CentraleSupelec : Seize the opportunity to build a great school

I am neither a Centrale nor a Supelec graduate, actually I "am not even" a famous Grande Ecole alumnus. Having said that, I have traveled a lot (had many international appointments), luckily enough I have been a prolific researcher which “gives” me an international standing and – at least I think - allows me to see things differently and express my opinion without much bias (at is concerns my "Centrale" origins).

Fusion is always a very difficult process. The process of putting together two institutions even if they are quite similar it is always painful. Different people, cultures, philosophies and habits should meet in harmony. It is a process that takes time, requires patience but also a long term vision. It should be clear where the new school should lead, what will be the main axes of excellence and how the new school will be operating. The most common decision is to average things, this is something quite common in mathematics, find the equidistance between the two poles, it will most likely not correspond to something but it will make equally happy/unhappy both parties. This would definitely have been the best possible solution 10-20 years back when the finances of the higher education and in general of the state were that different but it cannot happen anymore. State support is declining, academic growth is limited, digital revolution will definitely change higher education while in the context of consolidation towards creating major University poles in France (ParisSaclay) the Grandes Ecoles will definitely mutate to a new era where most likely their “exceptional” standing within the French education system will be somehow diluted in the years to come.

Centrale & Supelec according to the most reasonable international standards are small (and in general not that visible schools). There is first the question of mass (student and academic mass), and then the question of dispersion. It is not sustainable for any school (unless it is an indisputable international leader) to offer academic programs to a number of students that is disproportionally aligned to the expected faculty investment required for their delivery. This is also the case as it concerns research where one has to combine excellence first with significant man power. We cannot claim that we are excellent in all areas, this is certainly not true! We cannot claim that we should be active in terms of research investment in all engineering areas as well (this neither feasible nor sustainable). Science - as well as research in general - undergo cycles which in engineering and computer science can be quite “short” and therefore agility is critical. We cannot continue to invest in areas because there was a critical mass due to the important past historical activities.  Of course these disciplines should continue to excel but it is a strategic decision to make the call on the direction we are heading even if we make some of many people unhappy. There will be an important number of “Grandes  Ecoles” at Saclay in the years to come, what will differential our school from them? We could say that our students are excellent but their students will be as well and most likely 10-20 years from now all of them will get the same degree! Do people pay attention for Oxford graduates on the college which delivered their degree? Well the answer in no and therefore we have to provide highly innovative programs that differentiate us with them!

Centrale & Supelec according to the most reasonable international standards heavily depend on state funding which most likely will further decline in the future. Therefore additional resources are to be found which though should allow to the school to move to the right direction. Collaborations & International visibility will be a major card to play. It has to happen though on an equitable basis! Stating that we work with the best when actually the only thing that it happens is that we send our students to them and we have no incoming flow is not a credible argument. In order to do though we still have to be well identified and well visible on what we offer! Which cannot happen if we stay disperse and we try to be happy with everyone. Last but not least, research! We are not that good both as it concerns publications, as well as visibility and funding. Most of the leading EU and US universities often recover approximately 30% of their budget from highly competitive research grants, which they do not refer neither to subcontracting of industrial activities nor to gifts from our former graduates! Any reasonable bibliographic/bibliometric study will certainly show that there was a tremendous progress done over the past decade, but it is not enough!  Actually it is really far from being enough! We are still somewhere on the trail, and we will certainly need drastic efforts and investment from our side to catch up.

Last but not least, we should take advantage of the ecosystem but as equal partners. Cnrs/Inria/Inra/Inserm and other research organizations do not have access to our exceptional students, do not have the ability to introduce new academic curriculum and cannot initiate or put in place international exchange programs as we do. We should assume our differences, target their research excellence (whenever this is not the case) but also explain them that we are not simply student repository for them but equal partners. Negotiate research axes, negotiate positions, negotiate long term strategy and involve them whenever is possible on the curriculum (France is an international exception: current national evaluation system assumes that one professor should be equivalent with half of the researcher as it concerns productivity). The “Grandes Ecoles” cannot diminish themselves to a “second-class” research environment and cannot simply serve as “hosting” institutions to the national research organizations! The target should be to meet their excellence and even go beyond in the years to come. 

