Thoughts on Telecom Research
I was lazily browsing when i found the following blogsite:
http://ashwingumaste.blogspot.com/
Ashwin is James Issac chair at IIT Bombay and a visiting scientist at MIT. He has written a wonderful compilation of thoughts on research in Telecom field.
I am taking the liberty of copy pasting his thoughts.
Ashwin, do let me know if you have any objection, I will remove it right away
==========================================================
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Cracking the nuts and bolts of telecom research
The commoditization of networks the world over is certainly something that we did not expect a decade ago. It appears now that there is far more manpower in this field available than what the traditional networking companies need. In such a situation the obvious question a young grad student would ask is whether one should invest their careers into this field. A short answer to this question is Yes - not because that is 'my' bread and butter, but because networking in general and telecom in particular have a lot to give than what we already have. I am going to try and pen my thoughts and pardon me if I bash up a few adjacent areas of telecom in the process. My goal is to bring to you, the young kids, the future of tomorrow - the expected virtues of telecommunications and this vibrant industry that we are all part of.
1. Think business: One of the things that always irks me is that the research that many of us do (including a small fraction of my own group), is quite disconnected from business. Ask yourself this question - every article/paper you write, every idea you develop, would a consumer buy it? More so, would there by a delivery vehicle that would be able to take this idea from you to the consumer? In short, would a provider/vendor/integrator harp on to your idea? An easy way to wriggle out of this question - is to simply say - we are researchers, we just want to do "research", commercial success is passe! Well, unfortunately for those friends who say this, the reality is that we are (whether we like it) into applied science - and the application is largely commercial. So again, if you are doing something that needs more than just a wheel to turn, then your eyes should battle multiple eyelids :). If you are one of those who says that hey I am developing technology for the future - assuming that X and Y bits of technology would be available, I am developing Z which would be able to meet A's "future" problems. You see the variables in X and Y, these are single points of failure. If you are going to invest all your efforts into developing Z assuming X and Y would happen, then ask yourself this question - what is the likelihood of X and Y not happening. More often than not you would not have the answer to this - simply because X and Y are innovations that would happen in different fields - across layers, or simply over time. Ask someone who has dabbled in X and Y or in earlier manifestations of X and Y about the likelihood of these happening. One of the things you would see is that people simply follow a bandwagon - those at the top of this wagon do benefit from their "blind" followers, but for a whole lot of people who are simply followers, there is a big problem - they cannot and will not succeed. This is when bubbles burst and a whole lot of our researchers are left jobless. Who is at fault? The wagon driver who started this or you who followed it? A simple sanity check can do wonders. I have seen many fields being developed that have had no impact on society, industry (as if they were two different things:)). This is simply a case of researchers scratching each other's back. The problem is that it seems we do not have the "guts" if I may use that word to simply stand up and say Hey - this is JUNK!
2. Have conviction: Many areas of networking that are these days in vogue are fictions of imaginations - their applications may be immense but their deployments are too scattered to be noticed. But in academia or in some cleachae industry labs (with no link to the business units) are being actively funded or pursued. These areas are generally trouble spots. Typically the people who drive such areas are veterans of "scratch my back" philosophies. A simple way in which a young grad can filter this is by corelating the work that happens in these labs or in universities with leading business dailies and supplements. If no major company has this work anywhere on their roadmaps, then there is something fishy about it. It is good to write papers in this area, but then, the moment you are done, you are gone! The papers are going to just be archived and refered by no one except your "scratch my back buddies" and if you are a wagon driver then the blind men (and women) in your wagon :). What I have observed, is that many of us, even in our grad days are able to understand that there is something fishy about a particular field - but unfortunately we do not have the conviction to take tough decisions. So, always have a roadmap of technology and business needs. For example, when I was done with my Ph.D data traffic was just taking over voice - some of us knew that video would be next and telepresence would follow. Of course we could be wrong with telepresence, but then at least video turned out to the a good stepping stone in our careers. It is important to identify bubbles - this makes you stay clear of rude shocks. Of course, if you are the one that created the bubble, all you have to do is recruit folks for your bubble - not a difficult thing since the picture can always be portrated to look merry. If you do notice that a large number of big names are big because of the bubble that they created. Ever wonder why nothing grows near a banyan tree ;).
