Getting engaged

Besides research, one of the things I’m supposed to be doing as a Marie Curie research fellow is learning new things. Of course, that’s a good thing to be doing regardless of what other things you do, but in the case of the fellowship, it’s expected of me by the funder that I spend my time in Dublin doing things that will help me develop myself and my career prospects. I’ve already learned quite a few useful new things through my research work here, but I’ve also attended a number of training courses and workshops on various topics, and last week I had the opportunity to go to a particularly interesting one dealing with engaged research.

I learned about the workshop from the education and public engagement manager of the Insight Centre, who sent me an email about it and recommended that I sign up. I wasn’t previously familiar with the concept of engaged research, but as I was reading the description of the workshop, it soon became clear that it applies to quite a few, perhaps most, of the research projects I’ve been involved in over the course of my career so far. The gist of how this concept is defined is that it describes research where the individuals or organisations for whom the research is relevant are engaged to be involved in it, not merely as recipients of the eventual results but as co-creators of them. In my case the engaged partners have mostly come from industry, but they could also represent the public sector, civil society or the general public.

The workshop was facilitated by people from Campus Engage, a network that aims to “promote civic and community engagement as a core function of Higher Education on the island or Ireland”. Since Finnish universities have had social influence as their so-called third mission (research and education being the first two) for quite a years now, this statement also rings very familiar. A few days before the workshop, we were requested to fill out a survey with questions about our background and what sort of lessons we were particularly hoping to take home, which the facilitators then used to tailor the content to the interests of those attending the training.

A whole day of training can get very boring if it’s not well planned and executed, but there was no such problem here, as the presentations given by the facilitators were interspersed with discussions of our own questions and experiences, as well as small group activities. The latter involved, for example, studying an extract from a research project proposal and coming up with ways to improve it in terms of stakeholder engagement. One of the things I was hoping the training would give me was information and ideas on how to develop the engagement aspect of my own proposals, and this certainly qualified, although strictly speaking it was perhaps more of a cautionary example of how it’s not meant to be done. We did get more constructive planning tools as well, such as the logic model, a way of planning for long-term impact by laying out the path there as a series of if-then relationships starting with an analysis of the current situation.

Another thing about the workshop that I enjoyed was that we discussed some actual real-world cases of community engagement in action. A particularly interesting one was Access Earth, a mobile app that can be used by people with accessibility needs to find and rate hotels and restaurants by criteria such as accessible parking and wide doors. Clearly the key to successful implementation and deployment of such an application is engaging the people who are going to use it, both to get the design right and to collect the data on the accessibility of various places around the world, and one of the facilitators of the workshop has been working on the project as a community engagement advisor. The app is available worldwide, so the potential impact on the lives of people with disabilities is big – an inspiring example of what engagement is in practice and what it can accomplish.

Dear Santa

Now that I’ve managed to clear away all of the stressful and/or boring stuff that was keeping me busy, time to do something fun: Christmas shopping! After the break my project is going to be almost halfway through, and although it will be a good while yet before I’m ready to start conducting user tests, it’s time to start getting serious about recruiting participants. After all, the tests are supposed to be about analysing the participants’ data, so they can’t just walk in at their convenience – I need them to spend some time collecting data first, and to do that, they’ll need something to collect the data with.

Our initial idea was to recruit people who are already using a sleep monitor of some kind, and I’m sure we’ll be able to find at least a few of those, but naturally we’ll have a bigger pool of candidates if we have a few devices available to loan to people who don’t have one of their own. Also, it’s obviously useful for me to play with these devices a bit so I can get a better idea of what sort of data they generate and what’s the best way to export it if I want to use it for my research (which I do). Besides, I’m hardly going to spend my entire expense budget on travel even if I go out of my way to pick the most remote conferences I can find to submit papers to.

So I didn’t need to worry too much about what I can afford – one of the many great things about the MSCA fellowship – but that doesn’t mean that the choice of what to buy was straightforward, because the range of consumer products capable of tracking sleep is, frankly, a little bewildering. Some devices you wear on your body, some you place in your bed and some at the bedside, and although I soon decided to narrow down my list of options by focusing on wearables, that still left me with more than enough variety to cope with. Some of these gadgets you wear on your wrist, while others go on your finger like a ring, and the wrist-worn ones range from basic fitness bracelets to high-end smartwatches that will probably make you your protein smoothie and launder your sports gear for you if you know how to use them.