To conclude, the next five years to come will be critical, lets seize the opportunity to build a well identified/structured/agile higher education institution, where excellence is the driving force both in terms of academic offer as well as research with the most meaningful international collaborations which will allow us to become one the major players in the French and international academic ecosystem. 

ps:

1. The above statements reflect strictly my personal opinions and therefore by no means they have the approval/endorsement of CentraleSupelec.
2. I do not believe that the aforementioned issues are the due to the Centrale & Supelec fusion. I am convinced  that problems existed in both schools before and could become more important thanks to the cumulative effect of the fusion.
3. There is absolutely nothing wrong on looking either for people that are not part of the schools if needed or to assume strategies/models that were neither part of the former structures if appropriate! 
4. I have been fortunate to be exceptionally well supported from my institution all these years.

Higher Education: Three Main Challenges for the Decade to Come

Higher education has been undergoing tremendous changes over the past decade towards a new era. Such a transformation is paved from a number of challenges that are either the natural outcome of society evolution, technological progress or the internalization of the offer.

• Financial stress: In most of the developed countries where the model of public providence was prevailing (EU, JP, KR), we observe a declining financial support from the state. On the opposite side, self-funded educational models (USA, UK,…) inherit a constant increase of enrollments.tuition fees. The consequences of such opposite policies move both systems closer to a break point where on one hand the quality of the educational system is depraved while on the other hand elitism is installed and access to higher education becomes possible only for the wealthiest and problematic for the middle and low class part of the society. Rethinking the economical model while preserving quality and access to higher education to the all citizens with the necessary intellectual capacity is one of the major issues of our society. 
•  Internationalization & digital revolution: recent development of technology has made possible the deployment of large scale efficient online educational platforms. It is now possible and accessible virtual accreditation and degree while massive open online course create a new playground as it concerns higher education with an unpredictable outcome as it concerns their impact to conventional educational processed. Such accessibility will make possible in the very near future the ability of the remote education which eventually will  result on a direct international completion of higher academic providers both at it concerns academic programs as well as degrees. It is really challenging to predict the outcome of such an evolution. Having said that, it is almost sure that higher education should adapt to this novel ecosystem and find means to optimize its impact to the society. 
•  Societal impact & creation of wealth through Research: Traditional economical growth of the previous century has now being replaced with creation of wealth through new services/products and concepts serving the society. Research is becoming one of the major elements of such wealth creation through novel concepts, and higher education should evolve/embrace this effort and become a major pillar of societal wealth creation. Such an effort requires excellent coordination and precise actions with policy makers towards appropriate and efficient use of private and public funding through the higher education systems where the right compromise is to be found between short term objectives, wealth creation and funding of non-scientific disciplines.  

Greece: One Hundred Years of Solitude

I grew up in a small/tiny island (Karpathos), subsequently moved to a bigger one (Rhodes) while still spending my summers at Karpathos. When I was a child, the only way to get there was through a boat, and my island was part of what is called "αγονη γραμμη" (non profit) boat line since the trip was subsidized from the Greek government. The port was not that great and therefore when the winds were strong the boat couldn't coast and from time to time we had no other choice to continue our trip to Heraklion (Crete). 

