The Professor's life

Now that I hve blogpress on my iPhone, it's much easier to blog.

I'm on the train from Peterborough to Cambridge and since it's 50mins, it doesn't seem worthwhile to take out my computer to work so blogging to kill time sounds like a good idea.

My academic life is now so diverse. I remember when I first started in academia back in 2003. I just stayed in my office to write papers and taught students. What a nice and peaceful life that is. Now, I'm just about to start a project with Rolls Royce with a team of 4-5 people, I'm presenting my findings to BAE Systems and hope to negotiate a new piece of work. I spent all day Tuesday writing a fellowship proposal that wd give me access to the NHS. I am meeting up with Jon to see if we could collaborate on a paper for a special issue of marketing science on user generated content. I've just asked Sebastian (my post doc) to design a new mathematical model for a market of outcomes. Meanwhile, I've sent in a paper under review at JM and working on another paper for Decision Science. Next week I have to conduct a workshop for AIM to junior academics on how to engage with industry to develop win-win collaboration. Coming up, I have a special issue on new pricing models in the service economy in the journal of revenue and pricing management and a book to be published in march on complex engineering service systems. Quite a lot on my plate. The main driver for all this activity is not consultancy money or grants, although it's nice to hve them. The main driver is to get quality data that wd get me at least 4 tier 1 publications. Until I hit at least 4, I don't think I have achieved 'top of class'. Interestingly many ppl ask why I bother. After all there really isn't much money in academia in the UK and I'm already a professor.

I suppose it's personal satisfaction and credibility. And making a difference. I simply get annoyed when I read a paper where I learnt nothing from. I want to know that my research makes a difference and I want to show the world what academia should be. That one can do impactful research as well as basic research and contribute to theory and practice And have a life and home and hubby and kids. So there.