Dr Narine Hall is an Assistant Professor and Program Director in Data Science at Champlain College (USA) in Vermont. Her experience in industry and start-ups has been key in innovating tools for educators during the pandemic.
Experiencing the frustration of more limited interactions with her students during tutorials at the beginning of the pandemic, Narine put into action her entrepreneurial and computational skills. She started to develop an interactive online platform that could replicate some of the key elements so critical when teaching face-to-face.
As an academic with teaching and research responsibilities, her move into setting up a start-up and becoming a CEO in the middle of a pandemic was embedded in her core commitment as a professional to creating products and solutions derived from research, that could make people’s lives easier.
She is now CEO of the start-up In Space which is transforming interactivity in online classrooms. (https://inspace.chat/)
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking about:
I write a blog post for each Podcast episode, inspired by the many themes discussed with my guests. The blog posts prompt you in your reflection journey.
Access all podcasts and blog posts inspired by the Podcast interviews from: https://tesselledevelopment.com/podcast
Register on the mailing list to receive Podcast updates: https://tesselledevelopment.activehosted.com/f/5
Get in touch for questions, queries or to suggest a brilliant contributor: sandrine@tesselledevelopment.com
Dr Narine Hall is an Assistant Professor and Program Director in Data Science at Champlain College (USA) in Vermont. Her experience in industry and start-ups has been key in innovating tools for educators during the pandemic.
Experiencing the frustration of more limited interactions with her students during tutorials at the beginning of the pandemic, Narine put into action her entrepreneurial and computational skills. She started to develop an interactive online platform that could replicate some of the key elements so critical when teaching face-to-face.
As an academic with teaching and research responsibilities, her move into setting up a start-up and becoming a CEO in the middle of a pandemic was embedded in her core commitment as a professional to creating products and solutions derived from research, that could make people’s lives easier.
She is now CEO of the start-up In Space which is transforming interactivity in online classrooms. (https://inspace.chat/)
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking about:
I write a blog post for each Podcast episode, inspired by the many themes discussed with my guests. The blog posts prompt you in your reflection journey.
Access all podcasts and blog posts inspired by the Podcast interviews from: https://tesselledevelopment.com/podcast
Register on the mailing list to receive Podcast updates: https://tesselledevelopment.activehosted.com/f/5
Get in touch for questions, queries or to suggest a brilliant contributor: sandrine@tesselledevelopment.com
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.
Sandrine Soubes: All right, let's get cracking. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are. Dear listeners, you are on the podcast, Research Life and Cultures. This afternoon, I have the pleasure to have with me, Dr. Narine Hall, who is assistant professor and program manager at the University of Vermont.
I wasn't actually sure, Narine, whether the Champlain College that you're part of, is it part of the university? It's a college within the university or is it something completely different?
Narine Hall: It's a college on its own, and it's a very actually popular college in US. We are one of the most innovative colleges. I think we have been getting this award for the past several years. Champlain College is located in Vermont. If you're in UK, it's closer to Canada and it's a nice small state, very beautiful with greens and everything.
Sandrine: Tell us a little bit about your career so far. You are not from the US, so how did it all start, your academic and research life?
Narine: I did my undergrad in Armenia. I was coming to the school, it was really fun, but I knew I wanted to go to college in US. I actually came for the first time to Vermont for a summer school and this was called New Kind of Science Summer School that was organized by University of Vermont and also Wolfram Research. This was a great program. It was three weeks and we did research the whole time.
At the end, we had this big demonstration of what project we've done. It was like poster session. I remember I showed my poster session to Stephen Wolfram, who is the CEO at Wolfram Research. He basically was like, he hired me on the spot and I became an intern. I went back to Armenia and I worked remotely for the company and their research company. It was really fascinating stuff we were working on. WolframAlpha is one of the projects that came out of that interaction. That was really fun.