I recall from my very young years my grandfather telling me: you should get a job at the public sector! the job is not that hard, you have a salary and your life is set. I also recall the evolution of my island, from a remote and completely isolated poor island where people were struggling to survive (stories that my grand-father was telling me), to a reasonably developed touristic destination generating a new class of people with land next to the sea consider themselves superior. This was also the case in particular at Rhodes as well where tourist related business have generated a new class of people.  I also recall local and national elections and the flipping of votes from one party to another depending on the promises given from the candidates towards assuring public servant positions either at the municipality or at the public administration. I also recall the corruption at all levels of society as well as as hindering all public services. Public administrations were deficient and people in key positions had unbelievable power to overwrite laws - assuming some minimal compensation -. I also recall  an colossal tax invasion at all levels of society with no exception. I also recall the state of health services and the need to "compensate" illegally physicians in order to get a better access to the national health service system. I recall also my university years when the average graduation used to happen in a couple of extra years studying (in order to get degree) and again all my mentors saying! work hard to get in, once this has happened then you will graduate at some point or another. I recall the swap of power between left and right hand side parties for almost two decades and the constant increase of the public service sector. I recall the importance of pushing more and more people in higher education through the funding of universities throughout the country and an unbelievable imagination on funding most of the departments in areas with almost no relevance with respect to the needs of the Greek society - still it makes no difference, we educate more people, hire more professors and satisfy local city councils which once put together more votes for the coming election even if these departments will be around forever -. I recall the massive (without declaring them) use of legal or illegal immigrants towards reducing the cost and maximize the profit! I recall people without qualifications being positioned at "key" positions simply because they happen to know people who happen to know people. Last but not least, I recall conspiracy theories on the reasons why Greece had bankrupted from intellectually highly qualified people. 

The Greek crisis is now economical and societal but before that there was an ethical one. We have learned to live into a highly corrupted environment - government was corrupted, public administration as well and society profoundly -. We have adjusted our operational mode to better take benefit of this system and keep reinforcing the system over the past four decades! We have lost our ethical values and principles. 

However, crisis has arrived and hurt people, the deficient public services were further penalized to the extend that some of them are unable to offer even the basic services, the society had collapsed. It was a desperate situation but at the same time an opportunity! Build a new Greece, improve services, organize administration but not, in order to do that you have to hurt people and take visionary decisions that most likely will have a long term impact and non an immediate one! This didn't happen, the progress that was made was disproportional to the efforts of the nation, the right hand government screwed up big time! and when someone suffers for a while he becomes desperate and have the tendency to believe in miracles!  or go to a denial mode.

That is what will happen tomorrow. Greece will go back to the nighties when flipping of the left and the right hand party destroyed the country with such a great human intellectual potential. The same arguments, the same people in power with the same old arguments! We will reopen the "old" public television, re-hire people who have been laid of from the public sector, surprisingly no one have considered to re-instate olympic airways, reposition "our" people to the key positions and then blame others for our problems. Also, the public sector will be able to hire the 15% (out of the 25%) of the population being unemployed and therefore unemployment will come down to the average European standards. Also Greece will vote a extreme right/nazism  party which will explain us how Greece is a superior nation, that all problems are due to immigrants and "military junta" is the right political answer to our problems which most likely will revoke my nationality.

Ps. Have been living abroad for so many years (I have left Greece two decades back - still spending almost all my summers there), maybe things have changed and everything works perfect and as my brother says, you shouldn't express any opinion about Greece, you left and you do your life abroad so let to us to decide how we will solve our problems.

Big Data (hmm), Live Data (Yes) in Conjunction with Algorithms & Intelligence

Well, there are two buzz words in our days in science and technology, big data is among the most prominent and most considerably used in the field towards transforming the society. The idea is fairly simple, and well rounded, machines using colossal amount of data will be able to transform "stored" information to wealth and intelligence and in theory better interpreting them than humans. The basic assumption is that data is available and then the problem is solved.

Such assumption I think it could be one of the greatest misapprehension of this decade. Data was and is around for almost three decades now, one can cite for example stock market, where historic data are available ages. What have changed between the past decade and this one? Well three simple things: (i) computing power has extraordinary progressed while its cost has dropped down to peanuts, (ii) convergence between computer science and mathematics towards a field called machine learning where statistics, artificial intelligence, optimization and programming principles are met together, (iii) easy access to this data either in a centralized or distributed manner. The above once in conjunction with training (usually annotated though) data were able to show great promises in a number of fields.