3. Think big, think the bigger picture: At times it is easy to digress from reality. Often we forget the larger picture - we think that the work we do is the right path ahead. It is a depressing feeling to know that the work you did x number of years ago never left the papers you wrote. The question is then why did you do it? Obviously not everything you write can become products but an area in which you work certainly should be impacting business in some way or the other. When you do think about the bigger picture, also think about what are the blocks that remain between your work the the larger goal to society and to industry. My current head once told me - I am happy that you are working on large problems. It is better to work on larger problems even if you do not end up solving them completely than to do incremental work. I think he makes a lot of sense. The bigger you think the bigger your imagination gets - the better your ability to "scope" a solution. I am sure we all know our basics well and we can apply these to small problems as well as to larger than life problems - the latter need more than just the basics, this leads us to scope more interdisciplinary areas. That brings me to another important aspect of research - being interdisciplinary. In 2008 when I moved from the Stata center to the RLE labs at MIT, one of the things that caught my attention was a snippet across an elevator - it says that the last century was about innovation, this one is about collaboration. The Internet of course has been an excellent medium for all sorts of collaborations! But ever wonder what are the compelling reasons for collaboration? It is interdisciplinary nature of the business. When I design a telco box, I jolly well need to understand the mechanics, the algorithms, the optics, the RF, the thermodynamics and even the acoustics! A wide variety of expertise, which is hard for one man to gather in a short lifespan (rather say a short shelf-life - more on which follows). So we need to be interdisciplinary and hence collaborative. Again, if you do not think the big picture, you do not need to be interdisciplinary, you do not need collaboration (unless all of your collaborators are the scratch my back kind ;)).
4. Enhance your shelf life: One observes that researchers come and go! Some stay for a long time and are active. I often wonder what happens to some really smart people - who perform very well over a short period and then fade away into oblivion. What happens to these really smart guys? Do they get burnt out? Do they loose interest? Or are they pushed away? It does seem to me and I could be wrong here (as I have not yet proved that I have a long shelf life), that many of these folks are victims of their own legacy: (1) solving non-important problems (2) being adventurous in a single area of expertise (not being interdisciplinary) and (3) Not being on the right wave at the right time. The first one is something that affects a lot of folks whose shelf life is short. They work on problems that are disconnected from the real world. So while they do solve some really interesting (non-real) problems, these problems usually end up in huge energy drainage. The thing is that many non real problems are stemmed out from funding agencies which want to "investigate" into multiple areas hoping to get the right tact in shape. Don't blame them, they want every aspect of the science to be well covered. The second problem of interdisciplinary work is legendary. It is tough to be interdisciplinary. But you have to take that chance. Finally, heard the phrse - fortune favors the brave - well thats all about being on the right wave at the right time.
4. There is always another day: One of the keys to solving the shelf-life problem is that there is always another day. Research unlike life does give you a second chance. It can be quite forgiving. If you take that as the bottom line - I am sure you are going to do well. One should not worry about taking risks. Risks are like bursts of learning. Each risk gives you an ability to learn, and you can grow with these. In an increasingly competitive world, it is often best if you took your risks with conviction leaving competition to the wind. Each failure will open a new leaf and if you are true to your research, there is always a way out - there is always another day.
5. Be known by something: Often there are many interesting problems that we can solve or want to solve. What is important is that at the end of the day, month, year, decade, you be known as someone by something. What this means is that you should be known for your work on something. So while it is great to be deep and all, it is many a times another thing that you do work on a larger problem - a problem that you solve for which you are known as. So one has to ask the question - what is Mr. X known as? Someone who knows the intricacies of the field Y or someone who pioneered Z that was useful in many way. I often see great names - people who have a large # of papers or who are supposed to be "stars". Many of these are stars because they belong to a certain pedigree, many are stars because they have a large number of pubs, many are stars because they have led the community in many conferneces or are editors of multiple journals, but only a few are stars because they have pioneered innovations in the community. To me, this is important. I would personally be want to known by something I have done technically, rather than my pedigree, number of papers, or organizational abilities.
Many of these thoughts are not really mine - they have come to me as a result of interaction with some of my older colleagues - they have seen it all ;)
Enjoy.