At that time, when I was here, I learned that US schools work a little different than schools in Armenia. I'm sure it's a little bit different in Europe as well. One of the biggest things to get into Grad School is you have to find a research advisor who really shares your interest and it's a good [unintelligible 00:02:33] One of the students told me about this, so I started meeting with some professors at University of Vermont. I met with my advisor and we immediately clicked on some of the topics that I wanted to work, and this was in complex systems and data science. I applied to University of Vermont and I started doing my master's and then later PhD there, and then I became a research professor.
Sandrine: As a starting point, what made you interested in the type of science that you do? It's a disciplinary area that tends to be dominated by men. Thinking about the UK, very few women still do physics at the A-Level which is the end of high school diploma. I don't know whether it was like this in Armenia, or maybe not. I think that each country is very different, but were there a lot of women in this field or not? What made you really want to work in this area?
Narine: Yes, that's a great question. I think we have this in every country. US is the same and Armenia has the same thing. I have been really fortunate because my mom has a PhD in physics and so I saw that growing up, which is a huge advantage. On the retrospective, when I talk to my students today, I realize what a huge advantage I had having that growing up. For me, I fell in love with coding when I was in eighth grade. At the beginning, it was about hacking and doing pranks in the school with computers, but then later on, I realized how cool it is that I can code and I can create this interesting world in my computer basically. That was my fascination point there. At the beginning, I didn't realize that it was male dominated and I was just like, "Oh, this is the way it is." Later on, I realized that it can be a little tricky. You have to learn to make sure that your voice is heard. You have to stand tall and make sure everybody pays attention when you have interesting ideas, and that became a way of life. Later on, that was really helpful because thinking about some of the other stuff, it seems like somehow I'm always in this more male dominated field, so it's a really interesting skill to learn early on. Even being a CEO right now, it's same story, just different profession. I found that very useful.
Sandrine: Starting with your mom who has a physics background is a really good starting point. You were almost brainwashed to physics early, early on.
Narine: Oh, absolutely.
Sandrine: When you finished your PhD, you then had a few years in industry working for IBM and Blink, and Faraday as well. I'm not really sure what all of these are. Then you came back into academia. Can you tell us a little bit about the choices that you made? Often, at the end of a PhD, it's a crossroad. A lot of people go and do a postdoc or do a research fellowship, and other people leave straight away. What was the pathway of thinking that you had at the time of what it is that you wanted to do?
Narine: That's a great question. I think it's always so challenging especially when you're just finishing your PhD. You have all this knowledge that you want to apply and continue doing research, because that's what you have been doing for a long time. At the same time, I have always been really excited about industry, like just getting things done hands-on. For me, what's really exciting is creating products or things that other people can use. I think that's where it becomes life for me. The Blink Secure Company, actually this is the company I founded when I was finishing up my PhD. I just was so fascinated with this concept. It was proximity-based authentication system and it was really fun. When you get close to your computer, it unlocks itself, so you don't have to type any passwords. When you move away, it locks.
What we have been doing, we've been using this really cool research to create secure connection and authentication. That's where I got involved with this. I remember the first time someone used this thing that we created, it was this cheap and very clunky thing. It was just like, "Oh, I want to be in this." I think that's when entrepreneurship was really born for me. I just wanted to go and create products that are based in academia and research, but also are in industry.
At that point, I moved to industry and I went to IBM Watson which was one of the top machine learning labs. What I learned here was that, it was very hierarchical and it was very hard in large companies to push very innovative ideas fast forward. It would take years for things to actually get to a point where people use them. I realized that wasn't for me. I just didn't have the patience for it. I just wanted to innovate and move on, and so I went to Faraday.
