Writing and the Dictionary of Cognitive Science

Disseminating knowledge is one of the most important elements of my job.  One of the most effective means of disseminating knowledge is writing about what one has discovered, and publishing this writing as a journal article or as a book.

Writing, however, is an activity that requires a great deal of practice.  There are times when one cannot write during a research project – for instance, when a project is just starting or is ongoing, and you do not have any results to write about!  How do you keep your writing habits sharp in such lean times?

I try to keep in the writing habit by taking on projects that permit me to write when the need arises, but which can be left alone when other kinds of writing projects are put on the ‘front burner’.  One of my most important tools for maintaining my writing habit is the University Of Alberta Dictionary Of Cognitive Science.  It is a perfect writing project, because it can be left dormant for long periods of time.  When the need arises, it is easy to extend, because you simply find terms that can be defined, and which do not currently have a definition on the site.

 

This Dictionary of Cognitive Science is simply that: a web resource that provides brief descriptions of terms that are related to cognitive science in one way or another.  Most descriptions in this dictionary talk about a term in a paragraph or two, and provide a handful of references.  The Dictionary is organized alphabetically, and is also searchable.  It currently has entries for 373 terms, beginning with ‘abecedarium’ and ending with ‘z-lens’.  Since June 12, 2012 I have been tweeting links to its entries, in random order, every weekday as a ‘cognitive science word of the day’, or #cogsci #wotd.  I will have exhausted this list sometime by the end of 2013, and will have to add more definitions to continue this practice!

The Dictionary of Cognitive Science began as a class writing project.  Students in a graduate course on cognitive science wrote a handful of definitions, and I posted these definitions on a website that was being delivered by a lab SPARCstation.  One of my former graduate students, David Medler, wrote some routines for searching and posting on this website; David and I even published an account of this as a pedagogical activity (Dawson & Medler, 1999).  The current version is maintained as an Adobe Dreamweaver site on my office desk machine, and is served out on a new Linux box that is housed in my basement lab.

The Dictionary started as a class writing exercise, but it soon took on a life of its own.  It turned out that a lot of people were connecting to it.  As a result, I began to feel a responsibility to grow it, and to clean up entries in it that I felt were substandard.  I started this phase of the project in 2009.  In addition to editing existing entries, I added new entries related to material being moulded into a book on LEGO robots and embodied cognitive science (Dawson, Dupuis, & Wilson, 2010).  After another hiatus, another set of terms were added while I was writing my current book on the foundations of cognitive science (Dawson, 2013).

While the Dictionary of Cognitive Science exists as an internet resource, its control structure is a narrow plywood bookshelf that is slowly being filled with hundreds of index cards.  This physical instantiation of the Dictionary stands in my office, as shown in the image below.  The writing process proceeds as follows:  First, I scan through the Dictionary, looking for terms related to my current work that have no entries, or looking for terms that need to be revised.  For each term that I could create or revise, I write the term on an index card.  Second, I take a handful of these cards home, and spend a while writing an electronic version of a definition for each.  Third, I create a page for each new term in Dreamweaver, and update the required links in the website that permit the new definitions to be indexed.  At this time I stamp a ‘completed’ date on the index card of each definition that has been created.  I then upload the updated Dictionary to the server, and am ready to post the new entries on Twitter, one day at a time.  With every post, I stamp a ‘posted’ date on the index card, and then place the card on its alphabetized shelf in my office.

 

 

As the fall term comes to an end, I will have run out of current Dictionary entries.  Fortunately, I am working on a couple of new projects (relating neural networks to Bayes theorem, and a book about interpreting the internal structure of neural networks trained on musical tasks), which will serve as a source of (needed) new material for the Dictionary of Cognitive Science.  I am stocked up on index cards, and ready to write new definitions to keep the rust off my writing while I collect new data on these new projects.

References

 

 

·         Dawson, M. R. W. (2013). Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

·         Dawson, M.R.W., Dupuis, B., & Wilson, M. (2010). From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots. Athabasca University Press, Edmonton.

