 Hello, so this is another in this series of videos when I'm talking to our staff members about their career paths and their careers. And today we're talking to Zara Monteseri. Zara, hello, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us when and where you did your PhD. Sure. Thank you. I'm Zara Monteseri, a lecturer here at the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, and I joined this past January, so still brand new. And I'm also a consultant at business research at the same time, and my field of research is computer graphics. I received my PhD from University of California, Irvine, last year. Okay, thank you. Can you tell us a bit about the career path you've had to get to this point? Sure. So before joining University of Manchester, I had accepted an industry position back in San Francisco at Disney ILM. Then I transferred to London because of my husband's job. Before that, I was a researcher at a graphics company called Bloxian, working with Professor Henrik Jensen for almost two years. Also during my PhD, I interned at Pixar Animation, Studio Dreamworks Animation, and XEU. So in total, I had more than three years of industry experience before joining academia. And yes, I am one of the few examples coming from industry, while the other way is more common. Okay, thank you. That sounds like an amazing career path so far. So can you tell us a bit more about your role in the department, and what do you do day to day? Right, so I'm a research and teaching lecturer, which is the equivalent to assistant professor, meaning that I would get to do research as well as teaching proportionally. As a junior lecturer, we get to teach one module in a year related to my field of research, and that's even paired up with an honors senior academic. A relatively low load of teaching for junior academics gives us the opportunity to focus more on research and build up a good group in early stage. On the research side, I'm currently involved in five projects, three of them, I'm the main driver, so honestly hasn't been much progress recently. And the other two I'm just leaving. I admitted to PhDs joining in September, which is a pleasure because not all the schools fancy supporting this for early academics. Other than teaching and research, grant writing is another side of the story, which for me has been the most challenging bit so far. Okay, thank you. And, you know, following on from that, you know, what are the best parts of your job and what are the less good parts. All right, so what I like the most about my job, or academia in general is there. There is no limit, upper limit, and you can always grow, learn and stretch your potentials. Basically, every day is different and full of surprises. There is no cliche routine or so that makes it less prone to get bored. I would compare this with my experience in industry. Well, I potentially couldn't be more challenged, but I do like to always step outside of my comfort zone and challenge myself. Now I can reach out to any expert in the world and propose a joint project while industry is way more restricted in that area. The second part I greatly enjoy is the opportunity to teach, train and supervise students which I wouldn't get outside of school. It's very rewarding, and I would be honored to repay the debt of gratitude of my own teachers whom inspired me back in school and I would always own them my success. So yeah, it's very impactful and very big deal to me if I could contribute to someone's future. Now about less good parts. Well, the easy one is money. I moved from industry in California to academia in the UK so clearly I couldn't care less, but it's a well known fact and anywhere in industry we could make more, but that's not necessarily true as well. I'm now consulting with industry and that comes with compensation. So there would be always some sort of opportunity if someone cares enough to attempt. So another less good part is I would say the bureaucracy and all the unnecessarily paperwork we get to do in a day to day job, which I found a little annoying and kind of a waste of time. It's new to me comparing to my previous job at industry. And also, yeah, another not so good side is that I feel rather alone in my own success and the only person responsible for the outcomes, while in companies, everything is about teamwork and I always thought it would be very depressing, because I like to live in a dynamic and a more active industry group. But this was honestly the main concern that I had chose industry, but now I can change my mind, because I recently realized it's actually the opposite. I get to interact with my collaborators for every project. Besides, I get a lot of interactions with students in daily basis, which I absolutely love. So it's not me sitting lonely in my office with no social interactions, as I used to think. So now I get to work in a very social interactive environment, which I wouldn't ever know about back in my PhD. And I always think of, you know, following up on that you work in lots of different small, small and larger teams, different size teams. That's how I feel, you know, on that front that, you know, there's bigger teams. But, you know, there's smaller teams say to do with PhD supervision because there's often co supervisors and other people involved in those things. So yeah, lots of interacting small teams is how I view it too. And, okay, so you mentioned earlier on your other career I think Disney was definitely one of the places that you'd worked at. What did you do at Disney day to day or pick one of