Stories from Beyond Academia #9: Priscilla Grassi Freire
PhD in Mechanical Engineering
What comes to mind when you think about the process of completing a PhD?
Is it years of devotion to your specific topic? All the reading and researching? All the writing and publishing? The presentations? The trying to survive on a stipend that’s often less than minimum wage? The increasingly urgent sense of ‘please let this be over’?
Maybe it’s the time spent trying to work out what comes next? (Hopefully the stories in this series are giving a sense of the many options out there!)
In our experience, true for all of the above; but so too that we, as PhD scholarship recipients, were lucky enough to be paid at least some money to take some time to read and write and learn things related to a topic we found interesting, as well as pick up a bunch of skills and be exposed to some mindset-shifting experiences.
This conversation with Dr Priscilla Grassi Freire reminded us of the opportunity that is a PhD. In fact, just before the questions kicked off, there was even a brief discussion about how maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to do a second PhD (particularly if the pay was better!)
Priscilla holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, for which she investigated how material variability impacts the performance of bulk solids handling systems. Read on to hear about her path from industry to PhD and back again, and why she believes a PhD changes you forever and for the better.
Jonathan McGuire: Welcome Priscilla, and thanks for joining us to share your post-PhD career story! Most people we've interviewed so far have pursued a PhD with at least an initial idea that they'd go on to be an academic. But that wasn’t your path - could you tell us a bit about what work you were doing pre-PhD and how you ended up becoming a PhD candidate?
Priscilla Grassi Freire: Absolutely, thank you for having me! And yes, it’s true, I never really envisaged an academic career for myself. I've got an older brother who is a true, pure academic, and I always thought being an academic required supernatural levels of intelligence or skills that I thought weren't really for me. My PhD story actually started close to 10 years ago when I got a job working as a business development officer back in Brazil, where I’m originally from, for a company that is a commercial entity of the University of Newcastle. My job was initially only supposed to be a temporary six-month contract, where they hired me to do some market research and check if there was any opening in the market for the kind of services that they offered, which there was.
My six-month contract was renewed and renewed, and I ended up doing that job for almost three years, which I really, really liked. And then after three years, they made some strategic decisions that meant discontinuing the work we were doing in Brazil. One of my managers at the time said, “I can't give you a job here in Australia at the moment, but I can offer you a PhD scholarship”, as this manager was very connected with the University and the research side of things. So I thought - unemployed in Brazil or student in Australia? I'll take student in Australia! I had always wanted to live abroad, and Australia was one of the countries that I had considered, so it was the perfect opportunity to do something different.
I had really no idea how well I was going to do, but this manager had a project in mind. He had something he wanted to study, and he thought my skills - which weren't purely technical as I had business skills as well - would be ideal for the topic. So that appealed to me because it wouldn’t be purely engineering. It ended up being a lot more engineering than I originally thought, but that was a good thing in the end!
JM: We talk a lot about academic skills being transferable to the business world, but you're saying you got picked for an academic role because your business skills were transferable to the academic context?
PGF: Yes, that was the original idea anyway. Of course, when you start looking into the topic and doing the actual research, you might figure out that that original idea isn't necessarily feasible. So we did have to make some changes as we developed the project, but those business skills were part of the interest in me as a student. And that's how I ended up here!
JM: And so what actually did you end up researching during your PhD?
PGF: My field of research is bulk solids handling. We work with bulk materials, a lot of work for the mining industry, but also agriculture and so on. And I developed a model to assess the performance of some materials handling systems considering material variability. I focused mostly on storage bins and transfer chutes, and the idea behind it was that there are some models to assess how well these pieces of equipment will work, but they don't take into consideration the variability that the material going through the system might have, especially if the moisture changes. I looked at how we can use that variability as an input, and then develop a means to assess performance.
There were lots of aspects of the academic world that I really enjoyed. I found it very stimulating to be surrounded by people with different skills and interests, all within the same field…
JM: I love hearing about all the different things that people study because it's so far out of my wheelhouse. While you never intended to stay in academia, you did transfer from the business world into the academic world. What was that like? Was the culture different? Obviously, you also had a cultural shift from Brazil to Australia too!
PGF: I actually ended up really liking it. There were lots of aspects of the academic world that I really enjoyed. I found it very stimulating to be surrounded by people with different skills and interests, all within the same field because we were in a department where everyone was doing work related to this bulk solids handling area. But I have to say, though, that the department I did my PhD in was a bit unusual in comparison with all my friends that were doing a PhD, as we were basically an industry-focused research department. So whereas a lot of my friends that did a PhD at the same time were in a PhD room with other PhD students, in my department, we had professors and research associates who were also supervisors of PhD students, and we had research assistants all there in the same place. We also had clients coming in and out. So it was a bit different, but a very stimulating environment to be surrounded by people working on their own projects and being able to go and ask questions or seek suggestions. And my project was shaped a lot by the people around me, not just from my department, but other departments as well. So just by talking to people and saying “this is what we want to do, but this is the challenge”, and then someone would make a suggestion that resulted in a little piece of the model, someone else made another suggestion that became another piece of the model, and so on.