Faraday is a startup, and they're very agile, fast-moving and data company. That was fascinating for me. We did a lot of cool predictions modeling, et cetera, in machine machine learning. For that, I found that I missed academia. I missed the research of it. I felt like I had to do research to feed my soul in a way. At that point, I went back to Champlain College. The reason I love being in Champlain College is, it's very innovative college and it's a little bit outside of the box from traditional state colleges like University of Vermont. We have quite a bit of freedom to create innovative projects, creating hands-on projects for students, as long as students are learning in a real environment that was actually rewarded. Which may or may not be the case for other colleges. It was really great. I started doing both. I would bring industry projects to classroom and then I would have students get hired as interns in the industry companies. I became a bridge person between industry and academia. Through that, I realized that I can scale this, so I started advising other companies and became that bridge. It was really fascinating for me. It's a lot of work, I have to say, so anybody thinking about wearing both hats, it's double the work, but it's also double the fun.
Sandrine: One of the difference between industry or spinout companies and academia is that, what is valued is different. When you have a spinout, you need to sell stuff or you need to get investments. The value is in getting the monies either through investors or through selling stuff. In academia, you need to get grants, but at the end of the day, what is value are the papers that you publish.
Depending on the institution where you work, the reward from industrial partnership is valued or less, so it very much depends on the institution. In the context that you are in, how do you find it, the combination of value from two very different worlds? How does it work for you in term of your progression within the institution where you work, but also in term of even though you are a CEO of a company, keeping your hand into publishing paper because that's part of what is expected of you?
Narine: That is really good question. How do you combine those two? You're absolutely right. Having companies that came out of academia, they have very different-- I call it the soul of the company. It's like the funding is different, the motivations are different, and then having a company industry, depending what you're doing, it could be very different motivations and goals and really the purpose. it comes down to the purpose, why you have the company. InSpace is a great example of this, sort of what happened with us.
In the spring, when we all moved to virtual teaching, I was actually teaching this course in machine learning. It was a really exciting fun course. I actually got a Google Faculty Award for this course, for the content that I've developed there. We had these fun projects and discussions in the classroom.
When we moved to pandemic, we moved to virtual, I was super excited. All my content was online, I was ready to go. I get on the Zoom call with my students and I ask a question. Everybody tried to answer, and then there was this pause. It was just really awkward interactions going on and we just couldn't get the same value out of the interaction that we were having in the classroom. All of a sudden, all my projects that I had, doing project work became a nightmare. If you've ever created breakout rooms in Zoom, every educator knows it's a nightmare.
At that point, I was like, "I'm going to quit because I can't do this. I'm not getting the same value. It's not exciting." That's when I went back to, "What if it's the technology that's the issue? What if maybe I don't have the right tools?" Me and my co-founder were like, "Let's forget everything we know about video conferencing right now. The squares, the Zoom, the Google Meet, and this and that." We were like, "How would we actually do it if we were to build it for education, if I just wanted to do that?" At this point, we sit down and we're like, "Well, it seems like it's more human if it were in circles, not squares." One of the things you can do in the classroom, you can move to someone and ask a question, so that's what we did. You had your video circle and you can click on it and you move to someone else, and you can have a nice conversation. This is when my students can stop by and have a one-on-one conversation with me during the class. All of a sudden, all the hands-on project work we were doing in person was right back into the classroom. Also, it was almost better because now we had the chat to communicate that we don't have in a real classroom. Now, people were screen sharing which is really convenient for each group. All of a sudden, it was actually better than in-person which is not something we were aiming for at all. That's where we were like, "We're going to start this company." We had a lot of educators who were like, "I need this solution in my classroom. Can I please use it?" We started a company, but our goal has never been to make money, like, become profitable necessarily. Our goal was to make sure that we're there for educators and they have all the tools they need. I was an educator, I felt the pinpoints and I was like, "I want everybody to have this because I need this."
