Brace for impact: making the most of your research

This article first appeared on the 18/11/2015 on Times Higher Education 

Given the impending doom of the spending review, academics are becoming more mindful of what is expected of them by their political paymasters. A recurring piece of rhetoric around universities is that research should have “impact”. But what does impact really mean, is it a valid metric and should you be chasing it?

Impact is the new translation

Impact, defined on the Research Councils UK web pages as “positive impact in our society and economy…through knowledge exchange, new products…and so on”, is the potential of the research to make changes in the real world outside the university gates. It is different from “high-impact” papers – another different kind of evil, another gripe, another blog. Making research quantifiable and beneficial is a noble-sounding ideal and much/some/a little (delete as applicable) of the research performed has a clear and quantifiable impact – eventually.

Lost in translation

I have two concerns with using impact as a metric. First, I believe it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict which new avenues of basic research will have the most impact. Second, I believe too great a focus on impact can harm innovation, leading to shorter-term thinking and a narrowing of the horizon. A clinical trial of a drug is clearly closer to impact than understanding the crystal structure of a molecule, but the drug may have been designed based on crystal structures generated decades ago. If we cut the root of research today, we won’t be able to deliver the fruit of clinical trials tomorrow. Think of the laser, green fluorescent protein, the structure of DNA and monoclonal antibodies. All of these were discovered and developed with minimal consideration of impact or their possible industrial applications but now underpin vast industries.

Blue-sky impact

Ideally, we would get rid of impact as a metric altogether. University research labs should be viewed as feeder blue-sky labs. Owing to financial pressures, many companies no longer sustain pure-science basic-research facilities. Universities can fill this gap, playing to the strengths of both partners – academics have time to develop random thoughts; industry has the cash and the experience to see things to market. Yes, that does mean that publicly funded research supports private industry, but since we are told that one of our major functions should be to spark economic growth, this is a good thing.

Past performance equals future impact (maybe)

Sadly, in this age of metrics for everything, vaguely asserting that research has downstream benefits is probably insufficient. So how should impact be measured? I would argue that at an individual level, past performance is an ineffective metric, biasing towards more established groups, when historically disruptive innovation comes from outsiders, new starters and people with less to lose. However, assessing the impact of previous work at an institutional level is effective. Although time-consuming (and costly), the impact studies in the 2014 research excellence framework (REF) did clearly show how universities add value. Institutions with a history of impactful work over a longer time period are, I believe, more likely to deliver it again in the future. In academia, the larger institutions have the reputation to pull in the best thinkers, the resources to support them and the infrastructure to enable researchers to research.

Game it

Sadly, my saying that impact is an inappropriate metric is not going to change the system (although I am happy for Jo Johnson, the minister for universities and science, to prove me wrong). We are stuck with impact and therefore need to play the game by writing awe-inspiring impact statements. In these times of slender research budgets, grants have been won or lost on the perceived quality of the impact. Read the advice on the RCUK pages and get tips from academic mentors. But to take it a step further, be inventive. This is the one part of the grant where you can just make stuff up* – it is hard enough quantifying impact objectively after the work is done, it is impossible to quantify impact before the work is done. So say that your research can cure cancer, cancel Third World debt and fix the ozone layer, because you know what, some of it will.
* This is for comic effect to emphasise a point – I would never make anything up. My work WILL cure the common cold (in the space of a three-year project).

Academic failure: four more ways to deal with it

I had intended to focus on some of the many core skills needed in an academic career: selling your science, the importance of brand and how to collaborate. But I got derailed.
It turns out you can come up with all the carefully phrased advice, witty but apposite anecdotes and strategies for coping with failure. You can think outside the box and look on the bright side, but occasionally the wheels come off.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting at my desk working on the third draft of a grant proposal that I have been tortuously pulling together for many months when I had an unshakeable feeling that “this is unfundable garbage; what am I doing here, my career is in tatters”. I slowly sank into despair.*
That I had recently written upbeat pieces about failure and building resilience, combined with my inability to listen to my own advice, only added to my frustration.
You may wonder why I am sharing this in a blog purportedly about academic career development. Mainly, it is to (re)emphasise a key point: we all struggle with the ups and downs of academic life, and anyone who says they don’t is lying, not trying hard enough...or emeritus.
It is also to emphasise that every glowing opportunity is accompanied by a kick in the bum. Failure is rife and disappointment common.
I also wanted to share what worked for me in order to compress my time in the doldrums and accelerate a return to productivity. The route back up involved support, distraction and time.