·         Dawson, M. R. W., & Medler, D. A. (1999). The Dictionary of Cognitive Science: One approach to teaching students how to create their own WWW instructional materials. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 5, 65-78.

 

 

 

Strange Circles That Map Coltrane Changes

One of my collaborators notes that my last few blogs are very political in nature.  I thought that I would change that up by writing about some artificial neural networks and jazz research that we have been conducting, research to be presented this weekend at a conference in Calgary.  Of course, this assumes that jazz is not political, which is probably a dangerous move.

Most jazz pieces are essentially song structures in which musicians play sequences of chords called chord progressions.  Certain chord progressions are popular because the transition from chord to chord is musically pleasing, and because the progression permits moving from one musical key to another, permitting flexibility and providing musical variety.

One particularly important chord progression is the II-V-I., in the key of C major this progression starts by first playing the D minor seventh chord (Dm7), then by playing the G dominant seventh chord (G7), and ends by playing the C major seventh chord (Cmaj7).  In the key of C this is a II-V-I progression because D, the root note of Dm7, is the second note of the C major scale; G, the root note of G7, is the fifth note of the C major scale; and C, the root note of Cmaj7, is the first note of the C major scale.

The II-V-I has evolved into more complex chord progressions.  For instance, John Coltrane introduced the chord progression now known as the Coltrane changes on his seminal 1960 album Giant Steps, where it is central to two pieces, “Giant Steps” and “Countdown”.  The Coltrane changes are an elaboration of the II-V-I; it includes the three chords of this older progression, but adds four more chords.  Two of these are lead-in chords to the V, and the other two are lead-in chords to the I.  The table below provides the Coltrane changes for the key of C major.

Last summer we were interested in training artificial neural networks to generate chord progressions: when presented a chord, a network would generate the next chord in the progression.  To do this for the Coltrane changes, we had to determine the chord progression for any major key.  However, this is not easy: accounts of the Coltrane changes on the web are opaque.

In a previous blog entry, I described some ‘strange circles’ – arrangements of notes in a circle, so that adjacent notes in the circle are a constant musical interval apart – that we had extracted from other musical networks that we trained.  For our Coltrane project, we found that combining these circles into more complex diagrams provided a map that let us build our training set.

In particular, all of the tonic notes of the Coltrane changes are represented in a ‘rose diagram’ that attaches a ‘strange circle’ of major thirds to every note around the more traditional circle of fifths.  Here is the complete ‘rose diagram’:

 

The inner circle provides the tonic notes for the II-V-I skeleton of this progression, and the outer circles provide the tonic notes for the lead in chords.  To use this map, you start with a chord from the inner circle, you then play four chords related to the outer circle, and you end with two chords from the inner circle.  The figure below shows how the Coltrane changes falls out of the ‘rose diagram’ for the key of C major.  In this figure I extended the lines ending in G# and B so that the chords are mapped in the proper order.  The dotted arrows take you chord by chord through the changes; compare their order with the table above.  If you follow this pattern starting at any other inside note, then you will generate the Coltrane changes for some other key.

 We found that a very simple network – one with no hidden units – could learn the Coltrane progression if we presented inverted chords.  Inverted chords are the same chords (i.e. the same set of notes), but the notes are arranged in a different order.  When we examined the internal structure of the trained network, we found another easily mapped regularity.

The connection weights revealed that the network had learned that a key aspect of the Coltrane changes involved the relationships between the different base notes used in the seven (inverted) chords for the changes.  These relationships only involve four different musical intervals: unison, the major second, the minor 7^th, and the major 7^th.  A unique connection weight defined each of these intervals.  These relationships could be plotted as a map of movements about the vertices of a triangle, where each vertex is the lowest note of an inverted chord.