Then of course, when you start a company, then you have the logistics of, well, you're going to make a profit to survive. That just becomes the reality of the start-ups and that's where the industry part kicks in. For me, being in different start-up environments and big company environments, that experience of how companies run, was really critical to be able to just relate to those experiences. We very quickly started thinking, "What is our business model? How are we going to stay in business but also make sure we're always there for educators being the top priority?" It worked out really well. We got some really good traction by word of mouth, because in academia, it's all trust-based and references. People use it, they shared with their colleagues and we spread very quickly. We're in way over 100 colleges at this point, but at the same time then, we started getting traction, so we got investment because the revenues came in and all that worked together.
I feel like I was in some ways very fortunate to be able to be in that position of understanding both academia and industry to be able to make this happen. I think any time you can wear two hats, there's a really exciting opportunity around the corner waiting for you.
Sandrine: How do you think that your other colleagues perceive the way that you are being an entrepreneur while other may decide not to?
Narine: One of the things that happened early on, we had the minimum working product, barely works. I sent to a colleague and she loves it. She sent to another colleague and it just spreads like wildfire in the college. Everybody gets their hands on it and people started emailing me and calling me. Actually, my husband teaches at Champlain College too and he was getting calls from friends. He was like, "They want to get a hold of this thing. What do I do? I can't tell them no." It was just so exciting, the frenzy of everybody wants to use the product.
As a startup, we moved very, very fast. If you compare it to any other startup, our development process and creating the product was incredibly fast. Part of that was, we were really feeding off that energy of people just literally banging on the door and it was like, "Can we use the product?" Then there's, "Can my colleague at Stanford use this? They really want to use this at MIT, and everybody else." That's how it got out of hand, which is great as a startup.
I think my colleagues, they really supported me in a way that it was phenomenal. Everybody was right there for me and they were like, "You go do that, I'll do this other thing, so you can stay focused on InSpace." Which is really phenomenal, because they wanted the product, they wanted to subscribe, and they wanted to support me to get there. It was really amazing to see all my colleagues come together and help me. I feel very fortunate about that.
Sandrine: That sounds really amazing. There is a term that's present in one of the Bio that you have online where you say that you dedicated your career to collaborative learning. In a way, I guess what you've just achieved through that company is exactly that. It's really fascinating.
Narine: Collaborative learning is something that I've always been involved with. As a data scientist, I was always looking at the data and understanding, how do people learn? How do they interact with each other? What are the networks? Complex networks is where I started if you look at the networks and graphs of people interacting and who's learning from who, how is information disseminating? It's really amazing having the opportunity to bring that into a platform and turn it into a product. I'm still working on an NSF grant with University of Vermont and University of Maine. This is a collaborative project and it's really fun to see all those different researchers come together and work on something from different disciplines, and trying to create something that's very unique. It was really fun to see having this collaborative process to be the foundation of what we're creating in the product. How do we as researchers want to collaborate? What tools do we need from video conferencing? Having those tools at hand, that we can easily just work together, edit together, push that paper out, whatever it is that we're doing, is really important.
Sandrine: What do you think make you an amazing collaborator?
Narine: That's a great question. I don't know how good of a collaborator I am, but I try. It's a work in progress at all times. I think one of the key things is always trying to understand different perspectives and open mind. You have to go into every meeting open-minded because my perspective from data science, for example, might be very different from someone's perspective in biology. Unless I understand where they're coming from, and their domain, and just spend enough time to know what problems are driving their solutions, then I can't really find a solution that works for both of us. For me, it's really spending the initial time to understand other people's domains and expertise, and what they're doing, and asking them. They'll love to teach you exactly what they know. In academia, we all love sharing. It's just spending time asking people.
Sandrine: You know, because of the work that I do, I've come across a lot of postdocs who have done maybe several postdoc and don't really know what to do with their life, and often are really inhibited in transitioning into working in industry. Again, because of the mindset that they have about what it's like to work in industry or outside of academia. How do you advise yourself, early career researchers, when they're in that phase of, "Should I stay still in academia and suffer through endless short-term contracts? What can I tell myself to be daring enough to jump into working in industry?"
