How to become an associate professor(2/2).

In the last post (https://www.shinichiroyano.com/2022/01/13/how-to-become-an-associate-professor1-2/), I focused on the process and documents for promotion to become an associate professor. In this post, I will write more in detail. This is just one example so please don’t take it too seriously. In my opinion, what makes the candidate great are the following four things. They are the number and the quality of papers, the granted grants, the labs he has set up in the university, the number of PhD students he educated and will educate. There are other achievements, such as the number of conferences he organize, the number of papers or proposals he reviewed but I believe these four achievements are where he has done so well.

In his short biography, he got a bachelor and a master degree in China, and a PhD in Germany. He spent another year in Germany. Then, he moved to the U.S. for two years, France for three years, Spain for one year, and finally he moved back to China to be an assistant professor in his current university. He looks like 5-6 years senior to me. To be honest, I felt that it could be a bit late for him to be an associate professor. But I thought there might be some reasons. For example, he might have needed to stay in the school for 5 years to be qualified to get a professorship in the university.

Firstly, the number of papers, he has written more than 110 papers. I don’t think I can get to this level in the next five years. He wrote 34 papers as the first other, 43 papers as the corresponding author. This is a huge number. He seems to be producing 10-15 papers every year. I don’t think I can reach that level. I have to think very very hard to find ways to get to that level if I really want to. But anyway, the number is not important, at least I can do is to write more papers as usual. On the other hand, by comparing his and my profiles, I found that my citation is constantly improving. So I should keep writing papers, especially high-quality papers. That’s what I can do. In addition to the papers, I am impressed that he wrote patents as well and got awarded from a bank in China. These industrial partnerships are great. He is not only a scientist working in the lab but also collaborating with the industry. I should find a way to do a similar thing so I should find more project cold triple-axis can support.

Secondly, he has been granted over 7.2 million USD since he has moved to the university. 7.2 million for 5-6 years. This is a big number. The funding sources are local government, university, and the Chinese government. I am not sure how much money one researcher who does experiments are getting in Australia or Japan. What I learnt here is it is not important to the amount of money for his grant. I believe an attitude to keep asking money to create good science of our own is important. I didn’t have a vision like him, it is great to invest money for great science if it is properly planned. Like him, it is important to keep asking to create a good science so the society can invest their money in a good project. I will work hard to challenge this.

Thirdly, he has set up three labs by using these fundings. They are a physical property measurement lab, an in-house X-ray diffraction lab, and a single crystal growth lab. I can see the single crystal growth lab he made is high quality even in the international standard. These three labs are enough to produce scientific papers. I believe they can produce a nice paper by just using the data obtained from these labs in the university. He has set up these labs in the last five years. I am impressed. He got money outside and inside of the university and made high-quality labs. I don’t know how many experimentalists get funding like this in Japan, Australia, or Taiwan. I will look into it. I believe he could leave great assets for the university. It is like investing money in a startup company.

Finally, he has educated or has been educating 14 PhD students. This is an impressive number for just 5 years. It is not thinkable in Australia, Japan, or Taiwan. It seems the Chinese government selected the candidate’s lab to invest in, they wanted to make it to a world-class key research platform. Maybe this is partially the reason they are getting more students last two years. And I have to mention that, I have worked with his students occasionally, they are doing great.

These fours things above are I wanted to leave the comment for the report. I don’t think I can be like him considering my situation. On the other hand, I have learnt so much about what direction I should take in the next 5 years. As a scientist, the most important and the most difficult job is to write a good paper with a high standard and write constantly. I will push myself harder. Others, like getting the funding, managing the instrument, and supporting users are also important works. I knew this already of course but I have to push myself harder to do better. It was a pleasure to read and referee his achievements, I learnt so much from this evaluation.