JM: Sounds like a very collaborative environment, but definitely different to the stereotypical academic world if you've got clients coming in to see you! Having had that experience and being in that environment, what was it like transitioning back into industry?
PGF: I found it relatively easy - to be honest, it felt like I never left. Rather than feeling like an academic joining industry following my time doing a PhD, I kind of felt the other way around. I felt like I'm an industry representative doing a PhD for some time and then going back to how things were. And again, not to say that I didn't enjoy my time in academia, but I was mostly focused on that tiny little step in advancing my field. That's how I saw it.
JM: When you were going into the academic world and then when you were going back out to industry, was there anything you did to prepare for either of those changes?
PGF: For going back to industry, I made a point of maintaining my industry connections during my whole PhD: I kept my LinkedIn profile very active. I also had a casual job - so again, while my friends doing PhDs were looking for jobs within the university marking exams or doing tutoring, I didn't pursue any of that. Instead, I had a casual job within my department, and I kept doing the same sort of work that I used to do before - interface with clients. I also volunteered to be a student representative in the executive committee of a technical society in my field - the Australian Society for Bulk Solids Handling. That was a really good way to meet very important people in that field, which is a very narrow field. I also volunteered to help with an international conference - which gave me access to all the abstracts and papers before anyone else, as well as access to the presenters. I did this because, when you are hosting something, everyone knows who you are. So I felt that this was a good way to maintain my industry connections while I was away doing a PhD.
JM: There's a lot of foresight there to do that, to maintain and even build more connections.
PGF: I guess it's because I'm very passionate about what I do. I always say that I am an engineer, but I like the people side of engineering better than the numbers side. So it comes quite naturally to me. But my message to readers is there are things you can do, even if they don't come naturally to you, that may be worth looking into as they can help you prepare for a more varied future. So, if you're not sure what you want, to stay in academia or move on to industry, you can do a few of those things and build your connections so that you're more prepared for whatever might come your way.
JM: So going back into industry, what was that transition like? Have you ever come across the findings of your PhD in your everyday work and been like, “Hey, that was me!”
PGF: No, I didn’t publish at all. And I regret that a little bit now, but I don’t think it’s too late so I'm now looking into publishing. I would like to change some things within the model and make some improvements, now working with my colleagues that are experts in the field, so it's something that I'm still thinking of doing. But I did hide my findings, I was very concerned that people with more experience would find all the gaps, and then one day it just hit me that I don't have to solve all the problems and provide a model that is fully functional because I'm advancing a tiny little step. So if someone wants to take that and find flaws or find gaps, I would actually be quite flattered because it means someone took the time to go through it and they can take it to the next level.
I guess in terms of going back to industry, it felt really natural. When I was getting close to the end of my PhD, probably the last eight months or so, I contacted my former manager and I asked if they were interested in hiring me for a casual position. They were happy to have me back, so I went back to the job that I used to do before, with the difference that now I was doing this in Australia, not in Brazil anymore. Which was quite challenging because, in Brazil, I had a very wide network and, for this type of work, finding customers and introducing the company and getting projects and so on, you kind of need to have an established network. So I had to start that pretty much from scratch here in Australia.
So that's why all those things - being a part of the Committee of the technical society and going to conferences and so on - gave me a bit of a head start to get those connections. And that's what I'm doing now - I work as a business development engineer for the same company. The other difference is that my work now is a bit hybrid: I also do some engineering work and I owe that to my PhD. Before doing the PhD, I wasn't too sure how much I could do from a technical point of view, and after studying this for four years and reading so many papers, this was part of what I did every day, so now I feel more confident taking on projects as well. So I do a bit of both.
JM: You mentioned some of the extracurricular things you did have helped you build out your network, and you were just talking about that confidence in your own expertise coming from your PhD. Are there other things from doing a PhD that you think you've gained that have helped coming back?
PGF: One of the main things - and it's quite a transferable skill, but you don't realise it until you're actually doing it - is the fact a PhD is such an overwhelming, massive body of work, and you need to learn how to break that into smaller chunks. And you need to learn how to break those chunks into even smaller pieces that make sense within those chunks.