 One such map is shown below.  It starts with a chord that has F as its lowest note, then moves to play four different chords, each having Eb as a low note.  It returns to F, and then ends with a chord whose lowest note is E:

 

Interestingly, to start the same sequence in the next key the first note is the Eb; the last arrow in this map is a pointer to the first chord in the next key.  If you fill out the remaining triangles then another elegant map of the Coltrane changes is produced:

The interesting thing about this final map is that its outer wheel of notes, and its inner wheel of notes, are two other ‘strange circles’: the two circles of major seconds.  In short, it seems that whenever we train networks on tasks that involve musical chords, we find the networks represent chord regularities with these strange circles.

Sitting In My Office Until I Die

When I started this blog, I imagined that there might be more cognition, and less reality.  However, the business of discovering and disseminating cognitive science currently faces the harsh reality of our recent provincial budget.  I now find myself quoting Alberta Hansard!

Consider a small exchange at the Alberta Legislature that occurred Tuesday afternoon, May 7, 2013.  Dr. Neil Brown, the progressive conservative MLA for Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill asked why the government has not allowed postsecondary institutions to adjust tuition fees for the increased cost of living.  He prefaced his question with a reference to faculty retirement packages: “Postsecondary institutions in Alberta are struggling to cope with the 2013 budget cuts, and some of them are offering retirement packages to faculty, including some of our leading researchers.”

Dr. Brown addressed his question to Thomas Lukaszuk, the Deputy Premier and the Minister for Enterprise and Advanced Education.  Mr. Lukaszuk answered as follows:

“Well, Mr. Speaker, offering early retirement packages to tenured professors, who have no mandatory retirement age and actually can sit in office till they die, is not perhaps a bad idea if they choose to take those retirement packages, but we were very, very clear in our messaging. We will not be balancing the budgets of this province or our provincial universities, schools, and colleges on the backs of students. We have to make sure that we have efficiencies in the system, that we run those institutions as efficiently as possible before we ask students to pay additional money through tuition or taxpayers to invest additional dollars into the institutes.”

I was astonished by the minister’s comments about retirement in his answer; I have bolded them to bring them to your attention.  They seem to imply that once a university professor achieves tenure, they are strolling along easy street.  Something like that might be true of some political institutions – the Canadian Senate? – but  not of our postsecondary schools.  I would like to make a few quick points in response to the minister’s answer:

1. It is true that there is no mandatory retirement age at the University of Alberta.  However, I do not believe that is true of all of our postsecondary institutions.
2. Achieving tenure is an important milestone in a career, but it does not eliminate the challenge of the job, or its accountability.  It increases it.
3. I am accountable for my job performance.  Each year I compile an annual report, a document used to evaluate my performance (annually).  This evaluation considers all three cornerstones of my position: teaching, research, and service.  If I am not performing to expectation, then there are mechanisms in place to remove me – even if I am tenured.
4. Tenure and promotion lead to more accountability, not less.  As I proceeded through academic ranks, the expectations about my performance increased.  The university expects full professors to do much more than assistant professors do!
5. I am accountable for every class I teach.  Near the end of each course, students anonymously evaluate my teaching performance along a number of different dimensions.  The results of these evaluations are publicly available to any student or faculty member who has a valid University of Alberta computing id.  The Chair of my Department uses these results as part of my annual overall evaluation.
6. I am accountable for all of my research.  Any grant that I apply for, or any manuscript that I publish, is subject to peer review.  This means that my grant proposals, or the manuscripts that describe my research, face external evaluation before being successful.  Furthermore, this evaluation is external to my university – it taps into the opinions of national and international experts.  If these experts do not think highly of my efforts, then I do not publish, which means I perish – probably as the result of unfavorable annual evaluations.
7. I am only as good as my next discovery.  What do university researchers publish? They publish new discoveries – their novel additions to our understanding of the world.  In order to keep publishing (and to keep from perishing), we must be innovative.  We always face the challenge of pushing the edge of the envelope in our disciplines.  Every day we deal with the pressure of what to do next, with the challenge of coming up with new answers to questions.  To succeed in our research – for which we are constantly accountable – we must always find unbroken paths. The pressure to do so can be unbearable.