One thing that made the decision quite a lot easier for me is that the manufacturers of fitness bracelets now helpfully include all of their sleep tracking functionality in models that are near the low end of the price spectrum, and since I’m only interested in sleep data, there was no need to ponder if I should go with the inexpensive ones or invest in bigger guns. Also, I had a preference for products that don’t make you jump through hoops if you want to export your data in a CSV file or similar, so I looked at the documentation for each of my candidates and if I couldn’t find a straight answer on how to do that, I moved on. In the end I settled on three different ones: the Fitbit Alta HR, the Withings Steel, and the Oura Ring.

What I particularly like about this trio is that each of these models represents a distinct style of design: the Fitbit is a modern bracelet-style gadget, whereas the Withings looks more like a classic analog wrist watch, and the Oura is, well, a ring. I can thus, to a certain extent, cater for my study participants’ individual stylistic preferences. For example, I’m rather partial toward analog watches myself, so I’d imagine that for someone like me the design of the Withings would have a lot of appeal.

Today’s my last day at work before the Christmas break, and things are wrapping up (no pun intended) very nicely. The orders for the sleep trackers went out last week, this morning I submitted the last of my (rather badly overdue) ethics deliverables to the European Commission, and just minutes ago I came back from my last performance with the DCU Campus Choir for this year. The only thing that may impinge on my rest and relaxation over the next couple of weeks is that there’s a conference deadline coming up immediately after my vacation and I’m quite eager to submit, but I shouldn’t need to worry about that until after New Year. Happy holidays, everyone!

Tips for MSCA hopefuls

This year’s call for MSCA Individual Fellowship applications closed recently, with a grand total of 9,830 applications received – apparently a record number for MSCA and in fact for Horizon 2020 in general. Good luck to everyone who submitted! Soon after I started my own fellowship at the Insight Centre, I was invited by one of the people who helped me prepare my proposal to participate in a seminar on MSCA and speak on my experiences as a successful candidate. The presentation I gave there was quite well received, so I thought I’d share my little tips and tricks in the blog as well, even though the timing isn’t arguably the greatest, given that it won’t be until sometime in the spring that the next call opens.

First of all, if you’re considering applying but having some doubts, I heartily recommend that you go through with it. Although technically MSCA fellowships are H2020 projects, which may sound a bit frightening, the proposal process is actually quite lightweight, with the length of the research plan limited to ten pages and the budget being a simple function of which country you’re going to, how many months you will spend there and whether you have a family. The same goes for how the projects are managed, so you don’t need to worry that you’ll end up spending an inordinate portion of your precious research time cranking out deliverables instead of generating results. So, without further ado, here are my top 5 tips for would-be MSCA fellows:

1. Find the right host

I’ve already mentioned in a previous post that it boosts your chances considerably if the strengths of your prospective host complement yours. It certainly doesn’t hurt if there’s someone at the host institution – ideally, your prospective supervisor – that you already know and have developed a rapport with, but you shouldn’t get too hung up on that particular point; what really matters from the reviewers’ point of view is whether the place where you are proposing to carry out your project is the best possible environment for that project. Consider what the host can offer you in terms of things such as training, research infrastructure and potential collaborators, and make sure that you have a persuasive argument that comes across in your proposal. Also, keep in mind that there is expected to be two-way knowledge transfer between the researcher and the host, so it’s not just about what you can get from the host – it’s also about what you can bring to the host.

2. Get all the help you can

The most important part of the proposal is the actual research to be done – objectives, methodology, etc. – and that’s all up to you (plus, to a certain extent, your supervisor of course, but they’re likely to have quite a few things on their plate besides this). However, for everything else, don’t hesitate to take advantage of any support that the host institution can offer you in preparing the proposal. The odds are that there are people there who have done this sort of thing before and know what reviewers look for in a proposal in terms of facts and figures, hosting arrangements, available research services and so forth. They may also have access to external experts and offer to send your proposal to them for feedback, and I think it goes without saying that you should accept such an offer. What I found particularly useful was ideas on how to communicate my research results to non-academic audiences, since my first instinct (and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this) is to just write papers for journals and conferences and let others worry about public relations, and this cost me some crucial points when I applied for the first time.

3. It’s all about you

This is another thing I touched upon in that earlier post: MSCA fellowships are unusual, if not unique, in that their impact is measured in terms of the career development of the fellow as a European researcher. Therefore you should consider starting not with the question “What do I want to study?” but with “What do I want to be?” The answer won’t give you your research topic, but it will affect the way you go about choosing one and developing a plan around it. Do you want to work in academia or industry? In what sort of role? Or maybe you’re interested in starting your own company? Whatever your target is, state it clearly in the proposal and make sure that everything else in the proposal – research activities, training, etc. – is aligned with that target. If you’re not quite sure what you want and would prefer to keep your options open, pick a career goal anyway and pretend that you do know that’s where you’re headed; there’s nothing wrong with changing your mind later, but it doesn’t look good if you don’t seem to have any sort of long-term vision of your career. Of course, if you’ve come up with a work plan that can support multiple career paths equally well, it shouldn’t hurt if you point this out in the proposal.

