N. Petkov

Nicolai Petkov

I am

member of the university council of the University of Groningen (RuG) and the council of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. I have been a professor of computer science at the RuG since 1991. Before that I had been with five other universities abroad. At present I am also a guest professor at a UK university. My international contacts and visits to foreign universities made me familiar with different concepts on what makes universities attractive as employers. For more than 10 years I was scientific director of the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science of the RuG. The experiences that I collected led me to the following insights regarding urgently needed changes in university policy.

My theses

Explanation of the theses

Trust in the security of a university job must be restored! No forced lay-offs of personnel and we need a stronger legal status and protection from budgetary deficits.

Several excellent professors at our institute left the university for a position elsewhere because they felt insecure about their future at the RuG. In one of these cases, a former colleague talked to the dean when he received an offer from another university. Specifically, he wanted a guarantee that he would not be affected by any future restructurings (reorganisations) and would have a secure job until his retirement (which was due in 15 years): that would enable him to bring up his young children. The dean helplessly told him that even he, the dean himself, did not have this kind of guarantee for his own professor position. Consequently that colleague left our university. This was a considerable loss for us and it took us eight years to find a good successor. The recurring threat of reorganisations and forced lay-offs, due to sudden big financial deficits of the university, is a major source of anxiety and unrest. If we do not succeed in restoring trust in the security of a university position, we will not be able to attract and keep talented people. People are our main asset and this must be the leading principle in financial allocation decisions. This concerns both scientific and support personnel. I will strive for a strengthening of the legal status of university personnel and for taking measures against the risks of serious budgetary deficits and job cuts.

Flexibility in the system of personal performance evaluations is required! We need a system that favors creativity and diversity of qualities.

Nearly a decade ago, I was a member of the committee that wrote the first document describing the requirements for the tenure track system. The goal of the tenure track was to attract excellent personnel and offer them the possibility to become full professors. Over time the system evolved too far, becoming very elaborate, including requirements ever harder to fulfill -- especially those concerning research grants -- and taking a large amount of time for its implementation. It became a kind of Procrustes bed. (In the Greek myth, Procrustes had an iron bed in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and then he set to work on them with his smith's hammer, stretching them to fit.) People differ in their qualities: one is extrovert and able to build a wide network, attract research grants and manage a large group; another one is introvert but comes up with that excellent new theory that will stay. We need them both. We do not need clones of the same type of manager-scientist that optimally fit a system of rules that tends to favor quantity over quality. We need a diversity of qualities in people who excel in different dimensions. We need a system that facilitates and supports talent development instead of personnel management and control. I will strive for an improvement of the system in that direction.

Attention to the supervision of PhD students must be upheld! Supervisors need more time to fulfill their role of scientific parents.

I obtained my PhD degree in Germany where the thesis supervisor/director is called 'doctor father'. This illustrates the fact that supervisors have a parental role in the education of the next generation of scientists. At the same time however, we are terrorized by the obligation imposed upon us to devote most of our time to writing grant proposals, networking to increase our chances to obtain grants, participating in proposal evaluation committees and managing grants. Consequently, we do not have enough time to fulfill our role of scientific parents. A paradoxical situation has now emerged: senior researchers spend more time in obtaining funds in order to appoint PhD students than in supervising these students. The growing bureaucratization of undergraduate teaching disguised as "quality control" puts further claim on our time and keeps us away from the core activities of teaching and research. The multitude of PhD studentship forms with different legal status (bursaal, AIO 100%, AIO 80%, promotiestudent) also creates an abnormal situation. This system needs to be changed and I will work to achieve that change.

Opinions

About the current system of research financing

Russian roulette training

(Published in Universiteitskrant Groningen, nr.7, October 6, 2011)

Imagine a Russian roulette game with six participants. There is a revolver with six chambers: one loaded with a bullet, the others empty. The players use the revolver in turn, each pressing the trigger once. We consider a player-friendly version of the game in which they point the revolver in the air; the original version has a less happy end and is not recommended here. The player who happens to release a shot is declared to be the winner and receives a prize of one million in a safe haven currency. Subsequently, the winner gets wide recognition in appreciation of his/her performance. As the game gains popularity, consultants start offering trainings and the winners are welcome speakers at various success-in-life and carrier-development events.

Let us now make the following Gedankenexperiment (a powerful tool for those who like to think): six participants reach the last phase of a research proposal evaluation round. We assume that all six participants are equally excellent. The outcome is not that each candidate carries home one sixth of the available money according to the uniform distribution of excellence. No, the winner takes it all; there is one winner, and five losers. The winner is declared a "top scientist", cozily abbreviated to "topper", by his administration, a qualification enthusiastically and frequently used by that administration as a proof of its own excellence and wisdom. In hindsight, explanations are found why he/she won. He/She is in the spot light and is invited to give talks on winning strategies and patronize future candidates. In short, he/she becomes "A Hero of Our Time" -- by coincidence, this is Lermontov's novel where we find the only mention of that game in classic Russian literature.