 When I was a senior undergraduate, I submitted a manuscript to a leading journal for review.  The reviewers’ comments were very cutting, the paper rejected.  My mentor, Albert Katz took the opportunity to teach me a life lesson about academia.  “Mike,” he said, “you have to realize that this is a terrible job because people just shit on you all of the time.”  His advice did not turn me away from the profession – but it was certainly true.

Having no mandatory retirement age, it seems in principle that I could sit in my office until I die.  In practice, to pull that off I had better be working damned hard while I sit, because that is what my department, my university, and my peers across the country and the world expect of me.  That is not cognition – but it is reality.

‘Speed Dating’ For Blue Sky Research

My previous post, “On An Unnamed Institution to Commercialize Research”, was a fairly short and skeptical piece on a proposed government initiative.  Below, inspired by some recent reading, is a more constructive take on a related issue.

A recent article in the National Post brought my attention to a new book by eminent biologist Edward O. Wilson.  Wilson’s book, Letters to a Young Scientist, made the news because of his controversial view that budding scientists do not need to acquire advanced mathematical training.  He writes, “Many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate.”

Intrigued, I purchased a copy of Wilson’s book, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Wilson’s passion for science is infectious and inspiring, even to someone like myself who has been in the business for over a quarter of a century.  With our federal government frequently accused of being engaged in a war against science, and with our provincial government making large cuts to funds for postsecondary education, inspiration is in short supply, so I am very appreciative of Wilson’s letters.  His book also provides an interesting perspective on some of the issues currently facing Alberta postsecondary education.

Consider a recent announcement by the minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education about a planned institute for commercializing research.  Apparently, one of the goals of this institute is to foster cooperation amongst researchers at different Albertan schools.  The Edmonton Journal reports, “The institute will provide a forum where academics from different campus can come together. Currently, cooperation is limited because campuses compete for research grants.”  I wonder, though, whether this is the kind of cooperation best suited to increase applied research.  Inspired by Wilson’s book, a different (and possibly less expensive) type of cooperation comes to my mind.

Wilson argues that pure mathematicians develop theorems and models that are elegant in their own right.  However, he feels that mathematicians do not ground their work in real world phenomena.  Wilson is a proponent of such grounding; he counsels young scientists to seek out mathematicians, and to provide them real-world scenarios for linking to extant mathematics.  Wilson states his ‘first principle’ about the relationship between scientists and mathematicians:  “It is far easier for scientists to acquire needed collaboration from mathematicians and statisticians than it is for mathematicians and statisticians to find scientists to make use of their equations.”

It seems to me that a modified version of Wilson’s first principle has broader scope.  Mathematics should not be singled out; a more fruitful principle would consider the relationship between pure research (often called ‘blue sky research’ in Albertan discussions) and applied research or commercialized research.  A broader principle suggests a route for connecting companies and blue sky researchers: “It is far easier for companies to acquire needed collaboration from blue sky researchers than it is for blue sky researchers to find companies to make use of their theories.” 

I do blue sky research; I am quite adept at producing pure research related to a diversity of domains.   I also sympathize with the goal of applying my work.  However, I do not believe that this is hindered because I have no other scientists to cooperate with, as is suggested by the nature of the planned institute.   Wilson’s view is that science is an individual affair.  The most innovative scientists of Wilson’s experience “prefer to take first steps alone.”  I agree.

Instead, my problem is that I am completely naïve about the nature of potential applications for my work.  I do not need other scientists.  I need companies, to inform me about their applied problems, in the hope that I might see a potential solution in the blue sky research that I already do.

How might applied problems come my way?  One model might be a think tank the Santa Fe Institute, which Wilson has experienced:  “The idea in these places is to feed and house very smart people and let them wander about, meet in small groups over coffee and croissants, and bounce ideas off each other.”  Perhaps the planned Alberta institute will be a think tank like this.