4. Give details generously

This is really a more general formulation of the previous point: it can be tempting to keep things a bit vague, but every bit of vagueness will make your proposal seem that much less convincing – and remember, the bar is high and competition fierce, so every little bit counts. This goes for your career objectives, but other things as well; for example, when describing how you plan to disseminate the results of your research, try to come up with tentative titles for the papers you’re going to write and to identify specific journals and conferences where you will aim to publish those papers. If you can name some likely co-authors, even better, and it’s also good to consider how you will measure the impact of your dissemination and communication activities (e.g., number of paper citations, number of people reached). Likewise, in your implementation plan, provide as much detail as you can (without breaking the page limit) on things such as work breakdown, timetables, deliverables and milestones; in the real world, you won’t be expected to follow that plan to the letter, but you do need to demonstrate in the proposal that there’s a clear path from where you are now to where you want to be at the end of the project.

5. Focus your efforts right

Having only ten pages to explain your research plan in full detail is a blessing but also a curse, because rationing out those ten pages between the things you want to say may prove quite a challenge. To have an idea of where you should be concentrating your best efforts, keep always in mind the three evaluation criteria and their weights relative to your overall score: excellence counts for 50%, impact for 30% and implementation for 20%, so it’s a good rule of thumb to allot 5, 3 and 2 pages for the corresponding proposal sections, respectively. However, if you’re working on a revision of a proposal that didn’t get funding the first time around, you also need to consider your previous evaluation scores, because the law of diminishing returns applies as your score for a given criterion approaches 5. So, if you did very well on excellence but not quite as well on the other two criteria, you’re likely to get a bigger increase in your total score for the same amount of effort if you focus on impact and implementation, even though excellence weighs as much as the other two combined. You’ll definitely want to improve any criterion score lower than 4, and the verbal feedback in the evaluation report should give you a pretty good idea of how you can do that.

So that’s it! I hope you found these tips useful and will come back to them when it’s time to start preparing an application for the next MSCA IF call.

Rocky road to Dublin

When I first arrived at DCU to begin my MSCA fellowship, my supervisor paraded me around the place introducing me to various people, most of whose names I promptly forgot. (Sorry!) What did stick in my mind, however, were the numerous congratulations I received on winning such a competitive grant, which the Marie Curie fellowship certainly is, and on getting such a sweet deal, which it most definitely is. But it wasn’t all good times and glowing reviews, the way here – far from it, in fact. That’s why I thought I’d share the story of how I came to be in Dublin and how things might have turned out quite differently, had I been a bit less perseverant than I was.

I got my doctorate in 2014 at the relatively mature age of 35, having gone through a process that was a good deal more convoluted than it was, in theory, supposed to be. Following my academic baptism of fire, working as a Master’s student in a project dealing with computational quality assurance of spot welding joints, I embarked on a rather erratic journey that saw me dabble with research topics as varied as exergame design and ethics of scam baiting. I eventually pieced together my dissertation around the theme of knowledge discovery in databases, focusing on what the overall process looks like from different perspectives and how it can be supported effectively.

Not only was the process of writing my thesis unnecessarily complicated, but so was the process of getting the manuscript reviewed and accepted for publication. When the pre-examination phase was finally over and I was galloping, or at least cantering briskly, into the home stretch, there turned out to be one more obstacle to clear: finding an external examiner for the defence. I pitched a number of names to my then-supervisor, but one by one they all respectfully declined the invitation, not having the time to spare or not feeling that the topic of the thesis was close enough to their area of expertise. Fortunately, one of them offered the suggestion that Alan Smeaton of DCU might be our man.

This turned out to be a considerable stroke of luck: Alan was indeed kind enough to accept the job, and his style of handling it was very much what I’d hoped for, making this test of my ability to defend my magnum opus feel much less like a test and more like a friendly conversation on a topic of mutual interest. Some among the audience even described the proceedings as entertaining, which is hardly the word that first comes to my mind when I think about thesis defences! In all honesty, it’s not the word I’d choose to describe mine either – I was far too nervous to be entertained – but it did feel quite rewarding after all the hard work (not to mention a not negligible amount of self-doubt) to talk for several hours as an equal to a senior academic who had taken such an interest in my research.

