The key to how far a person can go depends on who he is with. So whether you are studying for a graduate degree or a Ph.D., the research group you are about to join is crucial to your future. To judge the quality of a research group, you can consider the following three aspects:
Luo Zhenyu once said that in business, Silicon Valley investors have a mental approach when judging the quality of a company, and they continue to observe the flow of talents. . If senior talent is flowing away from the company to other companies in the same industry, it is a bad company. On the contrary, it is a good company. This mentality is also applicable in the field of scientific research. The flow and composition of a research group directly reflect its strengths and weaknesses.
First of all, let’s look at the academic leaders, whether they are academicians, Thousand Talents, Yangtze River, or Outstanding Youth, Hundred Talents Plan, New Century Talents. In China, if the boss does not have a title, it will be difficult to develop and grow. After all, the scientific research community is also divided into many hills.
Secondly, look at whether this research group has a good successor team. In addition to the boss, are there any young talents in the Hundred Talents Plan, Young Talents in the Thousand Talents, and Young Yangtze River? The fact that outstanding young talents have joined shows that this research group is dynamic and sustainable.
Finally, look at the quality of students. The eyes of the masses are sharp. Are any of the new students admitted each year recommended and graduated from prestigious schools? If the newly recruited students are basically transfer students, it means that the quality of this research group is not very high.
For a research group, high-level articles and high-quality patents are high-quality product output.
Needless to say, articles, except NS (nature and sicence), are nature sub-journals. Then there are no. 1. For example, PRL for physics, cell for biology, JACS for chemistry, and AM for materials.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences previously stipulated that the standard for master's degree graduation was at least one SCI article or one patent. The year I graduated, the validity of patents was canceled, which directly caused many people to delay their graduation. China’s patents are actually relatively weak. According to data published online, by the end of 2013, the number of invention patent applications in China had reached 825,000, ranking first in the world for three consecutive years. However, according to the "Intellectual Property Rights Report of Chinese Universities (2010)", the actual patent conversion rate of Chinese universities is lower than 5. In 2013, Zhang Xiaoqiang, then deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, revealed at the "China Economic Annual Conference" that China's scientific and technological achievements conversion rate Only 10.
China’s patents are very wet, but there are also excellent results. A positive example is the news from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in August. The Shanghai Institute of Ceramics and Shenzhen Guanghe Precision Automation Equipment Co., Ltd. signed a dye-sensitized solar cell technology transfer agreement, with a technology transfer fee of RMB 100 million. The significance of such a high-quality patent exceeds the contribution of the article to the country.
Many talent plans now emphasize scientific research achievements in the past five years. This is for continuity. The boss may be pretty good, and he did a science job, but it was ten years ago, and he hasn’t had any promising work in recent years. Such research groups may already be a thing of the past.
Some research groups are large but not specialized. If you like to follow trends and chase hot spots, you will study graphene if you are interested in graphene. If you are interested in topology, you will focus on topology. It seems that it has been advancing with the times without forming its own characteristics. Some research groups focus on a certain field for a long time and become Beidou in a specific field.
For example, the label of our research group is thermoelectric materials. My boss is the chairman of the European Thermoelectric Association. When people mention our research group, they instinctively think that we study thermoelectric materials.
Finally, in one sentence, a good research group should have clear labels, continuous output of results, and high-quality personnel flow and composition.