On Being A Genuine Fake

Recriminations from a medal and fellowship

My cup runneth over.

After somehow snagging an ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellowship (as detailed down the bottom of my last post), it was announced yesterday that I was one of 22 scientists recognised for their contributions to the advancement of science this year by the Australian Academy of Science.

I was awarded the Frederick White Medal, one of ten early-career ‘honorific’ awards, which is a terrific honour. Big shout-out to my climate science colleague at the University of Melbourne, Andrew King, for getting the Anton Hales medal*. And a hearty congrats to all the other recipients. I really do appreciate the Academy making such a big song and dance about science and I hope it helps lift the profile of science in the country. In a rather crowded information and media landscape, I’m not so sure.

Why don’t you be the judge.

(This video over at the Academy of Science’s YouTube page currently has zero views. I think we can do better. My KPI this quarter is to double that figure, at least.)

Why the Frederick White medal? Well, clearly I am a scientist in Australia who is “engaged in research of intrinsic scientific merit that has made an actual or potential contribution to community interests, to rural or industrial progress, or to the understanding of natural phenomena that have an impact on the lives of people. Relevant areas of research are physics, astronomy, chemistry, and the terrestrial and planetary sciences.” My translation: this is the only award category applied fire research fits in. Not bad, eh?

On another level, I got the award because of my shameless and persistent pursuit of self-promotion. I don’t know how this happened. Once upon a time I was perfectly content to be a white cisgender heterosexual male, minding my own privileged business. Since entering academia, a strange transformation has occurred. Like Gregor Samsa, I awoke one morning from my ivory tower canopy bed and found myself metamorphosed into a grant-seeking missile.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with my regular diatribes about and against applying for things. To show you how bad it’s gotten, here’s some data from another application (for some recently advertised D and E positions (i.e. Associate Professor and Professor) here in the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. Do I have a chance? Not really. Did I feel quite angry while assembling the application? Yes. Yes I did.)

• Since moving to Melbourne in September 2022 I have applied for 27 (!) grants, ranging in value from $5,000 to over $1,000,000.

• 15 of these grants were as ‘CI’ (chief investigator), meaning I had to pull the whole bloody application together (with help, of course, from my ‘PIs’ (partner investigators), the school, faculty, grant office etc)

• Not included in the above numbers are a handful of grants still in review or about to be submitted, including one for a cool mil, one for a subzero five mil, and one for a liquid nitrogen 35 mil. Cross your fingers for me.

What the hell is going on here? 27 grants applied for? This is science by brute force**. Actually, it feels a long way from science. But you get the money in order to be able to do the science, right? The logic for awards is similar, if a little more indirect. Get the award, prove to the decision makers that you are good, get the money / promotion, do the science. Rinse, repeat.

As I alluded to in my previous post, I was not overcome with joy when I found out about the ARC Fellowship. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a part of me that loves the success, the external validation. But that feeling lasts about three seconds and is then swamped by other less savoury feelings. All of a sudden I find myself losing respect for the funding bodies, scientific societies and departments foolish enough to give me the thing I asked for. I’m admitted to the latest club, whereupon I realise I’m not sure I want to join any club that would have me as a member. And even if I did want to be a member, when I look around, all the other people seem so real, so solid, so scientific. In comparison I am vague, formless, translucent (I do have quite fair skin).

In the case of the Frederick White medal (or the Old White Guy medal, as my wife calls it), I felt like a try hard that exemplified the ascent of privilege at the expense of more worthy people, most of whom hadn’t even applied because they lacked time, weren’t encouraged or supported, and anyway all the other winners were old white blokes so why bother?

Sorry to subject you to some of the voices in my head, but it had to be done.

All of this is a clear lesson to understand your values and set your own internal goals, kids. External validation only gets you so far. I don’t want to be a crushed husk of a human when I’m with my family, because I’ve given everything I’ve got to getting the latest in a never-ending line of grants. I don’t want to be closed to the possibility of something new, exciting and joyful, just because I’m ridiculously overcommitted.

The other lesson is that no crisis or award should be wasted. So I thank the Academy for including this quote in their publicity on Threads:

(h/t chemistry and Westpac superstar Yu Heng Lau for tipping me off; my social media portfolio is currently threadless)

I shall further dilute my mixed feelings by spilling the beans on how I did it.

1. Thought on and off about applying over a few years, checked out previous winners, talked to trusted colleagues, all to get a sense of whether it was worth having a crack. (My application for a NSW Premiers Prize for science was unsuccessful a few years ago)

2. Glanced at my calendar and decided I could spend some time on applying.

3. Collected and read through all the award documentation mid-April. Had to prepare

   1. Brief citation = one page overview of my stuff

   2. CV = extended version (at 9 pages it was still less than half the length of the ‘comprehensive’ requested for the D & E faculty jobs )

   3. Top 10 publications = citation + a metric or two (e.g. # of citations) + a very brief blurb about your role in the paper

   4. A brief non-technical description of my work (right up my alley! this is the description text at the YouTube video linked above, in case you’re curious)

   5. A brief statement about how your performance stacks up compared to the opportunities you’ve had. I really should have achieved a lot more with the copious opportunities I’ve had!)

   6. Support letters from a bunch of experts

   7. Support letter from a sponsor, in whose name the application goes in (Thank you Prof Trent Penman. I owe you one!)

4. Drew up a shortlist of senior people here and abroad that I could ask to support the application.

   1. This included one or two Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science. It also included a few people who I didn’t know and who didn’t know me from a bar of soap. Here I was aided by my secret superpower of being able to effortlessly and shamelessly spam complete strangers.

   2. Wrote a concise and charming approach email, being very careful to change the names in each email. To my lasting surprise and delight, they all said yes!***

   3. Handed out some clear instructions, deadlines and an overview of my stuff

   4. Politely reminded the referees a few times. I never did see what they wrote but it must have been good.

5. Made sure the other i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, so it could be submitted on time.

6. Became forever indebted to the kind referees and promised myself I would pass it on.

7. Made no effort to shave or otherwise look less dishevelled than usual when the videographers came onto campus to shoot the video.

The main part was rounding up senior people to vouch for me. Most of the rest was familiar ground for a seasoned grant applicant like me. With the ARC Fellowship, much of the work was in writing 5 dense pages of project description, with particular attention to a killer first page (you gotta hook the reader, y’know?). The other key part of the ARC Fellowship was that it had to be prepared pretty closely with industry partners, but that part was pretty smooth.

It’s very easy to see the rich get richer phenomenon at play here, isn’t it? I have been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to encourage my colleagues at work to apply more and nominate others more, because things like this can help your career, they can feel nice, and they can help slowly move the needle away from us pasty old dudes towards the full diversity of awesome scientists and researchers our there.

In the meantime, if you need an award-winning motivational speaker for your next corporate event, look no further. Like my applications, my rates are extremely competitive.

~~~

*more prestigious because it’s for pure rather than applied science, although Andrew disagrees!

** to my bewilderment, I’m batting at between 0.62 and 0.68, depending on how you slice it in terms of number of grants, value of grants, PI vs CI, internal vs external and so on. This seems like a high number and does not feel sustainable. I’ve done decent work yes, but I’ve been lucky to work with some high profile and very supportive scientists in my short career, among other advantages.

*** Actually I got one no from someone who was already committed to another applicant, who I suspect was Andrew King!