Support

There are times when you need to draw on your network of friends, family and colleagues to hold your hand (literally and figuratively), to send you friendly emojis and reassure you that your idea is OK (or at least has salvageable parts). But make sure you are available to return the favour when the positions are reversed.

Step outside the moment

For me, exercise resets the balance. For you it might be music, drawing, playing Grand Theft Auto or cooking. I said this in my last blog but will stress it again, if only for my own benefit: if one aspect of the job gets too much, do something else. Defrost a -80°C freezer, order lab consumables or clean the incubators. Find your stress relief valve and make sure it is accessible at work.
In an attempt to manage myself better, I have now got running kit in a drawer in my office, to be deployed in emergency.

Time

The simplest factor is time: time away from the desk, time to reflect on the good bits and time to refocus.

Lessons learned

The moment passes, there will be bits you can salvage and, if not, you have learned what doesn’t work.
My problem is fear of failure, but you can’t win the lottery unless you buy a ticket, and you can’t get a grant unless you submit a proposal. I’d like to hope that having reflected on the stresses of failing (again) I won’t get into the same state (again). However, I am sure I will – but maybe next time I will be self-aware enough to break out the running shoes earlier.
* Note to my funders and employers: this was unfounded. My grant proposal is amazing. In fact you should fund it without even reading it.
 
This first appeared on 13/10/2015 on the Times Higher Education

Failure is an option: six ways to deal with it

Are you ready to fail, because as an academic you will, repeatedly.
We all do. Failure is part and parcel of academia. The two repeat offenders are grants and papers and, of the two, grant failure feels more brutal (to me at least). If you are like me, you will take each failure really badly, and it will ruin numerous evenings and weekends (and on one occasion, a child’s birthday party).
To avoid this, it is  important to develop coping strategies, a lot of them grounded in approaches to build mental resilience. Here are six that might help:

Mindset

I cannot recommend strongly enough the brilliant book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton professor of psychology at Stanford University. In brief, don’t take failure as a blow to your self-esteem; look at it as a learning opportunity. There may be a good reason why the grant or paper failed. Don’t think: “stupid reviewers, why don’t they understand me”; do think: “how can I write that better so it makes sense to even the most stupid reviewer”.

There are other opportunities

Failure is very rarely the end of the line. Grants are on a rolling cycle and many applications only get accepted on the 2nd or 3rd submission. That journal you were striving for is probably not as great as you thought, and there are more journals than ever, so your paper will find a home. Convince yourself that impact factor is an artificial construct. Successful academics are determined (bloody minded). Think how many job applications and interviews you had in order to get here and apply that same spirit now you have the job.

It’s nothing personal

Unless you ran off with the reviewer’s partner, killed their grant or ran over their dog, the critique of your work is about your work and not about you. Taking it to heart, memorising key lines and writing “you are an idiot” in red pen on the comments is satisfying but doesn’t get the grant funded. Look at it from the reviewer’s point of view: they have limited time to make decisions on a large number of grants from a range of subjects. Bear in mind that we are all called to be reviewers and through negligence, weakness or our own deliberate fault we sometimes get it wrong.

You’re not unique

Look up the success rate of your grant scheme, then take the inverse – that is how many people you are in company with. More applicants fail than succeed. Find them, commiserate and move on.

What would Alan Sugar say? 

Remember, you are selling, they are buying. You have to make sure the fit is right and the sales pitch correct.

Learn from what goes well

While failure may seem bad, success has its downsides too. You’ve actually got to do the work that sounded so good on paper. You’ve then got to think of bigger and better new ideas. At least if you are unsuccessful, you can recycle the good parts of the application.

Remember, academia is just a job. It may take up all your time, intellectual capacity and emotional energy, but it is still just a job.

Take a step back, do something unrelated – garden, run, swim, paint, sing. Apologise to the child whose birthday you ruined, and then on Monday morning pick up your pen and start again.

