My Journey Towards being Doctoral Researcher
Being a researcher is something that gives one an image of being nerdy or a mad scientist crammed in some dingy lab experimenting on unravelling the secrets of universe, or at least this is what I had in mind!
I had an average childhood and adulthood, with not many exceptions, like most of the people with moderate access to resources. I mean coming from a country with its fair share of economic and political problems it was a blessing that I could afford, which one can call a "good education" in that part of the world. When the question of making a career choice was thrust upon me, one not-so-fine afternoon, I had but only one or two choices practically! Although in theory I could've chosen a field that would've brought me comfort but in my own mind the sphere was limited to SCIENCE!
After graduating from secondary school, I found myself roaming in halls of the legendary Government College University in Lahore where the likes of Dr. Abdus Salam had once roamed! The walls of the new block, part of the physics department, were adorned with descriptions of the theory of relativity, Bose-Einstein condensates and stills of Salam's office furniture. All I could feel at that time was a strong sense of belonging to this group of people who spent their lives exploring the very frontiers of science.
With this in mind, I entered university which by some accounts was the best engineering university of Pakistan and within that university I chose supposedly the best engineering discipline there was i.e. Electrical Engineering. I was lucky once again to make this choice as in the very first semester I had a teacher who would inspire and shape my thought process for the rest of my life. He was himself somewhat of a prodigy with a PhD in quantum computing from arguably the best institution in the world, MIT and he talked about Physics and Mathematics with elegance. He talked about things like Fields Medal, Nema Arkani Hamid and taught Spivak's Calculus instead of sticking to the conventional course prescribed by the university management. After such an experience I already had my eyes set on a future where I would spend rest of my life dedicated to research. But of course life had other plans for me in store, at least initially! After spending four great years in university where I didn't focus much on getting good grades but on developing the skill of critical thinking I almost lost track of my initial ambition and ended up in the usual rat race of finding employment after graduation.
At that time, I loathed the idea of doing a nine to five job and the only thing that could've saved me from getting stuck in that rut at that time was further education. The avenues of quality further education, however, in Pakistan were quite limited with almost no resources, in terms of both infrastructure and experienced people and for pursuing post graduate studies abroad my own financial resources were limited. I couldn't get scholarships through the usual route (i.e. good scores in GRE + good GPA in Bachelor's) thanks to my focus on developing critical thinking instead of good grades in Bachelor's! Dejected by this train of thought I started applying for regular jobs and stumbled upon an opportunity where I would get to study and get paid at the same time. This seemed very much lucrative as I could hold off the harsh practical life that awaited me outside the doors of academia for at least two more years. The opportunity was a fellowship to do master's studies at Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Islamabad which was ranked as the top research university in Pakistan at that time. There was one catch though, that I was bound to serve for 5 years at the affiliated public sector research organisation after the completion of my studies. All in all, this sounded like something doable given the fact that it was after all science and research that I would be engaged in. With this in mind, I started the job but after covid, marriage and one kid I again found myself in a rut where research was only for its namesake while the public sector bureaucratic red tape was very much real. Nevertheless, my time there taught me valuable things in terms of management and provided me enough time to focus on things that I really wanted to explore. Once again, with a considerable work experience, I was looking for research opportunities abroad. One thing was changed this time though; I had confidence in my abilities and knew what set me apart from others and could show this to others as well.
At first it was tough getting out of my comfort zone, but I started looking for jobs in academia as well in the industry. Luckily, although with some effort, I landed a role as a consultant Electrical Engineer in the Uk at Alten Ltd. It was a big opportunity as I had never been out of Pakistan, and this was precisely the kind of exposure I wanted. I worked at a renowned aerospace company, Rolls Royce Control Systems as an Alten contractor. I mainly worked on fault injection testing for motor drive systems during my time there. It was great job and life went on but my mind and heart were still set on a career in academia and research!
I kept searching and within few months I found an opportunity, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network, namely NEPIT (Network for Evaluation of Propagation and Interference Training) with research objectives that truly "resonated" with my experience and liking. I applied to the position, got shortlisted for the interview and was finally selected as Doctoral Candidate 10 of the NEPIT consortium.
With this I finally started (not really started!) my journey towards being a researcher in true sense! It was a long journey with many twists and turns, and I find myself contemplating over all those years while writing this. It finally landed me in the unique city of Eindhoven in a truly unique and marvellous, some would say a small but great country of the Netherlands in one of the truly best research universities in the world with the strongest links to industry in a one of its kind industry-academia ecosystem called the brainport region. How my first year as a researcher turned out here, well you can look at the pictures and judge!
In the end, I would like to say that the journey is far from complete and the struggle is still ongoing, but I have learnt valuable lessons which help me shape my path everyday. One of those, is that one should never underestimate one’s own abilities!