Ph.D. Colloquium

Getting Your Ph.D.…and Beyond
Critical Stages and Career Paths for the Ph.D. Student

Date: Sunday, August 2, 2009
Time: 13:00—17:00
Location: Broadway II (Plaza level)
Registration: You can register for the Colloquium at www.picmet.org.

The PICMET Ph.D. Colloquium is targeted at students in all stages of the Ph.D. process, as well as recent graduates. Through guest lectures and workshop discussions, we will cover various aspects of PhD education and career opportunities in engineering and technology management, including:

  • The Ph.D. process and career paths in different countries
  • Critical stages in the Ph.D. process and how to successfully master them
  • Coping with possible personal problems while pursuing a Ph.D. (lack of time or motivation, problems with advisers, insufficient time for family and friends, etc.)
  • What’s next - academia or industry?
  • Entering the academic job market as future junior faculty
  • Landing your first industry job
  • To publish or to perish?

 

The colloquium provides a unique opportunity to meet colleagues, share experiences and ideas, and network with students and faculty from different countries and university systems.

Guest lectures will cover the following topics:

“Publishing, Promotion, and the Pleasures of an Academic Career”
George Farris, Professor of Management and Director of the Technology Management Research Center, Rutgers University; Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, USA

“The National Science Foundation – Its Role for Science, Technology, and Research in the USA”
Julia Lane, Program Director, Science of Science & Innovation Policy Program, National Science Foundation, USA

“Now That You Have a PhD in Technology Management, How Do You Prepare for and Find a Job in Academia?”
Hongyi Chen, Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Minnesota at Duluth, USA

“Critical Stages in the PhD process - How Do You Master Them?”
Pisek Gerdsri, Ph.D. in Technology Management 2009, Portland State University, USA


George F. Farris is Professor of Management and Director of the Technology Management Research Center at Rutgers University. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and former Division Chair of the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management.

Professor Farris is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. He was cited “for seminal contributions to the understanding of organizations and personnel practices in the furtherance of technological innovation and the management of technology.” His scholarly publications have appeared in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and his work has been cited several times in the Wall Street Journal.

Previously, Professor Farris was Acting Dean of the Graduate School of Management at Rutgers, Professor of Administrative Studies at York University in Canada, Ford Foundation Professor of Management at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Belgium, and Associate Professor of Organizational Psychology and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has held part-time visiting appointments at Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, the National University of Singapore, and he has presented invited lectures at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea. He received his Ph. D. at the University of Michigan and his Bachelor's at Yale University.

 

Julia Lane is the Program Director of the Science of Science & Innovation Policy program at the National Science Foundation. Her previous jobs included Senior Vice President and Director, Economics Department at NORC/University of Chicago, Director of the Employment Dynamics Program at the Urban Institute, Senior Research Fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau, and Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at the American University.

Julia has published over 60 articles in leading economics journals and authored or edited five books. She has been the recipient of over $20 million in grants from foundations such as the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Institute of Health; from government agencies such as the Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Health and Human Services in the U.S., the ESRC in the U.K., and the Department of Labour and Statistics New Zealand; as well as from international organizations such as the World Bank. She has organized over 30 national and international conferences, received several national awards, given keynote speeches all over the world, and serves on a number of national and international advisory boards.

She is one of the founders of the LEHD program at the Census Bureau, which is the first large-scale linked employer-employee dataset in the United States. She is also the PI of the NORC data enclave, a remote access collaborative environment for researcher access to sensitive business micro-data.

A native of England who grew up in New Zealand, Julia has worked in a variety of countries, including Australia, Germany, Malaysia, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Sweden, and Tunisia. Her undergraduate degree was in Economics and Japanese from Massey University in New Zealand; her M.A. in Statistics and Ph.D. in Economics are from the University of Missouri in Columbia. She is fluent in Swedish and German and speaks conversational French.

 

Hongyi Chen received her Ph.D. in Systems Science/Engineering Management from the Engineering and Technology Management Department at Portland State University. She is currently an assistant professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). She teaches courses in both the M.S. in Engineering Management and the B.S. in Industrial Engineering programs at UMD. Her research interests include multi-criteria decision analysis, technology planning, innovation management, and lean enterprise management. She has published several papers in journals and conferences such as the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, European Journal of Operational Research, PICMET, and the Decision Science Institute annual meeting; and she has given several presentations in the annual meetings of INFORMS and Academy of Management.

As an early career faculty and one who has served on search committees, Dr. Chen will give suggestions on how Ph.D. students should prepare to enter academia, where to search for academic jobs in Engineering Management, and what contributes to successful job interviews.

 

Pisek Gerdsri received his Ph.D. in Technology Management from Portland State University, USA, in spring 2009. Dr. Gerdsri’s doctoral research was on a systematic and comprehensive approach to developing a national technology strategy and policy development for emerging technologies. He validated his approach by applying it to the case study of nanotechnologies for supporting the development of Thailand’s agriculture and food industry. Dr. Gerdsri also holds two master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Technology Management from Portland State University.

 

Please direct questions related to the colloquium to:

Antonie Jetter, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Engineering and Technology Management
Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science
Portland State University
Post Office Box 751
Portland, Oregon 97207-0751, USA

Phone: 503-725-4663
Fax: 503-725-4667
Email: jettera@cecs.pdx.edu
Web: www.etm.pdx.edu

 

Phone: 1-503-725-3525
Fax: 1-503-725-4667
E-mail: info@picmet.org
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