What type of research are you working in?

In the past I have worked as a field researcher in Cameroon (twice) and St. Catherines Island, Georgia. In Cameroon I was focused on conservation by disabling snare traps placed by local hunters to kill chimpanzees and gorillas. The area of Cameroon I was working in is host to the two rarest subspecies of great ape in the world: the Cross River Gorilla and the Cameroon-Nigeria Chimpanzee. There are fewer than 300 Cross River Gorillas in the world and only two recorded wild sightings of them in history. You may seen one of these videos. It actually may be too late to do anything about keeping this subspecies alive without crossbreeding with other subspecies (which I am not against at all). The second time I was in Cameroon I was collecting my own data on chimpanzee nesting patterns in order to understand what ecological pressures can a) tell us about whether they are under hunting stress and b) tell us what pressures may have caused our own ancestors to start nesting terrestrially (as opposed to arboreally).

In St. Catherines I was there studying ring-tailed lemurs, and this project was basically designed for me by my current graduate supervisor. I had to be nocturnal for a month in order to help other researchers understand the evolution of primate sleeping patterns. I collected the first nocturnal behavioural data of ring-tailed lemurs in the wild and my thesis (just finished) is on the evolution of cathemerality. Yay?!

In the future, I want to go back to studying great apes and/or become a popular science writer.

Do you enjoy it? If so, what do you enjoy about it?

I really enjoyed my field experiences. I love it because I get to do things that have really never been done before (or if they have been done, only by a handful of people). When I was in Cameroon sitting in gorilla nests it felt like I was reaching back across 6 million years of evolution and searching for my own roots - at least that is what I imagined). I felt an amazing rush everytime we came close to contacting the apes themselves and realized that it was the first time these apes had ever encountered a non-African human. Many of my Cameroonian field guides suspected they were terrified of me because of my white skin.

I also just love collecting data and producing research. I love discovering new things and broadening human knowledge of our world. A life filled with research would be a happy life for me.

Do you think there are enough resources allocated towards science, medical research in the US and elsewhere? How would you change the process for receiving funding? Does it work?

I can't speak about science resource allocation in the U.S. But I can speak on the broken aspects of the Canadian system for my work. I get funded by NSERC, which is funding for natural science research. However, as an evolutionary anthropologist NSERC does not know what to do with me (us). There is no category for human evolution/primatology research and so our research usually gets reviewed by people that are not experts in our field. It makes no sense to have someone who studies fish or forest ecology to review my research because it is too far detached from their area of expertise. In the future I hope NSERC creates a category specifically for us. The reason there isn't one is historically contingent on evolutionary anthropology being lumped in with other anthropologists, who apply for different social science grants (SSHRC).

Oh, I can also comment on the transition to funding for STEM sciences because that effects me. Because governments are only putting money towards STEM sciences (e.g., science, technology, engineering, mathematics), I have to alter what research I do in the future. In the past, I have specifically focused on evolutionary theory (e.g., origin of human bipedality and the development of primate sleeping patterns, etc.), but that is not the "type of science" that is included in STEM science. They want science that has a practical application. So for my PHD I am proposing to research disease transmission between chimpanzees and humans. I think that is interesting anyway, so I don't care. But we are getting away from doing research on purely academic type questions. And that disappoints me because I love learning about how we became human.

I am a computer scientist. While many people wouldn't consider it a "science," (I doubt it most of the time, theoretical CS, IMNSHO, is just applied math) I help a lot of fundamental basic sciences (non-CS) research.

My specialization is high performance (supercomputers) computing and scientific visualization and analysis. This translates to helping scientists run simulations, large-scale data wrangling, and helping to analyze scientific and simulation data. I'm more on the application side, rather than hardware side. So, I act as a facilitator to the domain scientists and the guys building the supercomputers, because I talk both "languages," or at least I try to.

I do like it, and as I mentioned before, the only part that isn't fun is writing papers (but that needs to be done so others can see your research) and getting funding. I'm not completely all "soft money," so I do have some stable money that I can rely on. Also, I'm currently overfunded, so I am doing just fine in terms of paying myself.

I tend to agree with most other scientists that there isn't enough funding. There are scientists at my lab that are unfunded and go onto overhead.

Though, I'm not sure the solution is to guarantee funding for everybody. There's an incentive to do well on each soft money research project to show that you are competent and can successfully complete the next research grant. So, I speculate that we might not be as productive, but that's probably wrong.

More likely, I would be just as productive with steady funding and it would be beneficial to the whole society to guarantee funding for research, rather than having to constantly sing for your dinner. So much research time is spent just looking for the next dollar. Most people like being useful or productive, even if funding was guaranteed, and there would likely be more scientists if research funding was steady.

I do biomedical research, mostly developing new treatment for primary brain tumors. I enjoy the creativity involved in it, the depth of the challenges, and the breadth of technologies that can be brought to bear in experimentation.

