Life in academia and elsewhere

Sophie CluetDirectorate General for Research and Innovation

Mathematics; Physic; Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies; Security; Information and Communication Science and

Technology

Organization

Life as a CS researcher Life as a CTO Life as a research center manager Life as a science policy « maker » in a

Ministry

Life as a CS Researcher

1988 – 2000

INRIA Rocquencourt

Foreword

Special thanks to Serge Abiteboul for His Support through the experience His slides …

The Three Phases

PhD Junior Senior

100%

0%

Time spent doing research(common case)

PhD junior senior

PhD

Research, including • Reading and writing papers • Going to conferences, workshops, …• Eventually, system development and experimentation

Teaching Collective interest tasks

• Team (annual reports, seminars, web site, …)• Institution (communication, various committees, …)• Community (reviewing, …)

Advising Master students

GrantsEventually, consulting for industry

And the normal life: family, friends, hobbies, sports…

The Missing One : Postdoc

Junior

Research, including • Reading and writing papers • Going to conferences, workshops, …• Eventually, system development and experimentation

Teaching Collective interest tasks

• Team (annual reports, seminars, web site, …)• Institution (communication, various committees, …)• Community (reviewing, …)

Advising PhD or Master students Grants Eventually, consulting for industry

And the normal life: family, friends, hobbies, sports…

Senior

Research, including • Reading and writing papers • Going to conferences, workshops, …• Eventually, system development and experimentation

Teaching Collective interest tasks

• Team (annual reports, seminars, web site, …)• Organization (communication, various committees, …)• Community (reviewing, …)

Advising (PhD students, etc.) Grants Eventually, consulting for industry

And the normal life: family, friends, hobbies, sports…

Life as a CS ResearcherE

As for men, an exciting life :

Relative freedom

General feeling of getting smarter

Mainly smart colleagues

Great highs and lows

Part of an international community

…

Life as a CS ResearcherE (cont.)

Differences :

Pregnancies : one of the jobs where it is not really a handicap

Still, part of a minority• Negative effects : getting better in France but still a tendancy

to consider women less seriously than men (cf. Françoise Giroud "La femme sera vraiment l'égale de l'homme le jour où, à un poste important, on désignera une femme incompétente.") => women who succeed usually work harder than their male colleagues

• Positive effects : women are more noticable => Easier to make friends, more offers of responsabilities (program committees, …

Why did I quit ?

Essentially, the opportunity of a new challenge

But also, after 12 years, feelings of YAP and YAC

Life as a CTO

2000 – 2002

Xyleme

Xyleme History

1999 : a bet 1999 – 2000 : getting ready 2000 : starting the company 2001 : the first customers come in 2002 : getting more money and what

comes with it – end of the story 2007 : end of Xyleme

1999 : The Bet

An audit of the team’s work by an old friend (François Bancilhon) Semistructured data (among which XML) :

models, query languages, query processing Web applications : crawlers, integration

(wrappers/mediators) with light language analysis, distributed query processing, …

The old friend’s bet : a year to build the new Alexandrian library Hypothesis : soon, the interesting data of the

Web will be in « good » XML (i.e., not XHTML)

1999-2000 : getting ready

Working hard on a product and a business model with the help of INRIA Alliance with an AI team Hiring a technical director and some engineers 2 seminars with friends from industry and capital

risk Deciding who will be who : founders, boss,

directors (business development, finance & administration, commercial, technical, …)

Getting money (before the internet bubble) from friendly capital riskers

2000 : starting the company

More Hiring, altogether around 20 people mostly engineers

Getting a place to work and what goes with it (from computers to cleaning staff)

Madly crawling the web to find near to 0 interesting XML data …

Looking for a CEO (got one in 2001)

2001 : The First Customers

Change of the business model From service provider to software editor From public to private data

The main targets : the press and the banks who have tons of XML or XMLizable data

Small contracts, few money and a lot of work on pilots

2002 : Getting More Moneyand what comes with it

A great technology, INRIA in the background, a few satisfied customers, a convincing team => lots of money but this time not only from friends

More customers but hard to get : more and more pilots and specialized development

Why did I quit ?And some tips…

Another exciting opportunity, but mainly : having a CTO and a technical manager in a startup is a bad idea…

Some other mistakes : Leaving the lab before having validated the idea Spending a lot before having the customers A technology rather than something a decision maker can

understand A weak management

Still, a great experience : Real life Many different jobs in one Happy customers …

Life as a Research Center Manager

2002 – 2006

INRIA Rocquencourt

INRIA Rocquencourt

The largest of the 6 (now 8) INRIA’s Research CentersBudget (excluding civil servants salaries) : 11 M€Around 500 people• 350 scientists in 40 research project teams (CS and applied mathematics)

• 130 « long » time researchers• 20 postdocs• 120 PhD• 50 Master • 50 engineers

• 150 TA in 8 support services • Administration and finance• Communication• Human resources• Industrial relationship and technology transfer • Project assistants• Restaurant • Site logistic• Technical support

Job Description

By the CEO :1. Scientific leader2. Member of the INRIA Board of directors3. CEO of a SME

In reality : reverse order

How did I spend my time ? 106 days/year of recurrent meetings from 2 to many people (46, 40,

20) 50 days/year of e-mails (under evaluation - basis 5mn per sent

message) ~ 300 days/year

Other meetings (to solve problems – often HR, to work on strategy, to convince people, to treat various demands, …)

Preparing the meetings Writing or re-writing communications

It’s all about people !

That’s why it’s great That’s why it’s time consuming That’s why you cannot reach perfection

“Happiness” and a feeling of

belonging are essential

It’s all about people !

