Science and Scientists

 I left academia back in 2019 to become a research scientist at Onto Innovation. My title was research scientist, but was I still a scientist?

I read papers and thought up approaches using machine learning and the theory of machine learning to solve problems in semiconductor metrology (primarily for optical critical dimension (OCD) and a little X-ray critical dimension (XCD) metrology). I also worked on simulation. I mostly did applied research, looking to put ideas together from papers that could be used for OCD.

However, my work's results were primary trade secrets. Some were turned into preliminary patents, and some were handed off to engineers to be put into products. However, none of my results were communicated to other scientists. This was true even internally. I made presentations, but the other research scientists at Onto Innovation were not interested unless they were relevant to their work at the time. I did not go to conferences.

And I felt frustrated.

In January of 2022, I left to focus on Euler Scientific. Our main project was research, with a strong (maybe too strong) basic research component. But since our main customer was the Department of Defense, and because our main goal was to produce an application (the basic research was supposed to turn into applied research and then into an alpha application), and to have a successful company (and so more customers), there was no discussion outside of the limited number of involved scientists (really only myself and two with minimal time commitment from Fermi National Laboratory) and I didn't attend any conferences. There was an agreement to write papers, but without dedicated time/effort, they have been slow (there are two that are in the editing process (one that needs to be re-edited for submission to another journal and one that needs to be submitted for the first time) and two more that are almost finished and an additional one that requires more work). 

Was I still a scientist?

I spent the last 8 months focused on finding new employment. Despite funds being limited, I attended a conference I was invited to: Erice International School on Complexity: the XVIII Course "Machine Learning approaches for complexity". I realized there what I had been missing. Since the fall of 2017 (when I took parental leave, which became a parental leave sabbatical in the spring of 2018 which continued until I left academia in 2019) I had not communicated my research with other scientists (non-collaborators). Science can not be done alone; it must be communicated. This was what I had been missing.

I am not sure if I will still be a scientist in my next career step. I think that being a scientist outside of laboratories and academia is a privilege and one that I can not maintain. I look forward to bringing my work to customers, and my title will be engineer.