How to start a research group – part I: Grant selection and the application process

In this blog article, I will attempt to describe my journey to become a leader of a functioning research group, while providing some useful information that could help others to achieve this goal too. While such a journey is largely individual and will always depend on many specific, often personal aspects, there are many lessons learnt that can be universally transposed to others. As a disclaimer, I should say that I never intended to become a PI (principal investigator), professor or a group leader. I always loved science and wanted to be a scientist, but I never wanted to deal with the stress I perceived from the constant grant applications and management (and possibly bureaucratic) duties associated with such positions. I always liked teaching, which is a part of a classical academic career, but I always felt I could do that separately without having to be a professor and I found several good options to do so. My personal goal was to become a facility scientist, that is someone who looks after technical aspects of scientific experiments at user facilities such as lasers or accelerators. Such a position often comes with less management, no need for grant applications or teaching. One can do their own research supported by the institution, but with some limited scope and the payoff is support work for scientific users of the facility that come to carry out short term experiments there. I felt that this kind of work would be the right thing for me, plenty of interesting technical challenges, possibility to do original research, certain financial situation, long-term prospects and cooperation with plenty of interesting scientific teams. As a bonus, one also becomes co-author of the publications coming from these experiments. Alternatively, position as a staff scientist in national labs seemed like a good option.

Kateřina Falk: Není příjemné být neustále za exota

„Neměla jsem možnosti realizace ani ocenění,“ říká Kateřina Falk, světově uznávaná fyzička a popularizátorka vědy, která letos na jaře odešla z laserového centra ELI Beamlines v Dolních Břežanech do Helmholtzova centra v Drážďanech. Více v rozhovoru o tom, jak lze dělat vědu „punkově“.

Rozhovor s Naďou Strakovou pro Věda a výzkum, 15.11.2018

How to survive a PhD: time management skills and self-motivation

I have recently started accumulating quite a lot of experience mentoring students with career aspirations in STEM subjects, in particular in academic research. Such a career path is indeed very challenging and requires a huge amount of hard work, mental and physical resilience, dedication and a little drop of masochism to pull through the long and frustrating studies leading up to the dreamy end of a successful science career. There are many obstacles and points where everybody feels like giving up, especially women find many of the additional complications and frustrations very hard to deal with. Staying motivated is the greatest challenge during the early stages of such careers. I always like to say that obtaining a PhD is a real test for endurance and dedication and has rather little to do with one's intelligence or talent. Particularly, when it comes to PhD students, two most crucial questions always seem to arise during my mentoring experience:

• What did your typical day as a PhD student look like? How did you manage your time?

• How did you stay motivated?

I will attempt to answer these important questions in this article.

Oxford Matriculation: and the fun begins :D

Otevřený dopis - odpověd´ na článek: "Dělat kariéru, nebo vychovávat děti?"

Původní článek v magazínu Práva Styl pro ženy, 2.8. 2016:

Dobrý den,

Jmenuji se Kateřina Falk, jsem matka a již mnoho let se věnuji vědě v oboru fyziky plazmatu a laserů jako své primární profesi. Posílám odpověď na článek vytištěný v magazínu Práva Styl pro ženy, 2.8. 2016. V článku se obrátila zřejmě mladá vědkyne a matka na odbornou pomoc psycholožky PhDr.  Alice Vondrové ohledně její těžké situace v manželství, která začala velmi negativně ovlivňovat její osobní život, psychickou rovnováhu, profesní situaci a odbornou činnost ve vědě. Tato situace je poměrně častá pro mnoho žen s náročnou prací, ne pouze pro vědkyně, které žijí v tradičně založeném prostředí, kde na ženu padají veškeré zodpovědnosti ohledně domácnosti a dětí. Velmi často se mluví o situaci, kdy žena je nucena dělat "dvě směny" a muž jen jednu, protože se společnost ještě nedokázala posunout do 21. století, kde se činností dělí rovnoměrně mezi partnery. Tak pak vznikají těžké situace pro ženy, ktere jsou nuceny volit mezi kariérou a rodinou, protože dvojité směny nejdou psychicky ani fyzicky dlouhodobě udržet, přičemž muže takové dilema v životě nepotkává. To samozřejmě dává velkou psychickou zátěž na tyto ženy a mnohé pak potřebují profesionální pomoc psychologa, aby mohly takovou těžkou situaci řešit. To, co ovšem Dr. Vondrová předvedla, nebyla práce psychologa, ale spíš to připomíná kázání kněze nebo pavlačové baby z 19. století. Opravdu jsem ve chvíli přečtení tohoto článku mela pocit, že jsem se přesunula strojem času do dob před TGM, kdy ženy nebyly víc než domácí služky. Ale znovu jsem zkontrolovala datum a opravdu, toto bylo napsáno v srpnu 2016.