That’s why it’s great That’s why it’s time consuming That’s why you cannot reach perfection

“Happiness” and a feeling of

belonging are essential

• Project team• Service• Research center• General scientific direction• General “functional” direction• Institution

It’s all about people !

That’s why it’s great That’s why it’s time consuming That’s why you cannot reach perfection

“Happiness” and a feeling of

belonging are essential

• Project team• Service• Research center• General scientific direction• General “functional” direction• Institution

Not so far from research as one could think …

Understand the big picture Identify/analyze the challenges For each selected one :

Search for and define the right model Implement Evaluate Iterative small or large delta improvements

Some of the challengesscientific leader

The basic one : every year, sharing budget and other resources among project teams => scientific priorities help

Defining scientific priorities (every 4 years or so – although, obviously, no big changes from one exercise to the next) Why define priorities? What is the best process? Why is a priority a priority? Is there a life outside a priority?

Some of the challengesMember of the board of directors

CEO decisions impact the institution various structures differently. 2 examples : Scientific advisor status Information system

Every decision has an impact, but not all of them interest you… They should. Also, you may not be aware of all of them… You should.

What is needed ? Keeping a bottom-up top-down bottom-up top-down

bottom-up top-down … persistent flow of information An heavy touch of transversal communication A “happy” nature and a big mouth

Some of the challenges CEO of a SME

The main one : defining a strategy for the whole (projects and services) within that of the institution

The restaurant People love it Requires about 15 employees Less than half are civil servants, half of which will retire soon No possibility to recruit on more than a 9 months basis (or recruit

less of some other categories) hard on the civil servants

More than 100 newcomers each year Scientific, administrative, technical From 6 months to 4 decades For some, weak recruiting process (public rules) All managers are not “managers”

Why did I quit And how did I find my next job

Why did I quit Instability among INRIA’s CEOs and/thus(?) I

was tired Still, maybe my favorite job so far !

How did I find my next job Networking In 2006, in France, in this area, being a woman

helps

Life as « Policy Maker » in a Ministry

2006 – 2008French Ministry of Higher Education and Research

Directorate General for Research and InnovationA3 department : Mathematics; Physic; Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies;

Security; Information and Communication Science and Technology

Service de l'innovationet de l'action régionale

Sciences de la Terre et de l'univers,géo-environnement, aéronautique,

transport, Espace

DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DE LA RECHERCHE ET DE L'INNOVATION

Bureau de la recherche etdéveloppement en

entreprise

Bureau valorisation,propriété intellectuelle

et partenariat

Bureau de la création et du développement

des entreprises technologiques

Bureau de l'action régionale

Bureau de la réglementation

et des statuts

Bureau politique contractuelle

et coordination de la tutelle

Bureau de programmation des

moyens et des TGI

Bureau des affaires européennes

Mission emploi scientifique

Mission de l'information et de la culture

scientifiques et techniques

Mission Parité

Chimie, SPI, physique nucléaireet des hautes énergies, énergie,

développement durable

Mathématiques, physique, nanos,usages, sécurité, STIC

Biotechnologies,ressources, agronomie

Santé

Sciences de l'hommeet de la société

Sous-direction de l'appui à la tutelle

et affaires européennes

Département des étudeset de la prospective

Département des politiquesde recherche et d'innovation

Mission coordinationde la MIRES

et ystèmes d'information

DRRT

Direction de la stratégie

Organigramme de la DGRI

The « canonical » National Research and Innovation System

Three levels1. Orientation, national policy (macro-objectives)2. Programmation (translation of macro-objectives in programs)3. Operation (research operators)

The principles Autonomy of the three levels (distinct institutions) Interactions defined by 4 to 5-years contracts Each level is evaluated (ex post) by the one above

Job description

Service to the Minister Definition of the national R&I strategy (A3 domains) Implementation and follow-up of the strategy :

Supervision of level 2 • ANR (« matière et information »)• CEA (DRT, DSM)• CNRS (MPPU, ST2I)• GENCI• INRIA• Others (foundations, public interest groups, …)

Scientific policy of research operators (level 3 !) Collaboration with other ministries

European programs (ICT, PERS, NMP) (Too) many assessments/evaluations (historical, should slow

down)

National vs. Research Center strategy

The reasons for defining a strategy are more or less the same, but: The stakes are much larger (20 B€ spent by the “MIRES” each year,

desired impact on the economy) The “domain” is larger, more interconnections The grain is larger (you don’t see all the individuals) The decision circuit is much longer and tougher

The method is also more or less the same, some try to formalize it (science of science policy)

The method I’d like to say I use (currently)

(Bottom-up/top-down cycles + a touch of transversality + a lot of reading) to identify/order the domain main challenges (continuous process)

For each challenge1. (SWOT) analysis (can be done by consultants – at this level,

indicators are a must)• Validate the opportunity to act• Find clues on what to do

2. Collective work (all levels) to devise some action scenario(s) (and prepare the implementation)

3. Eventually, analysis to choose one of the scenarios4. Sell the scenario to the politics5. Implement

You think research in CS is a long process? Try strategy

Some A3 challenges

“The French mathematics school: danger ahead because of retirements, lack of students, new policy for HE&R employment combined with universities new autonomy

Improvement of France’s performances in some identified sectors: Computer security Ambient intelligence Nanotechnologies for environment or health …

National structuring of some sectors: Electronics Grids (production and research)

Improvement of the management culture in the HE&R institutions : an emergency given the many changes that have occurred or are occurring

ICST employment : danger ahead for research because of many students and many R&D projects (workload can be twice that of other disciplines)

…