This first appeared 19/09/2015 on the Times Higher Education

Intramuscular Immunisation with Chlamydial Proteins Induces Chlamydia trachomatis Specific Ocular Antibodies.

Pub Quiz time: What obligate intracellular pathogen infects the eye and is a major cause of blindness? (As you may guess I don’t get to many pub quizzes!). The answer is Chlamydia, with a bonus point for the full name Chlamydia trachomatis. And yes it is the same type of bacteria that causes the sexually transmitted infection, chlamydia. In fact there are 12 strains of chlamydia, a-c cause the eye disease, d-k cause the sexually transmitted infection and L causes an invasive sexually transmitted infection. Interestingly*, the way chlamydia infection causes disease in either the eye or the genital tract is the same. The immune response is too aggressive, leading to damage of the surrounding tissue, which has bad consequences in sensitive organs such as the eyes or ovaries.

Chlamydia of the eye

Chlamydia infections causes the disease trachoma, which leads to 4.9 million cases of blindness annually inlower and middle income countries. For more information visit the international trachoma initiative. It is described as a disease of poverty because it is most prevalent in locations with poor access to clean water. It is also categorised as a neglected tropical disease by WHO, with the aim that this will encourage a greater research effort. For example if companies work on these diseases they are eligible for FDA priority review vouchers which allows them to accelerate licensure of other drugs. The current treatment regime is to use antibiotics - Azithromycin . This is cheap and effective especially since Pfizer donate free Zithromax®. However with antibiotic treatment of bacterial infections there is always a risk that the bacteria become resistant to the drugs, which then become less effective. So it is prudent to look for alternative. 

Eye protection

In our recently published study, we were investigating new vaccines. Because it is a disease of the eye, we trying to improve the protective immune response in the eye. We developed a new technique for measuring antibody (the super molecules that are able to recognise bacteria by their shape). We observed that some of the new vaccines we tested led to the measurable antibody in the eye, which might protect against infection. This work has now lead (in collaboration with our Danish partners from SSI, Copenhagen, into a clinical trial in people, that will test vaccines for safety, but also measure antibody in the eye. This work was made possible by support from the EU as part of a multi centre consortium called Aditec.

* Interestingly is a horrible science writing device – often gets irate reviewer’s commenting about the reader getting to decide what is interesting, but the good thing about writing an unreviewed blog is that I can say what I like.

PS thanks to Alex (Badamchi) for proofing this and filling in the details

Going global!

If you have any personal contact with me - Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Email, Carrier Pigeon etc you are probably bored of me plugging my blog in The Times Higher Education supplement! But if you are on this site and have come not because I have cajoled you into it, you may be wondering why it has gone a bit quiet. The main answer is the summer holiday, but I have been working on pieces for other outlets, oh did I mention this one for the Times Higher Education

Buy one get one free?

PHiD-CV induces anti-Protein D antibodies but does not augment pulmonary clearance of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae in mice

Synflorix – a highly effective vaccine for S. pneumoniae

In our recent study (Siggins et al) published in the journal Vaccine we were looking at a commercially available vaccine called Synflorix (technical name PHiD-CV). This is a vaccine made by GSK against the bacteria called Streptococcus pneumoniae. This bacteria causes pneumonia (unsurprisingly – the name is a bit of a give away) but more seriously it causes a range of conditions called invasive pneumococcal disease where the bacteria crosses from the airways into the rest of the body leading to diseases like meningitis and sepsis. One of the problems with preventing Streptococcus pneumoniae infections (or Strep pneumo) is that there are many different forms of the bug and so a vaccine needs to protect you against as many of them as possible. Synflorix is highly effective at providing protection against 10 of the Strep pnuemo strains.

Sweet on the outside, deadly in the middle

The aim of our study was slightly different. Bacteria are a bit like the blue liquorice allsorts, with a bobbly sugar coat hiding a disgusting middle. Our immune system only recognises the outside part of the bacteria which is made up of complex sugars (polysaccharides). These molecules, unlike proteins, are not particularly well recognised by the immune system (poorly immunogenic). One trick to improve the immunogenicity of the sugars is called conjugation. This is where the sugars are chemically bound to proteins, which are better recognised by the immune system, and in a biological sleight of hand you the white blood cells into improving the response. A number of different bacterially derived proteins are used as the carrier protein to boost the immune response including ones from Tetanus and Diphtheria. In the current study we were looking at the effect of a protein derived from non-typeable H. influenzae (NTHi) called protein D. The aim was to see whether the protein D part of the Synflorix vaccine could give broad cross protection against NTHi in addition to Strep pnuemo.