A cheaper, more efficient model does not require the creation of a think tank or an institute.  Instead, it simply involves organizing a meeting or a short convention.  I imagine a simple gathering involving a diversity of company representatives and a diversity of blue sky researchers.  For a short interval – no more than five minutes -- a company representative interacts with a researcher, seeking common ground.  The former could pitch a problem, while the latter could pitch a methodology.  When the interval is over, the process begins again involving new pairings of people.  Think of it as a kind of speed dating for blue sky research.

The diversity of those involved in this ‘speed dating’ is critical.  Imagine a company that has some sort of heavy industry pattern recognition problem to solve, and imagine further that they are seeking university researchers to help deal with it.  Perhaps they have already used the internet to identify potential candidates, possibly by scanning ‘people’ listings for various faculties and departments on the University of Alberta website.

My suspicion is that one name that they would not come up with is mine.  What could a member of a psychology department, who is furthermore in the Faculty of Arts, and whose expertise is in ‘foundations of cognitive science’ possibly have to offer them?

If they encountered me in the ‘speed dating’ scenario, then I think they would be surprised.  They would find out that I have lots of pattern recognition expertise, that I have invented a new kind of artificial neural network, that I am currently exploring the relation between probability theory and classification, that I have some expertise in robotics, that I have lots of experience with multivariate statistics, … I could put a lot in my quick ‘speed dating’ pitch!  To their surprise, they might find that an Arts psychologist has the expertise to solve their heavy duty problem.  And, of course, I would have discovered a potential application for my blue sky research, which might be commercialized using existing mechanisms at my university.

The key point to the ‘speed dating’ idea is that I am not alone.  Most of my colleagues, across the various departments and faculties at Albertan universities, have amassed large degrees of expertise that could have economic applications, provided their blue sky work were to be matched with promising applied problems.  Companies might be surprised at what they find when they explore blue sky research conducted in areas that they would ordinarily ignore.

 We – companies and blue sky researchers alike -- need to increase the likelihood that such matches occur.  We need to explore avenues that are unconventional, another message central to Wilson’s book.

When Claude Shannon provided mathematical accounts of circuits, he did not revolutionize electric engineering because he linked his work with that of other engineers.  He succeeded by connecting problems with electric circuit design to something that he learned about in his philosophy courses – Boole’s logic.  In making this strange connection, Shannon was less than conventional, and illustrated another of Wilson’s principles: “March away from the sound of the guns.  Observe the fray from a distance, and while you are at it, consider making your own fray.”

Links:

Below is a link to information about E.O. Wilson's latest book on Amazon.ca:

Wilson, Edward O. (2013) Letters To A Young Scientist. Livestrong Publishing, New York.

The Best, the Brightest, and the Alberta Budget

Last week, the University of Alberta’s Board of Governors retreated to discuss the challenges raised by the recent provincial budget.  They met Premier Alison Redford and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk, who is also the minister for Enterprise and Advanced Education.  Upon his return, Lucaszuk tweeted “Back in #yeg from @UAlberta retreat. Planing its role in Campus Alberta, Canadian and global education. Exciting! #abgov #ableg #abpse”.

I’m sure the Minister meant to type ‘planning’ instead of ‘planing’, but given that postsecondary institutions are dealing with a surprise 7.3% cut in funding, perhaps ‘planing’ was the intended verb.  ‘Sawing’ or ‘cutting’ might also have been appropriate choices.

Other developments this past week provided some sense of where the government sees potential savings in its postsecondary file.  The government formally announced that it was using reserve funds to freeze next year’s tuition rates.  The Edmonton Journal reported that Lukaszuk was also ruling out the use of ‘market modifiers’ to implement large tuition increases for professional schools such as law or medicine.  A government news release noted, “We’ve been very clear that we will not be balancing the budget on the backs of students.”

