"It
was almost two years ago now when I arrived to Boston, in one of the coldest winters
of the last decade. The Charles River was frozen, everything was covered with
several inches of snow, and most of the people preferred to stay indoors rather
than get frozen while crossing Harvard Bridge. A mistake that you only make
once, or twice if you are in a hurry and you want to go from MIT to Boston. And
that was the start of my two years adventure in US soil, the beginning was
closer to “Fargo” than to “A beautiful mind” movie.
It
was my first time in the US and apart from the usual cultural misunderstanding
with the Spanish culture, never give a kiss if you barely know that person,
just shake hands if you don’t want to freak them out. And if someone told you:
How are you doing?, do not tell them what an awful day you had at the lab. They
just want to be nice and say hi. Once you surpass the cultural differences,
what surprise me most was how proud people from Boston are of MIT. Every year
MIT is the first or is between the top five of world universities. Here people
know the importance of knowledge and when they know that you do research, they
always say something like: I would like to be that smart…It is totally the
opposite response that you would receive at Spain, where they always ask you why?
(Meaning that research is useless). Which is horrible way of thinking and
totally far from reality. For example, in 2012, American universities earned
$2.6 billion from patent royalties, according to the Association of University
Technology Managers.
At
MIT it possible to know someone who has started a start-up, after its PhD or
even before finishing the PhD, and relative easy to known someone who got a job
in a company to do research. On the other hand, in Spain most of the times if
you have a PhD you will be probably seen as overqualified for an I+D position. In
Spain, universities and companies are two entities that hardly interact and
keep doing things in the old fashioned way, as
always has been done. In general in Spanish companies innovation is advertised,
but it is not part of its dna, yet. One of the things that shock me the most
from the beginning at MIT, was that all type of companies come to recruit
people, problem solvers, generator of new ideas, leaders,…. They look for
people that can add value to their companies, rather than mere tools. I hope
that this mentality will change, if we want to improve we must get out of our
comfort area.
In
part it is our fault, as scientists, for not being able to transmit to society
the importance of science in everyday life. We are seen as outsiders living at
its own science world. We should also fix the lack of knowledge transference
from university research to industry. We are normal people who like talking
with passion about what they like most. We should be proud of it, but we should
at least try to find ways to normalize it. As I fell that happens here at MIT,
where they always try to merge their passion for science into society."
Thank you Edu... We hope to see you soon...
Thank you Edu... We hope to see you soon...
