Thursday, May 21, 2009

Starting collaborations

At a conference I spoke with a grad school classmate of mine who was in another PhD program but with similar interests. He is in the first year of a faculty job, and I asked him he was able to get any research done while teaching. He said that he had and even gotten some new collaborations going.

I confessed that I had some difficulty starting collaborations, so I asked him more details about them. One of the two is still in the "looking for collaborators" stage. The other collaboration is with a faculty member at the same university in another department. He's contributing expertise to the project. I asked more details how he met this person --- did this person come to him or did he come to the person.

"Well, I came to them and they came to me." He paused. "Actually, it's my sibling."

Whew. Glad to know others have just as much difficulty as I do starting collaborations. Still he has a guaranteed salary for the next few years and gets to teach and come up for tenure.

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