The government exhibits less restraint about balancing its budget on the backs of postsecondary institution employees.  Lukaszuk sent a letter to the chairs of the boards of governors of all postsecondary schools requesting all future collective bargaining agreements to hold to salary freezes for 3 years, and no more than 2% increases in a fourth.  In addition, “awarding of performance bonuses would likely be considered irresponsible during this current economic climate.”  This letter, combined with comments to the press, suggests that Lukaszuk believes that savings accrued by cutting salaries and by increasing teaching loads are preferential to program cuts, which have also been making the news this past week, and over which the minister has the final say.  “If the schools ask me to close programs, I will look at what they are doing for efficiencies, what they are proposing on the salary side,” Lukaszuk said, adding that teaching loads could also be on the table.

What I find profoundly puzzling about all of these developments is their simultaneous accompaniment by government claims that the $147 million taken from postsecondary education will not harm it.  According to the Edmonton Journal, the Premier believes that “the cutbacks will make the system stronger by helping ‘change the way we think, work, and deliver services’.”  In the same letter to the chairs of the Boards in which he requested salary freezes and elimination of bonuses, Lukaszuk wrote “our government believes that it is important to attract and retain the best and brightest.”

Why does the government believe that it can make Albertan postsecondary stronger by dramatically cutting its budget, or that it can attract and retain the best and brightest in a climate of reduced funding and of salary restraint?

This belief is certainly out of step with other government policies that acknowledge attracting high-power research talent requires substantial financial investment.  Lukaszuk’s ministry, for instance, is responsible for the Campus Alberta Innovates Program (CAIP).  According to its website, the CAIP intends to recruit new research leaders to Alberta in four designated priority areas: energy and environment, food and nutrition, neuroscience/prions and water. It has budgeted funds for 16 research chairs in these areas, varying in value from approximately $300k to $650k per year for seven years. Funding all 16 chairs for 7 years at the minimum level would require $33.6 million.  This Government of Alberta program clearly recognizes that Big Science costs big money. 

If you are not willing to pay, then Big Science moves to other jurisdictions that will.  Unfortunately, the same is true for medium science and for tiny science, and this is why government cuts will decrease postsecondary quality.

Consider the goal of attracting the best and the brightest, not with high-end research chairs, but using the usual means of tenure-track academic positions.  A promising, bright candidate is going to accept offers from other regions or countries when they realize that an Albertan position comes with salary freezes, no merit pay, larger teaching loads, and the like.  The best and brightest always have other offers to consider.  Attracting such researchers is a competition, and the current Albertan climate is unattractive in comparison to others.

Retention faces the same issue.  From a professional point of view, when one’s current position appears tarnished, one looks to opportunities elsewhere.  In academia, who can take advantage of such opportunities?  Promising junior faculty members are very mobile.  Well-established senior scholars are candidates for high profile positions, such as those offered by CAIP – but by agencies outside of Alberta.  Losing either type of researcher weakens a department.  Worse, in tight economic times no money is available to replace a departed scholar.  Programs necessarily become weaker and smaller as their top assets move to greener pastures.

In my own department, there is clear evidence of such weakening related to previous government cutbacks.  I recently published a historical analysis of a century of psychology at the University of Alberta.  For a long period that began after World War II, the department grew at a steady state of about one faculty member per year until its size peaked in the late 1980s.  With Klein-era cutbacks in the early 1990s, department size shrank and never recovered.

All indicators suggest another downturn is on the horizon, affecting many different programs in all Albertan postsecondary institutions.  Not all agree with this prediction.  Lukaszuk has said, “I would be very surprised if any professors are actually seriously thinking of leaving any university in Alberta”.  However, as the postsecondary sector found out in the budget, surprises do happen.  The government may eventually have to admit that it cannot afford the quality of postsecondary education that it would like to offer, and that one consequence of its budget will be a failure to attract and retain the best and brightest.