Having said the above, the question now is what will be the future from now. Were there are two theories, (i) data "fundamentalists" believe that soon there will absolutely no need of physical understanding of the problem/origin of information  and in the presence of massive amount of (annotated) data I should be able to perfectly model the complex behavior  of my observations (black boxes!!!!), (ii) statistical/generative modeling where certain assumptions are made which introduce physical and humanly interpretable meaning on the solution which is then optimized using training data. It is hard to predict to what direction the cursor will move however it is certain that depending on the problem being considered most likely the solution will be different. It should be noted that we leave in an information era, which practically means that more and more (new) data will become available which could be used to better enriched existing models rather than building new ones.  

From scientific view point is the big data "bubble" that different from the "internet" bubble in the nineties, or the "artificial intelligence" in seventies? Do we really need to reason on colossal amount of data towards making better predictions or taking more appropriate decisions in the general case? Is it that hard to predict everything from anything when we increase the degrees of freedom of the models? Does more info even if not relevant add something if combination is not done appropriately? Hard to say. Would that data need to be "big" not so sure, I will guess representative but not that "big". Would the answer to all problems being "black boxes" trained with massive amount of data with "complete" lack of physical interpretation? not that sure "either" even though if it seems to the trend now...

What is easy to say though is that live data thanks to the internet of things and connected objects is become freely and massively available. Personally, I believe that this will be the real motivation/driving force of wealth creation. Simple day-to-day living problems associated with live measurements transferred over the network and adaptively solved using models based on historic training data.

Having said the above, it seems though that little attention is paid on the "scientific" issues relevant to the  data interpretation that are developing new mathematical models and their computational solutions towards reasoning on this data! Very often, we have the impression that all problems will be solved  once we have collected this amount of data and used them "naively" using massive computing. We also have the impression that each of us can become a "data scientists/manager" once had obtained access to such data. Well this definitely will be the greatest disillusion  of our decade.

Academic Reseach in Industry: "Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" for Academic Carreer?

Research in industry has been instrumental towards transferring academic and research achievements to society? In engineering sciences there are several fantastic labs that were built and supported from  the major conglomerates, like for example the Xerox PARC, HP or Schlumberger Lab at Pallo Alto on eighties, the Siemens, NEC, Lucent, GE, IBM labs in nineties, the Microsoft, Google labs in the last decade and most recently the Facebook/Apple labs in the ongoing decade.

The recipy is not hat different despite almost 40 years of interval. Industry is doing quite well, cash flow is available, so the idea was and is to hire exceptional academic faculty with three fairly basic arguments: (i) salaries that cannot be met by academia, and (ii) research environment free from the time consuming and tedious process of "grant-hunting", (iii) interesting problems and access to data that cannot be found easily in the academic world. 

Arguments are quite convincing (at least at the very beginning) conditions are amazing and things do work for certain time. However, industry has sort of cycles, in particular in the digital era things can change so fast!!! I recall when joining Siemens Corporate Research most of the funding used to come without conditions from the parent company (75%), while being there this percentage went to 50%, and the date I left the parent company funding dropped to 25% and discussions were ongoing on how to even further reduce to 10% and get the remaining 15% from government grants. Things might have changed now but that was the case then. Places like Xerox, HP, NEC disappeared and fantastic environments like Microsoft Research have considerably diminished their investment targeting few  areas of computer science & engineering! (which was not the case at the time of their creation)

This is not seems to the case for places like Apple, Google or Facebook in now days, the cash flow is enormous, but it wasn't the case for Microsoft back in nineties? or for HP/Xerox back in eighties? Working in industry as an academic researcher is a great experience but has definitely an expiration day that one can hardly predict especially in engineering sciences where economic growth and wealth creation can happen and disappear so fast...

The conclusion, join as a freshman, a place that does well, keep in mind that this will not last, and therefore spend (max) 5 years working on interesting problems (it is such a great experience and  definitely will have a tremendous impact in  your academic career) while make all possible efforts to maintain a top level research portfolio and move towards a junior faculty position, or think in the long run, assume managerial responsibilities, build a sizable group and seek an academic position at the level of associate/full professor with tenure after 10-15 years.  

