My first research publication taught me these 3 things

Publishing research paper is part of the mission in becoming a PhD. The path demands effort as well as, to me equally essential, right moment. Not only because science can go to the way that surprises us, also our life changes as we go along.

In my 4th year, I had the chance to publish the first 1st-authored PhD work. The days of running the first few measurements was still distinct – I was 8 months pregnant with my first baby. Fast forward to the day the research paper officially accepted, I was hospitalized for just giving birth to my second baby.

If there’s anything I want to conclude from the landmarks, it’s that the research process is a long journey while life is happening on the side.

What have I learned in the story of publishing the science story?

#1 Every learning opportunity is an invaluable experience.

The publication was not on the plan. Even, the material I was studying was tangentially relevant to our research goal at the beginning. I started off the “test” samples mainly to try my hands on the spectrometer for future projects. At the time, I didn’t think of the possibility of getting it through but I managed to meticulously document everything. If I’d brushed off the opportunity to learn, I’d lost the possibility to demonstrate the result.

#2 Don’t underestimate your intuition despite you’re new to the field.

After collecting a few promising data, however, we didn’t really know what to do with it. The material was new to me, so was the on the technique side. It took me a while to comprehend all of the things. Trying to transfer the skills and experience from the past, I intuitively proposed a computational chemistry solution to improve interpretation. If I’d been intimidated in a new setting from offering my thoughts, I’d probably miss the opportunity.

#3 It’s not your fault if it’s not working.

Though the project looked exciting, there was one problem, and a critical one, that the signature signal we looked for in one of the materials was missing. The effort of repeatedly trying was like throwing a stone to the sea – it never responded. This bottleneck had stopped us from moving on.

At one point when it felt like a dying project, one of my lab mates took on using another similarly equipped spectrometer to test if the equipment caused the problem. Surprisingly, it worked well on the new spectrometer – the signals we looked for did exist! More surprisingly, ever since it worked on my end of equipment too!

The connection between the two spectrometers remains a puzzle to me. Sometimes I feel the process of experiment and science is interesting as some of them seem to be straightforward concepts but difficult to measure – while others are even more difficult to measure and in the meantime abstract.

We don’t know which quadrant it is until we actually execute it. If it’s working, great! If not, we pick up the lesson and move forward. It’s no personal failure, it’s just the scientific puzzle is not being ready to be conquered.

Chiung-Wei at Triangle Student Research Competition in 2017. The research results were published in Communications Chemistry.