I had to do so many presentations: six months in and you have nothing, but you already have to present, so I would think “what am I going to present in six months”. That presentation is going to be 10 or 15 minutes long, and has to have a start and middle and an end and it has to make sense. And then at the one-year mark there’s another presentation, and it has to make sense. So you kind of learn how to summarise things in a way that makes sense, regardless of how much work you actually have. And then at the end you have to summarise everything and you have to present it again. I also had to present during my whole PhD because it was an industry-sponsored project. So we had all these mini conferences or updates to the industry sponsor and so on. I had to do that so many times that now it feels very natural. If I have to present something for work, even though I don’t particularly like it, I’m able to present and adjust the content to the amount of time I have.
The other thing is that, before I did a PhD, and now I know it’s a very big misconception, I had this view that you if you're looking to solve a problem in a particular field, then you need to research that field, read all the papers and talk to all the experts in that field, and you will find the solution somehow - it's going to be there. When I did my PhD, I realised that it doesn't have to be like that - you can actually learn a lot from other fields, even if they have nothing to do with your particular field. You can learn about methods or approaches.
I spoke to people from structural engineering, environmental engineering, and even fields outside engineering, and they would make suggestions such as “look at this theory for this part of the model”, and then I realised I could implement that. I read a paper from structural engineering that was pretty much the heart of my PhD, because it gave me the whole idea for the model. I saw that all I had to do was exchange variables for the variables in my field. It's a completely different application, but I used all that knowledge from a different field. Now I see that in my work a lot: sometimes I'll be reading a paper from a different area of knowledge and I'll actually see that this could be applied to an issue we are having, or we can maybe use a certain methodology for a project. So I think that's one of the key lessons that I learned.
If it has been done before, then it's not going to be a PhD because someone has done it… but it doesn't mean you have to completely reinvent the wheel - someone will have done something along the lines of what you're trying to do in some field in the world and you can use learnings from all those different researchers to help you…
JM: There's an almost omnivorous nature in that - you bring everything in and digest it all and you come out with these novel ways of approaching a problem that you wouldn't have if you kept a really narrow focus on what's been done before in your field.
PGF: Yes, and that's the very nature of the PhD! If it has been done before, then it's not going to be a PhD because someone has done it. So it has to be new, but it doesn't mean you have to completely reinvent the wheel - someone will have done something along the lines of what you're trying to do in some field in the world and you can use learnings from all those different researchers to help you. It’s really shifted my mindset in how I look at problems now - I'm not as narrow-minded, I guess, thinking that the solution has to be within this realm of papers or experts.
JM: We’re on to my last question now, which is: what advice would you give to someone considering a career switch from academia to industry? Or in your case, someone who's in industry and considering doing a PhD?
PGF: For someone who is in industry, if they have the opportunity to do a PhD, I would say go for it. I think it really changes you as a person. It changes you as a professional. It opens up ways of thinking. So I would definitely say, if you have the opportunity, take it. Yes, it's a few years of hard work, and possibly less pay, but it's definitely worthwhile just in terms of how it changes you forever.
In terms of people within the academic world wanting to move into industry, what I would say is take every opportunity you have to be present in any industry-related event. So, if you are invited to present your work, do it, even if you don't like public speaking, because it will be really good practice, it will give you visibility to people in industry. And I'd say nowadays, I can see a big shift in the universities here in Australia - I don't know about the rest of the world - but there's a lot of initiatives like industry-sponsored PhDs, and I would say most of the good universities will have programs to support that. In my case, for example, my project was a part of an Advanced Doctoral Training Center - it was the METS one, which was kind of a pioneer project, but it was really good. The way it works is that industry representatives will come to the university with something they want studied or a problem they want to solve or something they want to develop, a testing method or whatever it is, and then the university will recruit a student that meets the requirements or that has the skills to complete that project. The student will have a supervisor within the company in addition to the academic supervisors. So that's one of the ways that this can happen.
But what I saw at the University of Newcastle is that there are so many initiatives like that. And all of these initiatives will come accompanied by a whole support system. So there will be workshops on time management or presentation skills, there will be seminars where you present to other students so that you build up your confidence and also to know what the other students are working on. So there is a whole support network if you look for it, I'm sure other universities will have similar projects. And there's a lot of cross-collaboration between universities as well, like in ARC centers, for example. So, I would say, if you're interested in considering a career in industry, I would definitely recommend having a look at what the university offers in terms of support. And basically, just take all the different opportunities that come your way!
And with that, we thank Priscilla for sharing her story with us. The interesting fields in which people undertake their PhDs never cease to amaze. Let alone the apparently endless range of non-academic post-PhD career possibilities!
If you are a PhD who has moved beyond academia and you are interested in sharing your story, please get in touch with us via our LinkedIn pages - Sam, Jonathan - we’d love to hear from you.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by persons interviewed in this series are solely that of the persons interviewed and do not reflect the views, opinions, or position of Sam, Jonathan or Sequitur Consulting.