My favorite term they use in academia is "trainee" to justify low salaries. Trainees encompass High School Students, Undergraduates, to Postdocs, an age range from maybe 18 to 38.
342 karma · joined January 9, 2022
I was thinking about famous "I" and "T" scientists in history and I think there is a connection between "T" and "I" scientists and Freeman Dyson's "Birds and Frogs" essay.
Examples of Frogs or "I": Francis Bacon, Freeman Dyson, John von Neumann
Examples of Birds of "T": Descartes, Yuri Manin, Hilbert
I guess for me it is assumed that one who does the work can also communicate the work in various forms (text, formal presentations, informal discussions). Perhaps it requires separate skills? But to me they sound like a continuation along the same "I".
When one hears a nice talk from (what I would call) an "I" researcher, it is usually communicated well, but the techniques and scientific question can be narrow.
When I hear a nice talk from a "T" researcher, it's usually someone who combines seemingly disparate fields (e.g. physics + sociology) together to solve a scientific question.
I guess either way I assume "I" and "T" researchers are both able to communicate their work. Perhaps that's where I misunderstood your post.
Doing wet-lab experiments and developing in-silico ML models are completely different and often times labs are often focused on only one or the other. I imagine a T-shaped person excels in wet-lab experiments to generate quality data as well as in analysis/modeling skills to put the data into a quantitative framework.
I also want to make it clear that I don't consider "I" or "T" any better than the others. We need both in science to progress. Perhaps our definitions of "I" and "T" differ slightly.
>Setting up a suitable build system. Writing some unit tests for the code. Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed. Designing nice mock-ups or logos. Creating animations or graphics for presentations.
This makes me think the author is a fairly I-shaped person, because those examples look like one area (i.e., build systems, unit tests, sketching models).
An example of a T-shaped person would be someone who can develop wet-lab experimental technique as well as new machine learning models (which in academia you have the space to do).