Narine: It's a big step and it's a tough one. For example, when I was doing my PhD, I kept getting a lot of offers from companies in Silicon Valley and they offer large, large salaries, much like orders of magnitude from my PhD salary at the time. It's a tough decision to say no and stay focused on your PhD, or take that jump and move on, and hope that you're going to like it. What I would say, if someone has done a postdoc, they probably already know what that side of things look like. I usually advise my students, at that point you either take a job as an assistant professor and decide that you're going to academia, or you take a job in industry. I think multiple postdocs is where it starts getting very long and it can become very hard.
The other thing I would say, taking some job in industry is always beneficial. You take maybe a year or two or three and you see the other side of things, assuming this is something that you really enjoy. You never know what you really like unless you really get into it. You can always go back and continue, but not being afraid to really try to exist in between those two as well. A lot of companies do look for people who have research background and can research for the company, because that's where all the amazing patterns and stuff are coming out. At least that's how it's working at InSpace. Then at the same time, if you look at academic institutions, it's very valuable to have that industry experience. You just have to really research which schools are looking for what. Some are very researchy, and others, they really look for that real-world experience.
Sandrine: In your discipline, it might be easier to go back into academia after a period in industry. When you made the decision to go back, was it challenging to actually get to a position or were people welcoming you with open arms? "Oh, yes. Somebody from industry who wants to go back to academia," or was it a non-issue?
Narine: You're absolutely right. You can't do it all. Once you focus on industry, it's very hard to get a lot of publications going and then the rate slows down at which you publish, which exactly happened with me. Then you just have different priorities that we only can spend so much time per day. For me, it was a little different because I didn't spend too much time away from academia before I decided to go back, but also, I continued prioritizing the publications and things.
The third piece of this is also which school you're going to. Some of the research schools would have more issues with that than [unintelligible 00:21:09] A place like Champlain College, for example, is great, because what's really valued there is teaching students think that they can hit the ground running when they graduate. That's the first thing we hear from employers. We are also a little different college than say University of Vermont, which is more research school.
It's really finding the right fit, but it is a risk, you're absolutely right. If you don't continue publishing, can you really go back? It also depends on what you were doing in industry. If you're a research fellow at Facebook or Google, you probably would have more publications than maybe if you're just doing industry without research background.
Sandrine: One of the thing that I often ask people is, how do they build their inner confidence as researcher? I work as a coach, and I guess the people who work with me are people who want to thrive to be better in their job, or in their working relationship, or people sometimes who feel that they lack confidence. In your case, having the inner drive to launch a company while you're still an academic, it takes a lot of courage, and it takes a lot of confidence. How do you think that you've built that confidence over the years? What's been really the key thing that made you believe that, "Yes, I can do this. I have no problem. I can do this."?
Narine: That is a really good question. I think you're absolutely right. It takes a lot of courage and confidence, especially for women in industry. I mentor a lot of women in tech, and this is one of the biggest challenges, just having the confidence to go and say, negotiate your salary, or even to just say, "I'm going to take a risk, and I'm going to start a company." That's a huge risk. How do you go with that? I think for me, the solution is, you really have to find your village. These are people who support you, who are right there for you. We all go through those challenges where we're like, "Oh, can I do that or not?" There's always a little bit of questioning, and this happens more early on in the career and it gets better and better throughout. Having people right next to you who know you, who know what you can do, and they have seen you when you accomplished things, just reminding you what you can do, I think is the biggest thing and knowing that you have a group of people you can lean on when you want to make big decisions and take a risk.
I think networking early on is really important. Every job I started, one of the first things I do, I look around, and I find other women who are doing really, really well that I would want to be like them in that space. I reach out to them and I'm like, "Hey, let's have lunch, let's talk about this." Then I start talking to them. Then they help you to navigate the space, because every space is a little bit different, and having really strong mentors and most important role models, people that you see are thriving, then is really the most important thing.