Keep in mind that the situation will not last, salaries can be interesting but at some after some years you will be spending more and more time an management than real science. Of course, you can have a brilliant industrial career having a different impact on the society but this is not the view point/scope of this article targeting research perspectives in industry.

Science, Social Media & Marketing

Proliferation of means for exchanging ideas has lead to the "popularization" of sciences. It is becoming trivial for any of us to act/pretend like a real expert by composing a set of buzz and trendy words in particular when it is feasible to brand himself/herself as an expert by heavily investing social and scientific networks with "meaningless" but still "popular" content. Consequently, real-science become irrelevant and people who are usually talked about sciences have not much to do with it, or in the best case scenario fairly have a vague quite superficial idea on what they are talking about. 

Well, fortunately mastering a subject requires top level academic studies, persistence, motivation and hard work. We observe that these values are losing ground when facing modern communicators, people with limited technical background who are able to talk about everything and nothing, and were able to build an image of someone mastering the topic. I am not a great fun of social networks, however given the importance that these have taken in our society, one cannot neglect them. There are several scientific problems to which I have dedicated enormous amount of my academic career. It is frightening when seeking for content relevant to these topics through social networks. The list of top contributors have often almost no footprint or contribution in these areas but somehow manage to maintain their "virtual expert" status through what we call the theory of buzz. Keep producing as much content - even superficial - as you can things that could demonstrate that you are an expert.

The risk of such situation is dramatic both for science as well as for society. First, scientists become these "lab" people disconnected with the "society" problems who in the most general case don't know how to communicate and therefore give the impression that problems that they are working on are already solved. Such an impression could have devastating impact on them, as it concerns future research directions, funding, motivation, etc. Furthermore, convincing you highly motivated scholars who are usually the ones bringing in the greatest innovation to pursue graduate studies are becoming more difficult. In terms of society the situation is dramatic. It is fantastic to come up with ideas, concepts that could be of great interest, while having actually absolutely no means of scientifically addressing them. 

There is nothing wrong - and actually is great - about popularizing sciences and being able to disseminate complex ideas to a broader audience (beyond the scientific community).  Actually this could be a great source of growth and innovation if done properly where real needs coming from the society meet technical innovations coming from the scientific community.

However, talking about everything and nothing and substituting scientific work with a number of buzz topics/trends being alimented from non-(appropriately qualified) experts is becoming a major concern both for the society and the scientific community. Such a overdose of "useless" content could be harmful for the society, could drive the academic community on directions that are the ones which should be followed, force schools and universities to artificially address critical scientific disciplines and consequently reduce the intellectual background of the future generations of scientists and consequently their capacity to address the real problems/needs of the society.

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's

Competition (healthy and unhealthy) is among the driving forces of our society. I recall more a decade ago my promotion to program manager at Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton, NJ, USA. It came with a single person office, an important salary raise and a two days seminar where communication/management experts explain to us what is the path to success. Well it seems that there are three classes of successful managers:

• The group of highly talented and gifted individuals who assume their decisions, have a vision and take the initiatives without caring about their short term outcome. Eventually there will be cases where things will not go as expected but eventually at some point hard work, leadership and charisma will pay out and this will happen independently on politics. Usually these are the people who will make the difference and take institutions to the next level.
• The second group of people who most likely endow their career with success are the ones working hard, delivering what was asked from them and being at the right place the right time. These are lower risk cases with respect to the first category since the outcome is predictable and bounded both on the positive as well as the negative side. These are the kind of people who will assume the job and most likely deliver what is expected from them while taking almost no risks.
• Well, the third category corresponds to people playing politics and use connections to make the difference. They are talented because despite the absence of charisma, vision and loyalty they are able to navigate and survive in critical situations and they actually just care for themselves. Their survival code consists on taking other colleague's credit and putting obstacles whenever they feel threatened to to whoever threatens them.

I guess all of us are almost certain that we are highly gifted and talented. However, I recall the expert's conclusion stating that we often cross people during our professional path who belong to the third category and suggesting to avoid working as much as you can while hoping that in your institution there are people with the willingness to Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.

