Planning for your CAREER

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Planning for your CAREER

• Contents
• Plan your contribution and how you will
  disseminate it
• Have a running game and a passing game
• Create a team and infrastructure that enable
  sustain excellence
• Have a teaching plan and make it fun
• My personal experience
• Background
• 1995 BSME Iowa State
• 1997 MS MIT
• 2000 Ph.D. MIT
• 2000 Consultant
• 2001 MIT Faculty
• Wife 2 kids (2½ year old and 4½ year old)
• 8 Graduate students
• 5 undergraduate students

Prof. Martin L. Culpepper Rockwell International
Asst. Prof. MIT Mechanical Engineering Precision
Compliant Systems Lab culpepper_at_mit.edu
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Questions, contributions, plans, facets

• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to be
• In 5 years?
• In 10 years?
• Why is it important?
• Who cares will say so?
• How will you teach others?
• Undergrad
• Professional
• Community
• What will you do to cultivate under represented
  students?
• Why is your proposal suitable for the RFP?

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Your running game

• A running game
• The ability make small gains when they are needed
• The ability to slug it out and make gains that
  keep you going
• If your running game doesnt work, everything
  else suffers
• Tenacity, aggressiveness, scrappy
• Making short gains that get the ball moving
• Short gains add up to, or turn into big gains

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Your passing game

• A passing game Making high-risk, high-payoff
  gains
• Glory, honor, funding, recognition
• Be creative, know the risks of success and
  failure
• Plan so that you may take advantage of big plays
• Dont be left unable to capitalize, youll be
  worse off
• Learn how your school handles IP/patents

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Creating your research group

• Create a team that enables sustains excellence

Kevin Kevo Lin - Micro/nano guru - The big
play
Chris Don Dibiasio - Big hardware designer -
Speed and accuracy
Richard Tiny Timm - Big hardware designer -
Bulldozer
Dariusz Diesel Golda - Micro/nano guru -
Bulldozer
M.V. K-man Kartik - Big hardware designer -
Speed and accuracy
Shih-Chi Mac daddy Chen - Micro/nano guru -
The big play
Jon JohnyBoy Hopkins - Micro/nano guru -
Bulldozer
Amos Big A Winter - Big hardware designer -
The big play
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Really integrating education-research
Rcoil
i
Rwire

-
Synthesis
Geometric modeling
Manufacture
Control
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
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Mentors, readers and a sustained trajectory
Nobody becomes a good scholar without help Have
someone read your CAREER proposal!

• What to look for
• Honest discussions
• Proactive, outreach
• Someone who shares why
• Technical non-technical
• Other successes
• Importance

• What to avoid
• Masters of the obvious
• Disengaged
• Someone who tells you what
• Line talkers
• Same background
• Old coffee/lunch once a year

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My experience

• January 2001
• Here is your key
• Here is your start-up account number
• Here is an empty office and a lab full of someone
  elses stuff
• Summer 2001
• CAREER grant submitted but turned down
• Summer 2003
• Resubmitted with success
• Planning made all the difference
• Understand the proposal-panel interaction
• June 2003 mail review
• January 2004 panel review
• January 2005 panel review

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Finis

• Questions and discussion