Careers
From BioImagingUKWiki
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* Martin Spitaler (Imperial) | * Martin Spitaler (Imperial) | ||
* Amanda Wilson (Kings) | * Amanda Wilson (Kings) | ||
| + | * Paul French (Imperial) | ||
== Background == | == Background == | ||
Revision as of 20:15, 13 May 2010
Contents |
Topics
Defining policies and funding models to enable long-term career development and security for personnel dedicated to development and access of the latest imaging technology
Members
- Peter March (Univ. Manchester)
- Jason Swedlow (Univ of Dundee)
- Martin Spitaler (Imperial)
- Amanda Wilson (Kings)
- Paul French (Imperial)
Background
The UK has invested heavily in facilities for research and clinical imaging. The range of resources and technologies available to support cutting edge research have matched that in any other country in the world although this situation is starting to change as imaging becomes increasingly technology-intensive . Purchase of imaging instrumentation is, however, not sufficient to deliver world-leading imaging-based scientific discovery. The fast technical advances in the area of imaging, particularly for life sciences, requires imaging staff that can stay up to date with the latest development and further develop and customise imaging instrumentation while making them accessible the life scientist users. The cost and complexity of such instrumentation increasingly puts them beyond the reach of individual life science groups and so imaging facilities play a critical role in maintaining competitiveness and ensuring access to the latest technology.
Complex imaging systems must usually be administered, monitored, maintained, and sometimes run by specialist trained staff, many of whom have progressed from PhD research to a career path in imaging facilities and provide much more than a routine “technician” role. These staff often play a critical in training users (and particularly early-career) scientists in the use and application of imaging instrumentation and thus provide a critical contribution in preparing the next generation of UK scientists. They are essential to provide the vital continuity of expertise in labs and facilities that cannot be realised through PhD students or post-docs, ensuring that technical know-how and experimental protocols are preserved and refined. Scientific productivity in image-based research thus critically depends on expert (facility) imaging staff, without whom the imaging instrumentation is almost useless and of short-lived impact.
Where this critical role is delivered by imaging technicians and officers, there are significant causes for concern in terms of the career develop of imaging staff themselves and the future development of capabilities for imaging-based research. Imaging staff careers are often not well-managed and their prospects are compromised by a lack of recognition in academic publications – where they typically appear in a middle-position on an author line, if at all. In today’s metric-driven scientific culture, such contributions are often effectively rounded to zero and imaging staff are very vulnerable when universities are looking to cut salary budgets and fail to take into account the critical and longer term value these staff deliver to the overall research effort, as well as future potential funding opportunities.
The undervaluation of imaging staff has also contributed to an increasing mismatch between imaging expertise and purchasing decisions. In too many cases, instrumentation is sought, funded, and purchased, without concern for scientific support personnel, thus compromising the value of the original funding investment. With the ever increasing sophistication and complexity of “premier league” bioimaging instrumentation and associated software tools, it is vital to establish higher-powered career tracks for imaging staff that utilise and enhance their ongoing academic and technical development, recognising their critical roles in world-class research teams. Such staff should actively contribute to strategic decisions concerning research direction, management and investment priorities and should be encouraged to network with peers in international leading imaging centres.
Activities
These notes are from the Core Facilities Managers Meeting sub-group on careers that took place at Imperial College London in January 2010. From the round table discussions that took place it’s clear that most facilities operate around broadly similar ideas and this would make job descriptions for an imaging facility possible. On the other hand the way the facility is seen and organised within the various academic institutions was highly variable. There was a feeling that organisation such as BioImagingUK and EuroBioImaging could help define the role of an imaging facility and generate a real career path for members of these facilities.
How do you become a facility manager?
Most managers have PhD and post-doctoral experience and were often heavy users of the microscopes for this research. This then evolved into being the facility manager by a series of small steps and moves rather than a single jump via an advertised and defined position. This often resulted in a gray area of what exactly was the role of the facility manager, how should it be organised and how should it be financed.
What is expected of a facility manager?
Universal: The training of new users, maintenance and trouble shooting of the systems to ensure they are in full working order, record keeping of hours used and charges, development of new techniques and methods.
Variations: Some were also expected to run internal and external microscopy workshops. Teaching of undergraduate courses, tutorial groups, the supervision of undergraduate students on microscopy projects, the full supervision of PhD students in addition to the facility.
Status of a microscope facility manager?
This varied widely and may be a result of the academic institutions setup and the role that they were expected to play. Some felt that they were seen as nothing more than technicians - there to train, clean and organise. Others were expected to be a full member of the academic staff responsible for grant applications, PhD supervision and teaching loads.
Recommendations
We propose the following improvements:
Funding bodies should:
- make support staff an essential part of their science infrastructure funding strategy;
- for all major infrastructure funding, require a business plan for its long-term support;
- require the inclusion of a sufficient number of long-term positions for support staff, the funding of which should be a normal part of the grant application;
- where community access to specialized instrumentation is proposed, funding for staff to support use by external visiting scientists is requested and,provided where justified
- give clear priority for the funding of large pieces of imaging equipment to dedicated central facilities over individual groups or senior PIs with no long-term plan and staff for the maintenance and running of the instruments. This is in order to guarantee the optimal use and exploitation of high-end systems in central facilities by expert staff
Institutions should:
- make 'staff scientists' a normal part of their research strategy
- have a long-term plan for the career structure, mentoring, and development of support staff, that recognizes contribution and performance outside the traditional university roles of primary research and teaching; this should include the consideration of open-ended employment contracts for core staff to guarantee the continuity of imaging facilities
- include facility staff in strategic planning
- plan for continuity, as staff inevitably turnover, so that practical experience and knowledge can be transferred from older to younger staff and students
Both should:
- identify facility staff as an essential strategic investment to maximise the return on their respective investments
- make facility staff as an essential part of their business plan
- realise and support the important role of facility staff for training, education, outreach and potentially connections to the business world
- create new benchmarks to review the functioning of facilities, and most importantly, scientific technicians and officers;
- devise novel approaches for continuity and training, e.g., younger technical staff that are already experienced to an extent, but still have at least (10yrs?) before they retire, could spend (a month?) at a different facility to their own, apprenticed to a senior/v.experienced staff member, learning a new specific skill or set of related skills. The training would be one-to-one, and be more in-depth and 'on-the-job' than a course-based approach; in other words, a genuine opportunity for transfer of advanced/specialised skills
- collaborate to define a new method of evaluation that defines value in publications beyond the traditional first author/senior author delineation and includes a broader set of indicators of performance and contribution, e.g.
- usage of equipment
- number and quality of projects performed
- trainings and general education on new developments
- access to the general scientific community
- implementation of new techniques
- standardised user feedback (many added values are hard to quantify otherwise)
- outreach activities