==============================================================
Great write up ashwin.
http://ashwingumaste.blogspot.com/
Ashwin is James Issac chair at IIT Bombay and a visiting scientist at MIT. He has written a wonderful compilation of thoughts on research in Telecom field.
I am taking the liberty of copy pasting his thoughts.
Ashwin, do let me know if you have any objection, I will remove it right away
==========================================================
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Cracking the nuts and bolts of telecom research
The commoditization of networks the world over is certainly something that we did not expect a decade ago. It appears now that there is far more manpower in this field available than what the traditional networking companies need. In such a situation the obvious question a young grad student would ask is whether one should invest their careers into this field. A short answer to this question is Yes - not because that is 'my' bread and butter, but because networking in general and telecom in particular have a lot to give than what we already have. I am going to try and pen my thoughts and pardon me if I bash up a few adjacent areas of telecom in the process. My goal is to bring to you, the young kids, the future of tomorrow - the expected virtues of telecommunications and this vibrant industry that we are all part of.
1. Think business: One of the things that always irks me is that the research that many of us do (including a small fraction of my own group), is quite disconnected from business. Ask yourself this question - every article/paper you write, every idea you develop, would a consumer buy it? More so, would there by a delivery vehicle that would be able to take this idea from you to the consumer? In short, would a provider/vendor/integrator harp on to your idea? An easy way to wriggle out of this question - is to simply say - we are researchers, we just want to do "research", commercial success is passe! Well, unfortunately for those friends who say this, the reality is that we are (whether we like it) into applied science - and the application is largely commercial. So again, if you are doing something that needs more than just a wheel to turn, then your eyes should battle multiple eyelids :). If you are one of those who says that hey I am developing technology for the future - assuming that X and Y bits of technology would be available, I am developing Z which would be able to meet A's "future" problems. You see the variables in X and Y, these are single points of failure. If you are going to invest all your efforts into developing Z assuming X and Y would happen, then ask yourself this question - what is the likelihood of X and Y not happening. More often than not you would not have the answer to this - simply because X and Y are innovations that would happen in different fields - across layers, or simply over time. Ask someone who has dabbled in X and Y or in earlier manifestations of X and Y about the likelihood of these happening. One of the things you would see is that people simply follow a bandwagon - those at the top of this wagon do benefit from their "blind" followers, but for a whole lot of people who are simply followers, there is a big problem - they cannot and will not succeed. This is when bubbles burst and a whole lot of our researchers are left jobless. Who is at fault? The wagon driver who started this or you who followed it? A simple sanity check can do wonders. I have seen many fields being developed that have had no impact on society, industry (as if they were two different things:)). This is simply a case of researchers scratching each other's back. The problem is that it seems we do not have the "guts" if I may use that word to simply stand up and say Hey - this is JUNK!
2. Have conviction: Many areas of networking that are these days in vogue are fictions of imaginations - their applications may be immense but their deployments are too scattered to be noticed. But in academia or in some cleachae industry labs (with no link to the business units) are being actively funded or pursued. These areas are generally trouble spots. Typically the people who drive such areas are veterans of "scratch my back" philosophies. A simple way in which a young grad can filter this is by corelating the work that happens in these labs or in universities with leading business dailies and supplements. If no major company has this work anywhere on their roadmaps, then there is something fishy about it. It is good to write papers in this area, but then, the moment you are done, you are gone! The papers are going to just be archived and refered by no one except your "scratch my back buddies" and if you are a wagon driver then the blind men (and women) in your wagon :). What I have observed, is that many of us, even in our grad days are able to understand that there is something fishy about a particular field - but unfortunately we do not have the conviction to take tough decisions. So, always have a roadmap of technology and business needs. For example, when I was done with my Ph.D data traffic was just taking over voice - some of us knew that video would be next and telepresence would follow. Of course we could be wrong with telepresence, but then at least video turned out to the a good stepping stone in our careers. It is important to identify bubbles - this makes you stay clear of rude shocks. Of course, if you are the one that created the bubble, all you have to do is recruit folks for your bubble - not a difficult thing since the picture can always be portrated to look merry. If you do notice that a large number of big names are big because of the bubble that they created. Ever wonder why nothing grows near a banyan tree ;).