This is why on the other end of this, I think it's really important to give back as well. Anytime I have an opportunity to mentor other women in tech or just be able to be there, it's like I try to take that opportunity.
For me, being a CEO is very challenging and a fun and exciting, but part of it is, the company is a little different. You get this entrepreneurship bug and you just can't help it anymore. It's exciting, but also knowing that for my girl I'm becoming a role model, I think that's really important. I think more women should [unintelligible 00:24:45]
Sandrine: What do you think that you do yourself in the way that you interact with your students where you feel that you are able to be a role model and help people to feel that they also belong to that space? I remember I had an amazing PI when I was a postdoc, and she was such a hard worker. Her level of commitment was such that I always felt I can't work as much as she is. I can't get up at four o'clock, and read papers at four o'clock. It's like, "I need to sleep at four o'clock."
She was organizing your life in a way that didn't match me. I run a lot of women development programs, and I share my experience of dealing with my professional life. Sometimes I do wonder, when we share our experiences, how can we share in a way that people feel that they can, instead of being this unattainable role model?
Narine: You're absolutely right. There's the right ways to go about this and the wrong ways, and it's always challenging to understand what works. What I find is really important is, for me, the first thing is finding my own voice and making sure that I can stand up for myself and I can bring my voice to meetings. I had many meetings where I would have 10 guys in the meeting, and I would make sure that I don't just sit there quietly. I make sure my voice is heard and obviously, you want to make sure that you have something really [unintelligible 00:26:15] but also not be intimidated. Just trying to do that.
Once you do that, then next time you're in a meeting, and maybe there's another woman in the group, when they see you doing that and finding your voice, that's how it goes. For me, that's exactly how I found my voice because I saw other women stand up and just say, "Okay, this is right and this is wrong and this is how we're going to do it." I think to be able to have people like that around is really important. Giving people space to grow and being there for them when they need, but also not pressuring them into growing, it sometimes can also work backwards as well. Just thinking about what's going on and giving people space to talk and being candid and upfront is really important. Having clear open conversations, making sure everybody feels included in the conversation, and the feeling of belonging is really important. If you talk to anybody at InSpace right now, everyone feels that they belong there and this is a culture that you need to work really hard to build.
Similarly, it's funny, technology also has quite a bit to do with this. For example, in InSpace, we have a chat, and then in the chat, if you type a message that is toxic, it's non-inclusive or toxic, we actually use machine learning to block that message so no one can send it. People can still send swear words, because French professors, they said they needed the language [unintelligible 00:27:48] so we gave them the full language.
At the same time, if someone types something like, "Oh, that's a stupid question," that is not productive, inclusive and it'll make someone feel really bad. It doesn't matter what background they have, so we actually block it. It's really cool to be able to use technology to create more inclusive environments for everybody to work in. My hope is that we just continue doing this thing. It's really one brick at a time. I personally have seen a lot of progress in the recent years in that direction.
Sandrine: It leads to one of the questions that I had. We like to work with people that we like, or we like to work with people who think in the same way that we do. We know that's not the best way of actually having a very innovative environment, and at the same time, changing these practices take a lot of hard work. What do you think that you've done yourself, either within your academic institution or within the company? I know the company hasn't been going on for a long time, but in terms of really trying hard to create a space where very different people can be successful.
Narine: I think it's really important to put intention and purpose into creating teams that thrive and are diverse. To create diverse teams, sometimes it can be very challenging, hard, time-consuming, and frankly, expensive. Sometimes it's really going the extra mile to make sure that you have diverse teams.
When we started our company at InSpace, we're both women founders. One of the things that we decided was that we'll try to stay as close to that 50% ratio as we can, but it becomes very challenging very quickly because we're in tech field. Very quickly, like, "Okay, this is going to be really hard to keep."
What we have done is, every time we want to bring in someone, say we want to bring a male, then we also make sure we hire females. We make intentional effort to keep the ratios and make sure that we're spending time and energy into this.
