First, I think the idea of interviewing a famous researcher and asking him - in simple terms - what it is he does, is a very simple and inspired idea. One the coolest things the Q&A reveals is that Dr. Herschko has a tiny lab and does his own experiments himself rather than leaving the work to grad students.
Second, he gives two pieces of advice to students at the end that are great:
"I tell them not to go with the mainstream in picking a research topic. Also, if you have an unexpected finding, don’t ignore it. Serendipitous findings are sometimes the most important.
Another thing: If your mentor is not good, leave him. In these big labs, sometimes your mentor doesn’t know much about your activities. That’s not a mentor. For scientific research, you have to learn how to do it from a good researcher. I had that myself, and I try to pass it on to my own students."
It's especially useful to have occasional explicit conversations about topics like this, asking questions like those we raised with the first faculty panel. You should think about slipping these in, one at a time, during things like group meetings, where you might hear comments from everyone in the group.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a piece like this, perhaps done as a podcast audio interview, would make a great piece of public scholarship. We went to SummerFest last night and saw Ira Glass talk about how to create a story like those they use on "This American Life", and he stressed how accessible the technology for making and editing a recording like this is. Even layering in music is easy; he favors movie soundtracks as they are usually written to have people speak over them.
Who would you interview if you could? You might answer both among those here on campus and globally.