Research internships for students

In the old days, students took unqualified jobs to make some extra money in the summers during their studies. Some would see these as an excuse to travel, work behind a bar on a beach in Spain or be a summer camp counselor in one of the national parks in the USA. More recently, special internships targeted at mostly university students wishing to gain some field-specific experience became very popular. Most common fields for such work have been banking, management consultancy, bussiness, law or IT. These programmes usually organized by private companies then serve not only to give extra work experience for students before they even receive their degrees, but also provide a recruiting pool for the competetive positions in the most prestigious corporations. Not all students however realize that such experience and recruiting can be equally, if not more, important in science and engineering research and develpment. Even fewer students realize that such jobs can even take them on adventure journeys anywhere on the planet! Here is some info about scientific, IT and engineering research internships around the world.

Interview with Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, DBE, FRS, FRAS is a British astrophysicist. As a postgraduate student in radio astronomy in 1967, she discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. She has been a major inspiration for me becoming a physicist and I was fortunate enough to meet this wonderful lady and ask her a few questions.

Interview with Prof. Justin Wark, University of Oxford

I had the delightful opportunity to conduct my doctoral research work under some of the most distinguished scientists in the work while at Oxford. My suprvisors were Dr. Gianluca Gregori, Prof. Andrew Jephocoat and Prof. Justin Wark. Justin has had long-lasting relations with Czech science and has covered a very wide range of research and I am happy to intorduce an interview with him in my next blog.

Oxfordský časoprostor - život a výzkum na Oxfordské Univerzitě očima doktoranda (czech)

Mnozí studenti nazývají Oxford a jeho historickou univerzitu “bublinou”, kde se mění vnímání času i prostoru. Někdy mi připadalo, že zde mění zákony fyziky i tok času. Mezi místními studenty i výzkumníky platí heslo "work hard, play hard”, podle něhož po těžké práci přijde tvrdá zábava, což se jen těžko dá skloubit do tradičního 24 hodinového dne. 

Univerzitní knihovna Radcliffe Camera, Oxford.

My DPhil research project (Oxford)

Coming to the end of my DPhil (PhD) people often ask me what it is actually that I do. I believe that all Physics can be explained in the simplest terms and since this particular one actually has some exciting applications (at least I think so) in many fields including Astrophysics and thermonuclear fusion, I feel like this could be of an interest to the wider general public. So here it is ...

Inferring The Equation of State of Shocked Liquid Deuterium Under Conditions Relevant to the Interiors of Giant Planets and Inertial Confinement Fusion

A summer in Delaware, 2007

Imperial College London – University of Delaware Exchange 2007 Review

Katerina Strakova

4th Year Physics, Imperial College London

I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the five Imperial College students to undertake an undergraduate research project at the University of Delaware in summer 2007.

I worked under Professor Matt Decamp in the Physics Department in Sharp Laboratory. His research interest is in intense laser interaction with matter. My project involved building a gravity driven liquid jet that would be used to produce X-Ray pulses by interaction of a high power focused laser beam with a thin film of copper solution. This was a challenging task as Prof. DeCamp was only just starting his research in Delaware and all the laboratory equipment was still under construction. This meant that I had to design my piece of equipment as well as find the cheapest and most suitable equipment to be ordered. On many occasions I had to improvise and cooperate with the Physics machine shop as well as the Chemistry department glassblowers, because some of the pieces were not commercially available.

An experience of meeting a NASA astronaut, Nov 2005

Scott Kelly has been both a US Navy commander and a space-shuttle pilot. In 2005 me (Katerina Strakova) and my friend Ivan Minev (now doing a PhD at Cambridge) had the unique opportunity to invite him to give a talk about his experiences at NASA to the school and university students in London. The event was organized by the Imperial College Astrosoc, an astronomical society run by the students at Imperial College Student Union, and the Outreach Programme.