your other jobs. Sure. So I have the pleasure experience you're working at major animation studios like Disney Pixar ILM Dreamworks, and each taught me something and prepared me better for this my current job. I don't regret any single moment. My answer to the previous question was mostly my reflection on academia and I guess this question is more about the pros and cons and industry my point of view. So let me put it that way, which might be very helpful for PhDs in this stage of reclining on one side or another after graduation. Again, the easy one is money, especially in computer science honestly not part at all to find opportunities, especially in California. Second, a clear and well established day to day tasks you would get an industry, because there would be always superiors to you to help you out you wouldn't ever stop. And everyone is trying for a same goal. So it's a team effort very dynamic very motivating. It's usually a nine to five job and a clear cut between your work and home, which you wouldn't get much in academia. Well, with the exception of startup companies actually I did try once opening up my own business with a friend of mine, after our PhD, and it failed. So I can talk about my experience about having our own business as well. I think that would be really as a fail example, because the third option for graduates apart from academia and industry is starting their own startup right so that would be also something that they could consider. And, but I'm pretty happy honestly I got the chance to try everything before settling down in academia, and I would always feel confident about my current job and it helped out me to truly enjoy what I'm now doing. So yeah, let's get back to the last part. Yeah, the first thing comes to my mind is the job insecurity compared to academia. You may gain more money but you may also easily use your job. At least in the US most contracts are at will employment. So, you can never feel secure. The other part I found out. I'm not enjoying the most in industry is, and I wasn't aware before working there as a full time. It was, you're essentially working for someone else at the end. And there is less belongingness toward the achievements that you're acquiring right, rather than academia your work is yours and will be always yours. So you benefit most if you get to work harder, and you would less complain about the load of work, because you're not working for someone else in academia right so no one else is benefiting, such that you would get in a company and there is no one else. So you would compare yourself with so you wouldn't get that kind of very competitive culture. Following this matter in industry you may experience the ceiling effect which I don't enjoy the most. Soon after working in a company, you reach to the upper limit of your potentials and not much more room for growing and that's why you tend to see a lot of people change their companies after a while or jump into new roles because we would like to challenge ourselves. And at least I do. And that's not concerning me in academia because I can work always with whomever I want. And that's the beauty of my job which I appreciate because at the moment while I work with Disney research I also collaborate with wet unity. They are the creators of Game of Thrones, and some projects from IKEA so I kept my industry relationships but now I also have the opportunity to work with all of them at the same time, which would be very unheard of with the unrestricted with the restrictions in a company. So honestly, if I knew this, this possibility is back in my PhD I could have been more clear about my future path about academia I wouldn't know that could be an option to stay in academia while having collaborations with industry as much. Okay, thank you that sounds good so give us an idea on what you did day to day in, in, you know, one of these industrial jobs what did you when you arrived in the morning what did you do. So it depends if it was a research job or a software engineer as a as a research and development which was mostly what I did. It was mostly involve routine cliche work and we need to we had like a screw in the morning as a like a morning meeting so everyone would tell what they are going to work on. And, and it was pretty clear that this is the task and this is a ticket attached to this blog or whatever that we need to resolve. So it was much clear and a more focused on what we want to do. And of course we would get more variety of what once this product is released or whatever we get to do another very different kind of test so it's not quite boring, but still compared to what you do in academia with all different varieties of things. I feel that now it's more, more different the other day to day job. Okay, I understand a bit better and have you got chance in academia to keep up your software engineering skills. Of course it's very important because that's like the coding every day, what else we can do in computer science department and that definitely helped me on a skill set that I needed to grow back in school was implementation and now in academia you would still need to closely implement at least for junior academics. Okay, thank you. And you touched on this earlier on but coming back to this is, you mentioned transfer of skills between one role or one job to another so what skills have been useful in your previous careers that have been useful now or vice versa. Oh sure. So in my previous roles, what I learned the most was communication skill and playing a good team member, because