 

ps. I was fortunate enough to work with collaborators coming from all aforementioned populations, a situation which strengthens your ability to appreciate people being loyal to their  task/job and not to themselves.

The Myth of European Research Integration

I have spent significant time of my academic research career in Europe and during the past two decades I have participated to a number of EU-funded research projects, covering almost all possible funding schemas. Until very recently (the creation of the European Research Council), EU research policy was towards European Research Integration. The underlying principles of this policy towards getting support can be summarized as follows:

• Create a reasonably spread research consortium representing well the geographic distribution of EU members (north/south, big/small, old/new members)
• Introduce artificially some industrial connection to the consortium either by involving “research” in industry, or an industrial partner as integrator for some of the calls, which will introduce to the proposal credibility with respect to the society (well industry will transfer the technology)
• Establish connection with the research office in Brussels offices, and hire a professional company to write the proposal where the “call” buzz words appears as frequently as possible and also consider a professional company as well as to assume its coordination,

While all these conditions do make perfect sense and should have led to an efficient and productive research integration, this didn't happen and tremendous amount of resources was spent on projects with questionable return to investment . There are a number of reasons for that:

• Until recently the evaluation/review mechanisms were questionable/problematic. Researchers coming from the whole Europe used to meet a week in Brussels, gaining access to - hard copies of - the proposals the day of the review, and had to made an assessment during the day without having any means to check the credibility and the quality of the teams being involved in the proposal.
• Until recently (and even now) the programs were run  from professional managers (with certainly excellent prior research experience) sitting on their positions for while and having really strong influence on the nature as well as content of proposals being funded. While it is certain that almost all of even all of them were highly capable to do so, such a system is not healthy. Same people mean creation of network which is something natural in society (both from researchers as well as from offices). Network (in particular long-standing one) is equivalent with problematic renewal both on ideas as well as on people/labs funded. Introducing at least some notion of rotation would have been beneficial.
• Until recently evaluation/follow up mechanisms were not appropriate. Reviews (either intermediate or final ones) were not done properly. It is uncertain how the selection of the reviewers is done and how they are assigned to a project but the whole process is very problematic. I recall talking to a friend who was involved with a FP7 grant involving highly visible people and end up being evaluated from one of my students (who just graduated) and another former student of one of the most visible members of the consortium. When this was pointed out to the project officer his answer was quite impressive: it is good to have fresh blood in the process...I do review grants (and spend a lot of time) for many international funding organisms (Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Canada, Belgium, Luxemburg, Honk Kong - surprisingly enough I was never involved on any EU-related proposal review or evaluation), I could state for example that the Austrian Science Foundation (among others) is doing much better job and put in place far more rigorous evaluation mechanisms.

The above issues have create a strong disconnection between the European Union funding and the European researchers. The system is far from being predictable, proposals are now prepared from professional grant writers/companies and there is a huge concentration on funding on institutions/groups per call which is neither healthy or normal.This doesn't mean that these institutions do not deserve funding, they certainly do but I am almost sure that their funding envelope is far from being proportional with respect to their contribution in their domains at the European level.  

Unfortunately EU doesn't put up statistics on institutional funding. It would have been for example interesting to compare/establish correlation of that with research productivity (for example as it concerns research projects) in Europe.

The complexity, inertia and the lack of transparency of the system has led many (and some of the excellent) labs to give up on getting support for their research from the Europe which in the long run could be devastating for the European research. The European Research Council seems to be a mechanism to remediate that but these are mostly individual grants which do not offer the ability to support highly ambitious interdisciplinary efforts. It is certain that European research integration through flagships grants is necessary and important in order to be competitive at the international scale. Unfortunately, current standards and practices do not  provide the best possible conditions and the inertia of the system is unbelievable. 

Lets hope that the new framework (Horizon 2020) will change things and make the process more efficient, more productive and more transparent.

* I am familiar with the computer science/applied mathematics

* EU funding schemas were (and still are) quite generous as it concern my research activities