3. Think big, think the bigger picture: At times it is easy to digress from reality. Often we forget the larger picture - we think that the work we do is the right path ahead. It is a depressing feeling to know that the work you did x number of years ago never left the papers you wrote. The question is then why did you do it? Obviously not everything you write can become products but an area in which you work certainly should be impacting business in some way or the other. When you do think about the bigger picture, also think about what are the blocks that remain between your work the the larger goal to society and to industry. My current head once told me - I am happy that you are working on large problems. It is better to work on larger problems even if you do not end up solving them completely than to do incremental work. I think he makes a lot of sense. The bigger you think the bigger your imagination gets - the better your ability to "scope" a solution. I am sure we all know our basics well and we can apply these to small problems as well as to larger than life problems - the latter need more than just the basics, this leads us to scope more interdisciplinary areas. That brings me to another important aspect of research - being interdisciplinary. In 2008 when I moved from the Stata center to the RLE labs at MIT, one of the things that caught my attention was a snippet across an elevator - it says that the last century was about innovation, this one is about collaboration. The Internet of course has been an excellent medium for all sorts of collaborations! But ever wonder what are the compelling reasons for collaboration? It is interdisciplinary nature of the business. When I design a telco box, I jolly well need to understand the mechanics, the algorithms, the optics, the RF, the thermodynamics and even the acoustics! A wide variety of expertise, which is hard for one man to gather in a short lifespan (rather say a short shelf-life - more on which follows). So we need to be interdisciplinary and hence collaborative. Again, if you do not think the big picture, you do not need to be interdisciplinary, you do not need collaboration (unless all of your collaborators are the scratch my back kind ;)).
4. Enhance your shelf life: One observes that researchers come and go! Some stay for a long time and are active. I often wonder what happens to some really smart people - who perform very well over a short period and then fade away into oblivion. What happens to these really smart guys? Do they get burnt out? Do they loose interest? Or are they pushed away? It does seem to me and I could be wrong here (as I have not yet proved that I have a long shelf life), that many of these folks are victims of their own legacy: (1) solving non-important problems (2) being adventurous in a single area of expertise (not being interdisciplinary) and (3) Not being on the right wave at the right time. The first one is something that affects a lot of folks whose shelf life is short. They work on problems that are disconnected from the real world. So while they do solve some really interesting (non-real) problems, these problems usually end up in huge energy drainage. The thing is that many non real problems are stemmed out from funding agencies which want to "investigate" into multiple areas hoping to get the right tact in shape. Don't blame them, they want every aspect of the science to be well covered. The second problem of interdisciplinary work is legendary. It is tough to be interdisciplinary. But you have to take that chance. Finally, heard the phrse - fortune favors the brave - well thats all about being on the right wave at the right time.
4. There is always another day: One of the keys to solving the shelf-life problem is that there is always another day. Research unlike life does give you a second chance. It can be quite forgiving. If you take that as the bottom line - I am sure you are going to do well. One should not worry about taking risks. Risks are like bursts of learning. Each risk gives you an ability to learn, and you can grow with these. In an increasingly competitive world, it is often best if you took your risks with conviction leaving competition to the wind. Each failure will open a new leaf and if you are true to your research, there is always a way out - there is always another day.
5. Be known by something: Often there are many interesting problems that we can solve or want to solve. What is important is that at the end of the day, month, year, decade, you be known as someone by something. What this means is that you should be known for your work on something. So while it is great to be deep and all, it is many a times another thing that you do work on a larger problem - a problem that you solve for which you are known as. So one has to ask the question - what is Mr. X known as? Someone who knows the intricacies of the field Y or someone who pioneered Z that was useful in many way. I often see great names - people who have a large # of papers or who are supposed to be "stars". Many of these are stars because they belong to a certain pedigree, many are stars because they have a large number of pubs, many are stars because they have led the community in many conferneces or are editors of multiple journals, but only a few are stars because they have pioneered innovations in the community. To me, this is important. I would personally be want to known by something I have done technically, rather than my pedigree, number of papers, or organizational abilities.
Many of these thoughts are not really mine - they have come to me as a result of interaction with some of my older colleagues - they have seen it all ;)
Enjoy.
==============================================================
Great write up ashwin.
Labels: Research
posted by amitkeerti | 12:30 AM
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