Previously, what I have done in my programs, I had the same thing. Data science and computer science programs, we don't have very many female students, for example, or students with different racial backgrounds in Vermont. What I have done, literally went to high schools and did some talks. Did some interesting topics, just showing up there, and then I found that when they see you very successful doing things, somehow it's, "Well, she can do it, I can do it." It's a very interesting concept, but it really works. Just spending some time paying back, or just going to meet young people who are maybe questioning if they can or cannot pursue certain fields and showing them how it's possible, I think it's the best thing.
Sandrine: How did you go about building your own leadership? Obviously, you had your PhD and then you worked in companies and leadership is this thing that it's not that you have it or you don't, or it's not that it's based on the position that you have it. These are competencies that you accumulate step by step. What do you think that you've done over the years from early on in your PhD to, in a way, be in a position to be the leader that you are today? It just doesn't happen just because you become the CEO.
Narine: Yes. Absolutely and you're absolutely right. I think early on, I was always really excited about leadership positions. For example, in college, I was the president of the student council or lead some clubs and different things. You're absolutely right. It's a cumulative. They were little roles at the beginning, so just running a club or starting a new thing, but then slowly you learn, people are people. You learn how to work with people. That's the biggest thing for leaders, so understanding the people skills, how to interact and work with different people. That experience becomes really useful and then throughout the years, I was also very curious about just reading books about leadership. My recent one that I really enjoy reading right now is Dare to Lead by Brené Brown. I think she's fascinating and she brings all the humanness into leadership, which I think is so phenomenal and we need that absolutely.
It's also interesting because with InSpace, we bring that human interaction into a video conferencing platform and the human connection. That's what she talks about in her book about how to be a great leader is you have to build a human connection and take care of the human before thinking about the rest of it. Yes, I always read about these things, but it's really the practice, and starting early on with school things. There's starting a coding club or running a social media group or little things.
One of the things that I have been involved basically with is ML4All, that's Machine Learning for All. That group, basically, we got professors from-- I think it's maybe 200 professors we have in that group, that we basically think about, how do we democratize machine learning? A lot of people, through our phones, the data gets collected and it's being used, et cetera. It's important that everybody, it doesn't matter what their background is, understand how machine learning works, how predictions work, so when there are biases and things, people are aware of it. It's really cool. I've been always in this process of getting people together and organizing groups. That came really, really handy with the CEO job.
Sandrine: Do you think that leaders should reflect? In most institutions in academia, whether it's a research institute or university, there doesn't really exist to have a space where research group leader have an opportunity to really dig deep into the way that they are leading their research team. It's like, okay, they were successful as postdoc, they got some funding to set up their research group. Here you are, you are research team leader and they get PhD students, and then that's it.
In a way, the professional development for academics isn't as established as you will hope and there is very, very little reflection that takes place. Why is it that in 2020, while we still don't get principal investigators and professors to really reflect on their leadership in the research space? I guess you've worked in lots of companies and I feel that probably in industry, there is more of a structure to reflect as a leader, but still, why do we not do it in academia?
Narine: One of the things that Brené Brown actually talks about in this book, Dare to Lead, is leadership is not something you can do on your spare time. You have to dedicate time and effort into it if you're going to do it right. In research, your main job is research, then you be on the side, leading the postdocs and grad students. That doesn't always go great.