then you could always learn from peers what we need to learn and that would be the secret to success. So I picked this up in industry, and now I enjoy collaborating with my peers, with collaborators, and this collaborative culture that I learned because it definitely now helps me to better perform in my joint research projects. I think that management skill is another bit that I definitely recommend to pick it up as soon as possible because it hugely helped me to lead a research group, which to me, it's now not less important than learning technical skills. I found that honestly missing any school curriculum, unless students voluntarily work in extra curriculum activities, which I usually recommend by the way. Actually, back in my PhD, I was very active in different organizations and we were repeatedly told by the school that we graduate hundreds of scientists every year, while we need more managers. That's very true. Learning management skill is another bit helped me a lot for my current job and I owe it to my industry experience. I think that's really good advice that you know often think graduating as a scientist you think the science is the key I think it is very important but there's a lot of other skills around that you know communication and soft skills but you know management as well certainly that we need to get our science across and into the right places so so yeah. Okay, so what advice would you give to students in the last stages of their PhDs to help them finish off. Or get the most out of your PhD. Try for first class research, because your thesis would stick to your forehead forever until the end of your life. And this would might be the last opportunity to gain and build up resume before you would bury it under much more responsibilities and commitments. That would be my first advice this is a very, very valuable time I wish I would get even more if I go back to school. Second, be motivated and keep reminding yourself that it's going to pay off soon. I'm going to be depressing at some point with tons of rejections be proud of what you did and remember, you're now among a very tiny top community in that have mastered in that particular field. So be confident when reaching out to job opportunities about what you've done and try to kind of make it a good fit. Thank you and any particular career advice. Yeah, they may already know that the obvious ones but let me share one, one that I found less common in the UK educational system, but I myself benefited most studying in the US system, which I appreciate and that's about internships during during PhD. I started to do five internships during my six year of internship, sorry, six year of PhD, basically means one internship every summer. I would get to work on different research related projects so they all ended up in my thesis, but still a different environment a different team. I can be more grateful of the opportunities because I got offer from all of them after my graduating, and I was already integrated in the community so that saved me a lot of time compared to those were focused in at a school. So I definitely recommend it but I haven't found very easy way to do it I tried to work it out for my own group now. And also another part from the experience is also the financial support. So I remember we would get the three month of salary usually would be twice as more as the rest of the nine months so I definitely recommend if you have the opportunity. Oh, the other less obvious one is to attend important conferences, even if you're not presenting. So I know about the financial restrictions that you may have given that the funding you're on, but even self funding for going for a conference the network you will get is essential it definitely worth the money and time to me, at least like once in a two year something at once a year, which I haven't seen that comment and have been so far in the UK. Yeah, and just networking networking networking during your PhD because you get, you need to do that you need to have the visibility of your work and all of yourself so you would have much more opportunities open to you. You know, where you graduate and conferences will bring those all to you for free. So, I would definitely advise on that about both finding a position for after PhD, and also all the experience and technical stuff that we would learn by attending conference. Yeah. But very good advice. Is there any other things you'd like to say that we haven't covered. So one thing is that maybe think of your future plan in advance so clear up, do you want to go for academia do you want to go for industry do you want to start your own business, because that would help you to be well equipped in that particular direction because each needs its own resume. And so clearing up your mind, talking to people getting experience having a better a future plan would definitely save you some time. Another thing is to finish unfinished projects before you graduate because once you graduate you would have a pipeline of pretty impressive work but never got published so if you if you can finish whatever you have in the pipeline before you kind of start your new journey that would be always a bonus. And yeah, yeah that's it. I think that comes to the end of our Q&A Zara thank you so much for sharing all your thoughts your advice and your experiences. Really interesting journey you've had and you know sort of keen to see more what happens in in the future in the department so thank you so much Zara. Thank you so much it was pleasure. Thanks for having me.