A whole industry arises where expensive consultants offer trainings in which you may be advised to study the hobbies of committee members - if you, for instance, drop the expression "hole in one" during your presentation, this may win you the sympathy of a committee member who plays golf. No joke: such advice is given to barristers in their professional magazine. Now remember that we postulated our six candidates to be equally brilliant. The outcome was purely random and arbitrary. It was, maybe, just the aftershave/perfume smell of the winning candidate or his/her shirt tugged out at the back that pushed the bets in his/her favor. Of course, this explanation will be ironically dismissed as "loser frustration" by the granting organization, it will be experienced as ultimately offending by the winner, and it will be ferociously rejected by his/her administration as egalitarian disrespect for a genius. Similar behavior is observed in business, arts and politics.

The accounts on the scientists-losers are much shorter: their prize is the Damocles sword above their heads, while waiting for tenure or promotion. According to Taleb, the art-losers are destined to serve you a cappuccino at Starbucks or a burger at McDonald's.

Before making the moral, let me re-tell you a story, the origin of which I forgot, maybe Taleb? Moshe prayed to God to help him win the lottery. He prayed every day, day after day. One day, just after saying his prayer and looking at heaven with a mixture of tired hope and threatening reproach, Moshe was stunned as heaven opened and God spoke to him: "Moshe, do your part: do finally buy yourself a lottery ticket."

Roles differ, so do morals. One for scientists: the current Zeitgeist requires you to to play the research grant lottery, unless you prefer to work at Starbucks or McDonald's. Another for administrators: you may be fooled by randomness when judging the quality of your scientists in terms of acquired money. Finally, a moral for policy makers: hazardous games should be abolished or at least radically restricted.

Recommended literature: N.N. Taleb: Fooled by randomness. Penguin, 2007.

Nicolai Petkov

The author is professor and member of the university council.

About the new profile of the University of Groningen

400 million dollars

(Published under a different title "Will wants to buy a company", given by the editor, in Universiteitskrant Groningen, nr.24, March 1, 2012)

400 million dollars is the venture capital Will West raised. He is founder and chairman of Control4, a worldwide market leader in home automation. This concerns devices that take care that the heating goes down when you leave home and up when you come back, or that your favorite music follows you through the house. Control4 want to grow, as fast as possible. And this is why Will was in Groningen on invitation of my well-connected colleague Marco Aiello. Will spoke with president Sibrand Poppema and dean Jasper Knoester. Will may decide to invest in our research, but the main reason he was here is to buy companies.
        Imagine we had started a program in home automation ten years ago. Imagine it had produced 200 graduates and that some of them had started companies that were still out there, looking for ways to break through to a bigger, international market. Will would be keen to buy them. Does it sound unrealistic, like a dream? Let me then tell you another story.
        Ten years ago, a young lecturer in the computer science (informatica) department of the University of Groningen, two PhD students and one master student founded a wannabe-high-tech company. They did not have much money to spend, so they decided to rent just one room in Beilen (30 km south of Groningen). With the knowledge they got in image processing, computer vision and neural networks, they developed a system for automatic license plate recognition. This is a tough market with fierce competition. A few years ago they finally broke through and their company Dacolian became a market leader. Worldwide. Subsequently, Dacolian merged with stock exchange-noted Norwegian Q-free. Personally, this means that the founders no longer need to work. Well, they still work, as a challenge and for fun. And they employ 70 people, 30 of which graduates of the RuG, half of them with a PhD degree. Yes, in Beilen, a small place near Groningen. You do not always have to be in Silicon Valley for high-tech success stories.
        How different this sounds from what I experienced first when I came to Groningen 21 years ago. I was preparing a European research proposal, and an elderly experienced colleague advised me to specify that Groningen is an economically underdeveloped region: this would increase the chances of getting a European grant. "Pleeease, help meee, I am working in an underdeveloped region." Hmm, I never felt comfortable with that argument.
        Recently the University of Groningen made a choice for a profile in Energy and Healthy Aging. We will start programs in these areas. In 5 years from now, we may produce 100 graduates per year. Some of them will start up companies and some of them - I am sure - will become very successful. And Will West, or another guy of his caliber, would come to Groningen eager to buy them. And our local guys may sell, or maybe not, maybe they will go themselves out to buy other companies in order to grow fast and remain leaders in their markets, worldwide, not just in Groningen.
        Finally, a message to these future high-tech Energy and Healthy-Aging students: "Come on guys, I do no longer want to read these stories of CalTech professors that became super-rich because they invested in the start-ups of their students. You do not always have to be in Silicon Valley for success stories."

Nicolai Petkov is professor of computer science, a member of the university council, and a wannabe high-tech investor.

Last changed: 2012-03-02.