“Where You See Difficulty, I See Opportunity”

“Where You See Difficulty, I See Opportunity”

“Where you see difficulty, I see opportunity”, Einstein

The main thing I love about my job .. teaching. To be a teacher to someone is one of the most precious things we have in our lives. A teacher for in instance can change someone’s life. And, of course, as a professor, my other passion is research, and the acquiring of new knowledge. And, not so much … administration and those pointless meetings that waste hours of your life.

At our core, we are driven by learning, and our core desire to continually learn. We make mistakes, and we get things wrong, but we learn, and we become better for it. Without learning, we are soulless creatures. If the lazy way to short-circuit learning is at the click of a button, we are on a spiral downward, and where we are cheating ourselves and the future next generations. And, so,

Doing research is not just for academics

It is unfortunate that research is increasingly seen as an academic thing. It has become a machine to produce PhD graduates — who serve their apprenticeship to show that they can be real researchers. For some reason, industry-based research has faded a little, as academics have muscled in on the whole peer-review process for paper publishing. This has — perhaps — produced a gulf between those doing academically-focused research, and those who work on real problems. There should be no real barriers to someone getting involved in research, and everyone has the opportunity to create the next great advancement. So, let’s look at the ultimate example of the creativity of the human mind: Albert Einstein - and his route into research.

Einstein — the “third-class technical expert”

“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing”, Einstein

Einstein was a “third class technical expert” in a patent office — and had just been rejected for a post of “second class technical expert” — when he published three papers on amazing discoveries: Brownian motion; special relativity; and mass-energy equivalence (E=mc²).

While these would have been eventually discovered by others, he then advanced a theory that we would probably still be waiting for: general relativity. It must be remembered, too, in his early papers, that he did not have access to specialised equipment and did not even cite any other research work. For the maths involved, we gained help wherever he needed it.

And what was the magic spark for Einstein? Well, it might have been that he discovered the papers from Max Planck and which outlined that light was delivered as packets of energy (photons). It was the start of a quantum world, and from the work he read, Einstein could see our world in a way that few others had ever imagined. From his humble roots, he advanced the single most amazing thought in humankind.

Dump ChatGPT and investigate the beauty of our world

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born”, Einstein

We need more people to do research. We need to build the companies of the future. We need new discoveries to solve the problems on our horizon. So, forget playing with ChatGPT for a while, and go and read a few research papers. Find a topic that you love, and discover the boundaries of your selected area, and probe them. While most research is conducted in universities, there should not be significant barriers to anyone publishing work which contributes to a research topic. Seek help from academics wherever it is required — and you will (hopefully) find a supportive community.

To publish peer-reviewed work is a great achievement — even a single paper can have great merit in the advancement of knowledge. Overall, academia has become a little too driven by metrics (h-indexes, citation counts and journal impact factors), but that should not be the case. Einstein was never driven by a need to get high citation counts — he did it because he loved his area, and learned everything he could about it.

And, so, you could be the next Einstein. Go do some research …

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”