Tom H.
About me
| Tom H. | |
| Computer Science | |
| Computer Science | |
| Research Postgraduate | |
| Halifax | |
| 2010 | |
| United Kingdom |
My employment
| Research Associate | |
| University College London | |
| United Kingdom | |
| Education | |
| 2013 |
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A day in the life of a Research Associate in the United Kingdom
My career history
After my PhD at York did a 3 year post-doc at Queen Mary, University of London. I am now at University College London, also as a post-doc.
Where I hope to be in 5 years
As long as I am doing research I'll be happy. At some point it would be nice to make lecturer, if only to have some job security and enough money to afford a house.
My advice to students considering work
I have taken an academic route, and so employability for me is almost entirely a matter of demonstrable skill (although knowing the right people helps though). It is always much better to be able to demonstrate your skill than to claim you have it - I have published research papers and put large repositories of open source code online. I also have a personal website that brings all of the above together - anyone Googling me will find a mass of information that demonstrates that I can do the job that I do, and there is no substitute for that.
My advice about working in my industry
Academia is hard, the pay is poor relative to what industry will pay you and job security zero unless you reach lecturer. If you don't love it you will not make it. Make sure you have some savings - I was unemployed for 3 months between my current job and the previous one, and it can be hard to stay afloat (Though I actually did some contract work, that actually paid more in two weeks than 3 months of my usual salary.). Be prepared to move around to chase jobs, including to the other side of the planet. Come a conference deadline you may find yourself staying awake for 4 days straight.
What I do
I am primarily doing graphics/machine learning/computer vision research, specifically on generative models of handwriting right this second. This allows me to clone other people's handwriting given a few samples, and to also determine what the probability of someone having written something is. This last detail is the key aim of the grant, as knowing who wrote something can be of high value in a court of law. I also do limited teaching, help out at labs, run a summer school for college kids and write grants. Previous research has been quite varied, and covered areas such as 3D reconstruction and automated surveillance.
What I like most
Research! Or, more accurately, stretching my brain to the absolute limit to come up with cool solutions to real problems.
What I like least
The fact I have no real job security, writing grants and desk squatting.
What would I change? To do cooler research. To have more freedom to work on the projects I like, rather than being subject to whatever the grants agencies will pay money for me to do! More robots.
Next steps...
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