NTHi is the new HiB

I guess you are wondering why we would want protection against NTHi, or probably more honestly, what on earth is NTHi? Haemophilus influenzae (the Hi in NTHi) is a bug we all carry in our throats and noses, which sometimes causes illness and occasionally causes meningitis. However, Haemophilus is divided into different types based on its sugar coat. It is the B type or HiB that is highly invasive and there is a vaccine for this, included in the UK infant schedule at 2, 3 and 4 months, which has significantly reduced the incidence of meningitis. Haemophilus are grouped (or Typed) by the sugar they are covered in, some don’t have a sugar coat and are so non-typeable (the NT in NTHi). Whilst the non-coated strains rarely cause invasive/ meningitis disease, they do lead to a significant amount of community acquired pneumonia. NTHi lung infections are particularly common in patients who are long term smokers and have the ongoing lung damage from smoking (COPD). There is therefore an economic argument for reducing the burden of this disease, especially if it can be achieved as a side effect of a vaccine that is designed to prevent a different bacterial pathogen, which brings us back to the current study.

No cross protection

It is very complicated to perform the types of study needed to define whether Synflorix gives cross protection against NTHi in patients. This is because the majority of NTHi infections cause pneumonia and the causative agent of pneumonia is rarely defined when patients go to their GPs. To get around this we developed a mouse model of NTHi lung infection. When infected with NTHi mice got sick and we were able to detect the bacteria in the lungs and airways. This gave us a model to test the vaccine in. Mice were given Synflorix (the vaccine we wanted to test) or another pneumonia vaccine called Prevenar (which has the same Streptococcus components, but doesn’t use the NTHi protein). The vaccine was good at inducing an immune response and we were able to measure antibodies specific to NTHi Protein D. So far so good, unfortunately when we infected the vaccinated mice with NTHi, there was no difference between the vaccinated ones and the control/ unvaccinated mice, either in how sick they got or how much bacteria was in their lungs. From this we drew the conclusion that sadly in our hands and in our system, Synflorix does not give the extra protection against the second organism – NTHi. This doesn’t mean it isn’t a highly effective vaccine against S. pneumoniae, which it is.

The no’s have it.

This study was a piece of what we call negative data. Ben Goldacre (@Bengoldacre) goes into this much more eloquently than me, but negative data is really important. It may not be as exciting as finding something new and positive, but by publishing negative, you 1) stop someone else doing the same thing which 2) reduces the cost of repeated research, 3) reduces the numbers of people and animals that get used in the process. This work was kindly supported by the charity Sparks and whilst in this case did not change clinical practice, it is an important piece of basic research. It may inform policy about which vaccine to use and therefore free up money to be spent elsewhere. We are really grateful to the people who raise money for the charity and encourage you all to get on your running shoes and raise more money so we can perform the research to find out whether vaccines do (or just as importantly do not) work.

The 4 elements of Academia

Professor Beardyman

Just to show I am down with the youth, I am going to compare academia to hip hop. As you all know, there are 4 fundamental elements of Hip-Hop. You knew that didn’t you? You didn't? Oh allow me to educate you – they are:

Beardyman: Though the beard may be a bit oversold

1. Bboying

2. MCing

3. Graffiti

4. DJing. Obviously.

Why am I showing off my Vanilla Ice like knowledge of the patois of modern culture? Well there are 4 elements to academia, publishing, grant writing, teaching and admin. In my quest to inform the great unwashed (yes that’s you, the one not really paying attention in the back) about what academics do, this week’s tortured musing is going to give an overview of why we think these elements matter. Though you will be pleased to know I am not going to stretch my torturous analogy to linking say Grant writing to B-boying – mainly because I don’t know what Bboying is!

