00:13
I recently started working more with engineers and actually this has been on our list of sort of
our topic ideas for a while, but do you find engineers to be different from scientists or
not that different? Or do you even have a chance to work with engineers?
I normally don't work with engineers, but I think there are people, scientists, even closer to that
field than other, for example, physiology or other fields, right? So each scientist has different
ways of approaching the same phenomenon. Oh, I guess, yeah, you work closely probably
more with like medical field people. Yeah, medical doctor, yeah, fields and also
physiology people and some people are more like towards engineering and even in a sense of
scientists, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm interested in this like sort of traditional
science people working with slightly, slightly applied science people, like the combination,
the collaboration between the two, because we just, you know, just random lunch conversation
and one of us are from sort of material science background and so that's his degree is in from
engineering, like PhD in engineering and it's material science. And my, and this one other
person's background is in chemistry, which is sort of like traditional science, right? Like we,
our degrees is PhD in chemistry or physical chemistry. So I don't know where, how the
conversation started, but this other person had an opinion that scientists and engineers are
similar but different species. And I never really had an opinion about that up until that point. So
I was just thinking to myself like, okay, well, I don't really have an opinion about this. I wonder
what other people have to say. And this material science guy was very insistent that engineers
are also scientists. And the scientist girl was saying, no, I think we're different. And
03:03
in my head, I was like, after, after that conversation and some time has passed and I
thought like, in my experience working and collaborating with engineers, I do realize
that our sort of training background is slightly different, even if they do chemical engineering
versus chemistry, we take mostly the same kind of classes as an undergrad. But beyond that,
I feel like the training that we get as sort of traditional science is different from engineer,
which is sort of inherently closer to applied science. And that really got me to remember
this one project that I sort of stopped being a part of after like second year of grad school.
And this was like a huge collaboration between seven PIs maybe of different,
completely different disciplines, like signal processing engineers, computer science people,
chemistry, both organic and physical chemistry, like that kind of wildly interdisciplinary project.
And we spent a lot of the time in our meeting, translating each other's language,
which was very funny. I know that happens. These people, these people with common goals
would not have such a different ways to approach the problem, but there's a huge difference.
Yeah.
Mainly, my takeaway was that engineers work very fast. They're really good at churning out
prototypes, or like coming up with different sort of test cases. And they are very fast at that.
And sometimes they just do it because they can, rather than having like a logical sort of reasons
that are grounded in science to do that. They just come up with a bunch of different ideas and try
different ideas. And let's see what works approach was at least the engineers that I worked with
had. And whereas all of these science PIs were like, but why? Why does it work? And why does
it not work? We want to know why. And the engineer PIs were like, we don't know why, but it works.
So let's just go with this. And I think that was some of the biggest conflict between the two teams.
And yeah, it really slowed down our progress. Sometimes I was like, why can't people just
06:09
meet halfway? Like, it's really good that these people are coming up with new ideas and
test cases that they can sort of simulate in a smaller scale. Sure. It doesn't promise that
it, when it's scaled up, it works the same way, but at least it gives us an idea on sort of where
to focus. And, but some of the science PIs were very stickler about any idea, anything that's
worth doing has to be grounded in science, scientific reasoning, scientific sort of,
yeah, like ideas and logics, which, you know, as you know, when we start thinking about these
things, we often come up with more questions rather than answers. So our decision-making
process is a lot slower than that of the engineers. So sometimes when you have a project
with a certain deadline, the engineer approach is more productive. But it's also important to
not forget that, you know, if you're doing a scientific project, anything that comes out
of it ultimately requires a scientific explanation. Right. So that was, that was my experience. I was
wondering if you had anything similar with your medical doctors that you collaborate with,
or physiology people? Yeah, and also physicists. It's not like, yeah, we do collaborate with
the physicists. So each, yeah, each different, yeah, areas, people from different areas
have different languages. So we start from, you know, talking a lot, discussions on the topic
that we want to, yeah, we want to ask. And then even asking questions is, the questions we want
to ask could be very different too. So, yeah, we, I feel like we, it takes a very long time to
collaborate with the researchers in other, like, areas. Other disciplines. Other disciplines.
But still, I think I'm, I've been learning a lot from other people.
Yeah, the way they tackle the problem and the approach they take could be very different
from ours, but could be more, could be more, you know, robust, I would say. And scientifically,
09:05
yeah, I would say scientifically more robust. So I think I've, I'm learning a lot from people
from other disciplines. And it's kind of fun. It's a very long process, but it is fun. Yeah.
It's, it definitely, like, having that extra step of translating, making sure everyone is on the
same page does require effort and does require time and, I guess, willingness from everyone
to be able to be patient with that process. But I do think that nowadays,
you, it's really hard to do anything worthwhile scientifically without collaborating with other
field. I think, you know, maybe if this was like 50 years ago, they can do a paper with just
physicists and get a Nobel Prize or something. But nowadays, if you look at the Nobel Prize,
like most science Nobel Prizes are shared between multiple people, and they often belong in
completely different departments or, you know, disciplines. And sometimes I think it's even hard
to sort of delegate that into Nobel Prize for chemistry, for physics, for, you know, whatever,
because it's so interdisciplinary. And I, yeah, it's sometimes a very painful process,
this translation steps. I do think it's worthwhile, as long as everyone is willing to be
doing that. Yeah, yeah, I'd be lethal too. Yeah, it's just that, so in now in museum,
I'm learning to be a scientist. I'm a minority as a science background person in a museum.
I'm kind of just more extra conscious than before about what I bring to the table, because
unlike in a discussion with multiple, you know, bunch of other scientists, I really need to be
able to discuss and contribute my scientific expertise for people who have no way of
verifying what I'm saying is correct or factual. So I really need to be accountable for myself
in explaining clearly to people who don't share the same background, as well as making sure that
I am very clear about, okay, up until here, I know what's going on. But beyond that, I don't know,
or like beyond this, I we need to do some experiments to figure it out kind of thing.
12:03
It's like an added consciousness, I'd say, being in a museum. So it's just been on my mind,
you know, collaboration, difficulties, and good, mostly good parts. I think in the end,
it's always worth it. But yeah. All right. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and
find us at Agodescience on Twitter. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time!
