the department level, at the group level, at an individual level. Every-- at each level, everything is competitive, but then if you don't work as a group, you-- I don't think you are as happy. I don't think you make progress as easily.
It would be to try to create and I have a lot to learn on this actually. I would really like to learn things much better on that front to create an atmosphere where people respect each other, look in the same direction, but still are among the best in their field, but will support their neighbor if in need. That is what I would like to do, but it's it's a big job.
Sandrine: It's a big big task. My final question Stephane is about, you thinking your young self when you left France, went to the States. If you are thinking of yourself at that time, what would you tell your young self to ease your research journey?
Stephane: First of all, I would say that I look back at the journey as very positive. I'm not thinking about it like an ordeal or a terrible time where I was really suffocating, couldn't breathe, or was overwhelmed constantly and continuously. I relocated very positively. One thing I could have done better is to be more selective at what I did. That also come with experience.
I could have maybe told myself that anyway, "Don't worry, you will meet the people that you need to meet, when you need to meet them. Don't stress out so much. Some things will become obvious as to what you need to do at a certain time. At the same time, don't worry too much about what is going to happen to your promotion, because everything comes in due course.
If you create the right opportunities at the right time-- keep being dynamic, energetic, positive, try to infuse other people to share your passion. It will basically come on its own because people will be excited. You'll meet the right people. You will have opportunities, you will create them, you will follow through and you'll make them happen." I didn't really believe in this because we don't have a lot of self confidence in that field.
I mean, in general, in academic, I think, or maybe too much, either too much or too little. I think usually it's linked. If you're over confident you usually hide some sort of insecurity and vice versa. In my case, it certainly was the case that I didn't have a lot of self confidence. When I started into a research field, I needed to already overdo everything. I needed to dot the I's and cross the T's and make sure everything was perfect.
Sometimes leaving things a bit to chance also works because when you ask me what the career hinged upon, it was a random meeting with someone who changed my life completely. At the same time, I could not predict this. What I would basically tell myself is, "Anyway, you can't predict it. Just go ahead, be yourself, do what you like, and at some point it will work, but I know it's very naïve."
Sandrine: In a way it's almost like trusting whatever comes your way, because one event leads to another and because you can't predict the future anyway, so you might as well embrace whatever is coming your way.
Stephane: That's it? Being positive about it, and trying not to fear that much. To take risks, and not really worry because the consequences at the end of the day are not enormous. The other thing is we do a job, but we could do almost any other job. If let's say we fail, it's not a big failure, it's just a change. We have to see things in a dynamic way, so we're here, but we could be somewhere else.
If we were somewhere else, it would maybe just be as good because we would get used to it and would be happy anyway. It's a way of looking at the present and as an opportunity to shape the future, but staying in the present and not looking at the past and future that much. Trying to be there, now here and do the things we really are good at and learn the things we're not good at as much as we can step out of this comfort zone.
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Sandrine: Well, Stephane, it's been really a pleasure talking to you, and I really really appreciate our conversation. Thank you.
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