your academic FYP 30th January, 2025

Academia essentials hand-picked fortnightly for the informed scholar

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Image: Alfred Stieglitz, Car 2F-77-77; 1935. The Art Institute of Chicago

Hey Scholar, here's what we have for you this week:

• PhD and Postdoctoral opportunities 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇸🇬 🇩🇪 ;

• A not brilliant but certainly productive method for academic writing;

• 58% of research discovers something by accident;

• Academia cosplays as a high-tech supercar;

And much more.

OPPORTUNITIES

💼Funded PhDs, Postdocs and academic job openings

• Postdoctoral Positions @ Côte d'Azur University, France: click here

• PhD Positions @ Ulster University, Norther Ireland, UK: click here

• Postdoctoral & Research Positions @ NUS, Singapore: click here

• PhD Positions @ Jülich Research Centre, Germany: click here

If the idea of making your PhD application is daunting, here's a detailed guide to help you through the entire process👇

RESOURCES

👓Talk nerdy to me:

Science often isn't sexy enough for the general public to pay attention to, especially not when researchers present it in hard to understand, jargon-monoxide. But this doesn't mean they're not interested in what we do. This 4-minute Ted-talk is a masterclass for how non-scientists would like scientists to talk about their work to them. 

📝The Mumford Method for writing: not brilliant but productive

How can you be expected to write something clear and simple if you are wrestling with the very thing you're supposed to be writing about? Well, you can't and if you want to be productive, you shouldn't, according to the Mumford Method of Academic Writing. After receiving requests via Twitter to make his method available, its inventor Stephen Mumford has given the people what they want: this 2 page document is for those who find academic writing stressful or labour intensive. Mumford doesn't claim to be a brilliant writer, but says, “I am productive. I get things finished and to deadline.”

BRAIN FOOD

💡Stupidly Productive

If your research is making you feel stupid, don't worry it's a good sign. You've likely reached the territory of the 'unknown' i.e. found your research problem. At the end of the day, research demands that we admit our ignorance to gain knowledge, that we do not in fact know so we get to know. This might be a tough pill to swallow given that before getting into research, education is primarily focused on getting the 'right' answers. Being stupid is not an option for students, but when you're a researcher, learning to be productively stupid is the very key that might enable you to make your own discoveries. 

🍀Sweet Serendipity

By analyzing 90,000 grants, a team of researchers are measuring just how many studies discover something by accident. Their answer is 58%. These findings have implications for how grants are awarded (is research funding really targetable?), but more importantly, how you should approach unexpected results in your work.

NEWS

🥶January Funding Freeze Leaves Researchers Teeth Chattering

The US Government ordered all Federal agencies to temporarily freeze paying out cash this week, affecting The National Science Foundation (NSF) and one of the worlds largest scientific funding bodies - the National Institute of Health (NIH). Combined, they give out more than $56 billion in grants and loans a year. Universities are advising researchers not to spend grant money on travel, new equipment or snacks for their grad students and a ban on external communications means that both the NIH and NSF have stopped assessing grant applications or awarding new funding. 

🛡️Japan's Academic Alliance Against AI Deception

A Japanese research initiative is bringing experts from the Humanities and STEM together to develop a system for slowing the spread of misinformation and deep fakes. A group of 9 universities and companies including the University of Tokyo and Fujitsu are being tasked with improving Japan's economic security as AI generated faces become more realistic, leading to more and more people being influenced by deepfakes. 

🏁Full throttle academia

Put seatbelts on your eyes, because they're about to go on the ride of their life. Publishing giant Elsevier has surveyed hundreds of academic leaders around the world to identify the high performance objectives that are critical for the success of their institution conceptualize academia as a supercar. 

The all-new Academia Futura comes equipped with an antenna to facilitate Car2Car information sharing (to represent collaboration between universities), AI algorithms for safe and efficient navigation (just like technology will streamline routine processes) and is a hydrogen-electricity hybrid (showing the importance of sustainability in academia's future). When the Academia Futura will be available from your nearest supercar dealership isn't clear, but you can download this brochure summarizing the 25 key high performance objectives academic leaders think we should be focusing on.  

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