The other thing is that nobody gets actual training in how to lead these teams or support. I think you're absolutely right, that's a big challenge. It's funny, one of my colleagues, Robin Collins, she recently took a project management course. She called me and she was like, "We're doing everything wrong in academia, these project management things." It was just really interesting and I think you're actually right, bringing some of those resources, like how to actually lead teams and how to do project management, how to stick with deadlines in a way that's not stressful. Adopting some of those industry standards that have really been developed in the past years is really important. I'll give you one example. There's this tool called Trello and it's for project management. In industry, very popular. Nobody uses it in academia, so I actually brought it into my class and we started tracking our projects with that. It was amazing. Students were posting and watching their progress and it just felt great. I got great reviews from it. The other thing, Slack is a chat system. I tried to use that similarly, so the students can asynchronously interact. Slack is very popular industry, but then we found that it doesn't really work very well in academia. With InSpace, what we're doing right now, we're actually taking the chat, asynchronous conversation to the learning management system like Blackboard and Canvas, so students can have that conversation. It's a little bit more like the industry style where people continuously work together, but it works beautifully for students because they're working on projects, they're interacting and they don't have to have this awkward thing of going to someone and it's like, "What's your phone number? How can we connect to work on this?" I think tools also play a great deal on this. Having the right tools and resources and training would probably accelerate our research.
Sandrine: If you're thinking of the big picture of how you want to contribute in your research life, what would you say is the big motivator of the contribution that you want to make? Whether it's towards the research environment or your science or the broader mission of your company, what's really the driving force of what you do?
Narine: Very early on in my career, just in my PhD times, I realized that I love research. I love research for the sake of it. I love exploring and learning new things and innovating and finding new stuff that hasn't been done before, and that's really fascinating. I also realized where it really, really gets exciting for me is when it gets applied. When you take the research outcomes and you actually apply to something, and ultimately it comes down to when that product, that research is able to make someone's life a little bit better [unintelligible 00:37:51] I think that's where it becomes full circle for me. For me, the biggest contribution is to be able to create products and things that are grounded in research, but also bring joy to people and that's the best thing.
Sandrine: That's awesome. One of the things that I really like asking is what people will tell their young self if you had to do it all over again. Would you do things differently or what would you tell your young self?
Narine: I would probably tell myself while I was doing my master's, PhD or undergrad, maybe take it a little bit easier and play more and worry less about the outcome. With the PhD, it can be very stressful. It's a lot of unknowns and then you have to get to interesting place. Spending some time to play and when I say play, research play.
Sandrine: I guess depending on how the funding works, it's something that as a PhD supervisor, you may want to let your student do small playing, but at the same time, the timeframe of the funding doesn't necessarily allow this. As a supervisor, how do you create that space where your PhD student can do the playing and the experimenting and the figuring things out by themself and at the same time, get a PhD within a timely fashion?
Narine: I don't think I have a perfect answer, but I think I did struggle myself as a PhD student with this as well. I was on one grant and I had to study specific things, which were very exciting, but then while you're studying those, you find this other things that are super exciting. How do you keep yourself from not doing those? I remember those times I would go to my advisor and be like, "This is really exciting." She's like, "I agree, but we have to do this because we're on this grant."
Then it became this interesting game where we would figure out a way that that thing was associated with the work we're doing on the grant. It was in the scope, so we could work on this. I think overall, just looking at the grant and the system, I would say everybody would probably benefit more if the scope was a little bit looser, and the students could explore more. You just never know when you're going to run into something that's super exciting, and you want to see that out. I also understand, from time management perspective, that could be a big challenge. I think this is where having those resources and training and tools that can keep us on track while also allowing space for play and innovation is really where we can probably accelerate the process.
Sandrine: That's awesome. Narine, that was really, really lovely talking to you. I'm immensely grateful.
Narine: Thank you so much for having me. It was really fun speaking with you. I think the last thing I want to leave with is probably just encourage everyone to be bold and confident and take risks because I never met anyone who regretted taking a risk, it's usually not taking risks. I think in academia and in industry, in all places, taking risks where it's really exciting, and you just have to try it out. Never be shy to try things out.
The other thing I would say, if you're curious about InSpace and what we're doing and you want to explore it, you can go to inspace.chat, and you can sign up for an account and feel free to send me an email. I'll be curious to see what everybody thinks about it.
Sandrine: Thank you very much.
Narine: Thank you.
[00:41:45] [END OF AUDIO]