Having thus finished my doctorate, it was time to make some decisions. I felt that I wasn’t quite done with academia yet, but I also felt that I needed some kind of change, and besides, there’s a certain amount of pressure on fresh post-docs to go explore the world beyond their alma mater for a while. Since I happen to have a great deal of appreciation for many things Irish (including, but not limited to, grain-based fermented beverages and traditional music), this seemed like a potential opportunity to combine business with pleasure, so the next time I visited Dublin, I met up with Alan to have a cup of tea and a chat on the possibility of moving there to work with him, provided that some funding could be secured. Later that year, we submitted our first proposal for an MSCA Individual Fellowship to the European Commission.

MSCA wasn’t the only funding source we considered; I also applied to the Academy of Finland for a grant that would have involved me mostly staying in Finland at the University of Oulu but spending a mobility period of six months or so at DCU. However, the feedback I got from the Academy did not paint a rosy picture of my chances of winning the grant even after several iterations, and in the meantime, I was feeling rather aimless in my research and finding the idea of switching to industry more and more attractive. Unsurprisingly, my publication record for these past few years is not exactly impressive, but thankfully, the MSCA reviewers seemed to be more interested in what I wanted to accomplish than in what I’d (not) accomplished before. With the assistance of DCU’s excellent research support staff, Alan and I were able to put together a good plan, and then, after a very encouraging round of reviews, to make it even better for our second attempt. This was in 2016; in early 2017 we got the notification that the fellowship had been awarded. After that, I went on working in Oulu until the end of the year to complete my contract, took January 2018 off to wind down and make arrangements, moved to Dublin at the end of January and started the new project on the 1st of February.

If there’s a lesson to take home from all of this, I guess it would be that even if you haven’t been the most shining star of your peer group during your PhD studies, that doesn’t mean you’re out of options if you want to keep pursuing a career in research. Sure, some funders may dismiss you on the basis of your CV alone if they don’t think it shows enough potential, but still, a well prepared proposal can go a long way if you know your strengths and build your research plan around them. MSCA Individual Fellowships are perhaps a more forgiving funding source than many others, since they’re explicitly meant to help you advance your career and thus come with the built-in assumption that there’s something important you don’t yet have but can gain by carrying out the right sort of project with the right sort of host. So, if you’ve found yourself a host with a set of known strengths that complement the ones you’ve demonstrated in your previous work, you already have a pretty solid foundation to build your proposal on.

Getting started

Welcome to You Know Nothing, Socrates! The theme of this blog is knowledge, or more specifically – because that sure could use some narrowing down – the intersection of knowledge (in the philosophical sense) and computing. Knowledge, of course, is a notoriously elusive concept once you start trying to pin it down, which is why I’ve decided to name the blog after the famous Socratic paradox, apocryphal though it may be. And before you ask: yes, the title is also a Game of Thrones reference. Get over it.

To make matters worse, we haven’t been content to just assert that we as human beings have the ability to know various things and to derive new knowledge from evidence. Instead, ever since the invention of the modern digital computer, we’ve been very keen on the idea of replicating, or at least imitating, that ability in machines. This pursuit has given rise to fields of computer science research such as knowledge representation and knowledge discovery; this is the area where I’ve been working throughout my career as a researcher, and also the main subject area that I’ll be writing about.

A bit of context: I’m currently working as a Marie Curie Individual Fellow at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics in Dublin, Ireland. The project I’m working on, titled KDD-CHASER, deals with remote collaboration for the extraction of useful knowledge from personal data, such as one might collect using a wearable wellness device designed to generate meaningful metrics on the wearer’s physical activity and sleep. These products are quite popular and, presumably, useful, but for most users their utility is limited to whatever analyses the product has been programmed to give them. The research I’m doing aims for the creation of an online platform that could be used by users of personal data capturing devices to discover additional knowledge in their data with the help of expert collaborators.

As long as the KDD-CHASER project is running, which is until the end of January 2020, I will be using this blog as a communication channel (among others) to share information about its progress and results with the public. However, I’m also planning to post more general musings on topics that are related to, but not immediately connected with, the work I’m doing in the project. These, I hope, will be enough to keep the blog alive after the project is done and I move on to other things. Not that I’m expecting those other things to be radically different from the things I’m involved in at the moment, but hey, you never know.

There certainly isn’t a shortage of subject matter to draw on: besides the under-the-hood mechanics of computers capable of possessing and producing knowledge, there’s the philosophical dimension of them that I’m also deeply interested in – another reason for my choice of blog title. From here it’s not much of a conceptual leap to the even more bewildering philosophical questions surrounding the notion of artificial intelligence, so I might take the occasional stab at those as well. I fully expect to come to the conclusion that I really know absolutely nothing, but whether I’ll be any the wiser for it remains to be seen.