Adventures In Tiny Science

Approximately a year ago, I learned I had lost my major source of research support. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada decided that it was not interested in funding my latest research proposal.  It had provided me uninterrupted funding for about a quarter of a century, including over $30,000 annually over the past 5 years.  I thought that I had put together a solid research proposal to extend this project, which had been very productive – 3 books and over 20 journal articles in its lifetime – and felt that the worst-case scenario, given the NSERC budget, would be a reduced grant.  I was wrong.  Without warning, my NSERC funding vanished.

After a week of being in shock, I pondered my next move.  The rational action would be to tweak my proposal and enter the next competition.  I decided not to do so.

Instead, I interpreted my sudden bad news about grant support as a liberating event.  I decided to continue to do the research that I am interested in, but do it without the pressure that accompanies seeking and administering funding.  In short, I decided never to apply for federal funding ever again. I now conduct tiny science.

This decision was completely rational.  After losing my grant, I asked myself serious questions about what support I really needed to carry out my research.  Repeatedly the answer was that a grant was really a ‘badge of honour’ and not a necessity.  My lab’s primary resource is my brain.  My research niche does not require expensive equipment, animal care costs, pricey technicians, and the like.  My version of cognitive science can be a frugal science.  It will have to be!

In all likelihood, given the current provincial and federal financial situations, more and more questions will arise about the return of investment in Big Science.  Big Science involves pouring huge amounts of money into targeted research projects.  However, there are growing questions about the success of Big Science.  For instance, a recent article in the National Post questioned whether the successes in research on cancer treatments were significant enough to justify billions of dollars of funding.

Well, I certainly was never getting enough grant money as it was to do Big Science.  NSERC’s funding decision pushed me in exactly the opposite direction.  Fortunately, I had a year to access surplus funds remaining in my grant.  I reflected on my research needs, and used remaining money to meet future lab needs.  Most of my work involves theoretical analyses and computer simulations.  I obtained lab resources that would support my future work (new computers, printers, etc.).  They will have to last a while!  As of the first of this month, I have no more grant money available.

The pursuit of tiny science is adventurous, though, because it carries with it a palpable degree of risk.  Our modern age of academia is money driven.  University and Department websites usually describe how much grant money they pull in, because this is a presumed measure of excellence.  In our academic culture, the amount of external funding that a researcher attracts reflects one’s quality as a researcher.  In pursuing tiny science, I ask to be judged by the quality of my research, and not by the quantity of its financial support.

This is not going to be a popular position.  A university has a financial motivation for its employees to attract federal grants.  The federal government runs the Indirect Costs Program; its homepage points out that the goal of this program is to help “Canadian postsecondary institutions with the hidden costs of research. By alleviating the financial burden of expenses, such as lighting and heating, the program ultimately helps researchers concentrate on cutting-edge discoveries and scholarship excellence. After all, it is easier to achieve a eureka moment when the lights are on.”  Presumably, the amount of funding an institution receives from this program is a percentage of the total amount of federal grant funding awarded to its researchers.  For 2011-12, the University of Alberta received $16,878,176 from this program; it obtained $16,945,028 the preceding year.  My pursuit of tiny science will not help my institution’s pursuit of indirect cost money.

Furthermore, my pursuit of tiny science carries the real danger that it will not help my career either.  Being a university professor, there is an annual evaluation of my performance (research, teaching, and service).  This year will be the first time ever I do not include grant support in my annual report.  Such support obviously is valued in academia; its absence lessens my worth.

Thus, the pursuit of tiny science makes strong demands.  I have to maintain (and most likely elevate) my level of research productivity to compensate for the lost grant support when I am evaluated.  Can I do so?  Will my research productivity receive the same kind of reviews when it is unfunded?  I am not sure of the answers to these questions, which is why I view tiny science as an adventure.  For the record, I am very proud of my career as a researcher, teacher, and supervisor, and I have no problem being accountable by making my CV available on my website.  I am confident that I can rise to meet the demands of tiny science.  I have no doubts, though, that it will be a challenge.