A reflection on my academic journey

Jae-kwang Kim

8/3/2020

Short History

  • 2000: PhD (from Iowa State U)
  • 2000 - 2001: Census Bureau & Westat
  • 2002 -2008 : Korea (한국외대, 연세대)
  • 2008 - Current: Iowa State U (jointly with KAIST during 2016-2019)

Acknowledgments

  • PhD advisor: Wayne Fuller

  • Collaborators & Friends: J.N.K. Rao, Chris Skinner, Randy Sitter, Jun Shao, Changbao Wu, David Haziza, Myunghee Cho, Dongwan Shin, Sangun Park, Emily Berg, Kosuke Morikawa

  • PhD students: Sixia Chen, Ming Zhou, Minsun Riddles, Shu Yang, Jongho Im, Seunghwan Park, Seho Park, Zhonglei Wang, Hejian Sang, Danhyang Lee

Short practical advices

  1. Maximize your input (=time): Do not try to optimize your output vs input. Securing enough time for research is important in several ways.

  • It can control anxiety and emotional stress.

  • Maturity grows with time. Research is a life-long process. It is better to be a late boomer (대기만성) than a young star.

Short practical advices

  1. Having a good collaborator is like having a turbo engine.

  • In the junior stage, try to work with someone who has good experience and knowledge. Even if you are doing 90% of the work, it is often the additional 10% that determines the quality of the paper.

  • Once you become more mature, try to work with young ones with more energy and less experience (i.e. graduate students).

Short practical advices

  1. Find good problems: Finding a good problem is more important than solving a well-studied problem.

  • A good problem is like a niche (틈새시장).

  • Expand your research area gradually. Understand the exploration and exploitation trade-off.

  • Real data consulting often provides unexpected problems, which turn out to be good ones.

Short practical advices

  1. Never Give up : Persistency is the key to academic success.

  • The null hypothesis of our life is sorrow, not joy. The null hypothesis of our submission is rejection, not acceptance. So, don’t be discouraged with rejection.

  • Be realistic but never give up. Try to find a sentence of hope in the rejection letter, as you try to find a humor point even under difficult situations.

Short practical advices

  1. Detail is everything: One might think that the big picture and the ideas and good theory are important for publication.

  • Yes, they are important of course but that is not enough.

  • In reality, details are also very important. English expression, proper citation, careful experiment, etc.

  • In an analysis of NBA basketball games, it was found that the height of the players were no longer important for performance, as the average height of the NBA players are similar. The other factors became more important.

Thank you for your attention & Good luck!

Never give up!