(Speaking now in terms of the US) We don't put nearly enough money into research presently. In the past, we have funded it well, but now we are starving labs to death. Many are leaving the field. You don't know who the head of the NIH is. That is the problem here. There should be very strong outreach and public engagement. There is a staggering amount of brilliant work that comes out of public-funded research. People should hear more about it, and feel proud that so much of the best research in the world takes place in the US.

The funding process is ok, but it has flaws that have become more apparent as funding has become scarce. I will expand upon this, but I need some sleep atm. :)

I'm a scientist. I think the most overreaching observation to be made about science in our society today is that our body of knowledge is advancing much faster than our collective wisdom and ability to handle that knowledge. Frankly it's depressing that for all our advances, the chair of the current so-called US Congressional science committee still condemns evolution as "lies from the pit of Satan." I see my older relatives having their lives extended by decades thanks to modern medicine, only for them to thank God for their miraculous recoveries and bequeath their estates to megachurches and televangelists. I wonder, if we really as a culture have to debate whether stem cells are deserving of the same special protections afforded to living people, should we really even pursue stem cell technology?

I don't mean to draw a contrast between science and religion here. Let me be clear: I'm drawing a contrast between people who know and understand science topics, versus those who do not. Paraphrasing Asimov, 'your ignorance does not bear the same merit as my knowledge.' It just happens that so many religious zealots and single-minded businesspeople push anti-intellectual agendas in pursuit of their own goals. That kind of willful ignorance is simply unacceptable if we are to move forward, societally, in a positive way. It overarcs any subsequent discussions of grant funding agencies' internal politics, science education in the public school systems, and so forth.

I love my job, but the older I get, the more I think that if I really want to have a positive impact on the world, I should get into politics.

Hey, I know this wasn't directed towards me, but I'm just getting started on Hubski so I don't have a name for myself haha.

I'm a structural biologist, specifically I work with glycosidases, enzymes that break down glycoproteins. These proteins are the reason for many of the lysosmal storage diseases. Generally, the one most people are familiar with is Tay-Sachs, though that is a result of failure of a lipase, not a glycosidase. Our lab works to solve the structures of these enzymes so possible pharmacological chaperones can be tested and possibly discovered.

As for whether enough resources are allocated towards science...eh. Every sector is selfish, and every sector wants to get more pieces of the pie if it can. Do I wish the NIH had more money, so then my PI would get more grants and therefore I would have more equipment and leeway? Sure. But I also realize the federal government is in a crunch and it's not just me and my field feeling the crunch. I think politicians realize how important science is.

Whoah wow. I got mentioned in a post, haha. I'm not sure what prompted that.

Unfortunately I don't work in research (I'm just about done with my bachelor degree) but I plan to. I've got a few friends who finished honors (some getting first class) as well as one person on their PHD.

One was working on a study involving macrophages and how to convert them to a specific type that actively seeks out neoplasms and engulfs them. Cancerous cells have a tendency to turn macrophages into a more dormant version that doesn't really want to get rid of them. His field dealt with an aboriginal remedy involving some sort of plant that they would apply to sunburns/melanomas, there was some evidence that suggested it did have quite a profound effect on some types of melanomas.

He was working insane hours, in addition to going to university and working in a pathology lab. He'll go far for sure, he won some statewide award for his work.

From what I've seen there are few professions that require as much time and effort as research if you REALLY want to do well in it, especially when you're working on an honors/masters/PHD.

To be honest I may likely end up in Pathology at this point, but I'm definitely interested in working in research that involves histopathology or cytology at some point. The issue right now is whether I have the time and patience to do it.

I'd be curious how people's relationships held up through this, though my PHD friend is married and she seems to be doing quite well.

Speaking of funding, there's never enough of it, even for bachelor degrees in biomedical sciences. Our department is in the red while the commerce/business department (the money maker degrees) are all well and good.

social science research. HBE, game theory, cross-cultural economics all that sort of misapplication of math to culture stuff. The grants came from DARPA which I was never comfortable with.

It's not science in the traditional sense, but I currently study the application of queueing models to urban traffic networks, using simulation based optimization to address a number of issues, such as traffic management (i.e. signal plans) and calibrating behavioral parameters in microscopic traffic simulations.

I don't think transportation research is particularly important, and I'd be willing to bet that this is reflected in the amount of money in transportation research. I think that my friends who work in fusion research would be a better long term investment - but mostly because I think the issues of transportation are more difficult in practice than in theory. Well, maybe that describes a lot of fields. I don't think that transportation receives the attention or funding that it deserves, but the funding would be more for planning and construction than research. Transportation is incredibly important to society and is seems to be taken for granted in the US. It's unfortunate that the transportation suffers from political problems, whether it be from poor judgment on behalf of policy makers (i.e. Congress), or nepotism in the hiring practices of transit agencies. Transportation researchers (on the policy side) have advocated for things like an increase in the gas tax for years, despite the fact that it is a political impossibility. One of my professors pretty much threw it out as a option for discussion in class for that reason.

I was an intern over the summer doing research related to electro and electroless coatings, and it's applications. All of the funding came from within the company I worked for, which was very interesting.