Zen and the art of university maintenance

There are 3 ways of viewing the elements

Idealistic: Universities are dreaming spired bastions of learning and higher education where we educate young minds, push back the boundaries of knowledge and enrich the greater good by applying Kantean dialectics to the routes of the romantic poem. In this worldview teaching is central, admin is giving back to the university, paper writing a joy and grants a dirty word as there should be an inherent understanding of the intrinsic good our esteemed institutions do.

Fatalistic: The economy is fucked, George Osborne is busily grinding the last traces of state funded endeavour into a dry dust of free market neo-con fury. In this less than enlightened time, we have to pay our way and our work has to have IMPACT (if there was an option to make the word flash and somehow sear itself into your skin, that would be the font I should use, but a whole other blog is needed to talk about IMPACT). Our work is publicly funded from hard working honest tax payers' money and we should never be allowed to forget it. The university is a business and every action should be to support the mission statement and bring money into the university.

A third way: Like the force, there needs to be balance in the univers(ity). The money that pays for our salaries does come from somewhere and most of it comes from the taxpayer. In return I need to do something more productive than watch Beardyman videos on YouTube (though the kitchen diaries is awesome). Academics do need to contribute to the running of the place and the education of the students. But at the same time we should be in a position to carry on researching the relative importance of early-latin swear stones (if we wish).

The academic transfer market (my one paragraph of soapbox ranting)

These different approaches have an impact on university life. As with all educational institutions in the UK, universities are ranked and what does ranking bring…Prizes (or substantial funding from the government in the form of QR and QT grants from the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, but prizes is more catchy). They are ranked on a number of different criteria, but the two big ones are the REF (a quinquennial exercise evaluating research output and IMPACT) and the QA (which evaluates teaching). These evaluations are based on individuals, which generates a transfer market in academics, with the superstar professors moving between the big universities demanding more space, more salary, more acolytes and flunkies to peel them raw grapes. This can have a number of negative repercussions: focussing resources on a small handful of individuals, damaging departmental cohesion, depleting the pension pot (which was final salary based) and putting academic career development at a lower priority – why train people when you can just buy someone in. The other concern is just because they are big hitters doesn’t mean they are team players and the perceived benefit of what they bring may be offset by the friction and resentment they cause. To crunch metaphors, we should aspire to have more Stephen Gerrards (who played for one club his whole career, possibly to the detriment of the amount of medals he won), people who grew up in one institution are to my mind, more likely to be loyal to that institution, understand the culture of the institution and are more inclined to contribute in the small ways necessary to keep it running. Then again, we can all get a bit inward looking and fresh perspective always helps.

Nick Clegg and the new student generation.

Crikey, got slightly off topic there. Must. Focus. 12 months ago I would have said that successful grant writers will inherit the ivory towers. They were perceived to bring in cold hard cash that pays for the buildings, the electricity, the salaries of the people who work in the mystery blue box (and as a sideline get a small bit of money to do research). However, times have changed, and the quants who run the institutions have realised that students = money: £9,000 x as many people you can squeeze into a lecture theatre per year. This has the beginnings of a major revolution in universities. Firstly (and don’t tell them) this gives the students real power as consumers, if the teaching is not up to scratch they can head to the twitterbookapp thingy and troll the course – luckily most of them are too busy being students to realise this empowerment. Secondly, those who teach and particularly those who teach well, suddenly have become more valuable. With the increased focus on teaching, it is possible that the superstar teachers will now also be commoditised and traded between the colleges. I suspect we are a way off Panini doing a sticker album of high flying academics, buy maybe academic top trumps is not too inconceivable! Imagine the fun - oh no I can’t believe you beat my Nobel Prize winner with your senior administrator.

Not so Deep Conclusion

Academics need to deliver a range of diverse functions within the space of the working day (like most jobs). I would argue that the breadth of skills required is unique, ranging from preparing sales pitches to writing technical literature to teaching to management. Then again I have no experience of any other job, except stacking shelves in a refrigerated warehouse, so have little to compare it against. There are some people who excel in a single area and are prized by the institutions, but the rest of us have to muddle by with a mix of all aspects. 

To entice you to come back soon, the next few editions of this blog will unpack each element (dreadful business speak fail) and what is involved in them, probably, or I might just talk about my lunch – again.