Why MMCi at Duke 0 0 1 766 4372 Duke University 36 10 5128 14.0

The dialogue with Stephen, posted earlier, left me thinking about recent career decisions. The paragraphs below are taken from the essay I wrote as part of the application to the MMCi program at Fuqua. They relate directly to these decisions. So far, the program has been living up to my expectations as stated in the last paragraph below.

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There have been a few times earlier in my career when I found it necessary to “remake myself” professionally. This first occurred as a grad student in a PhD program studying nuclear physics, I came to realize that career opportunities would be limited. For a variety of reasons I resolved to stop my education after completing a MS and found employment at Bell Laboratories doing software engineering. Later I managed to switch from product development to applied research, which satisfied a yearning otherwise unmet, but required developing many new skills. After the telecom meltdown, and the onset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, DoD research funds (which had been my bread and butter) tightened and it became increasingly difficult to find the external support required to continue what I’d done previously. I found another project at RTI that looked promising, and learned a new set of technologies associated with semiconductor fabrication and packaging. But after working in this area for a couple of years, it’s now clear, this path does not have enough market traction have much of a future for me. It’s time to rethink directions and remake myself yet again.

I’ve given much thought to encore career options. Generally I’ve concluded that I need to do something that can support a reasonable income to provide for a financial cushion to hedge against getting caught in the changes needed to restore fiscal order to the Federal government. The work needs to have the right kind of challenges for keep me intellectually and emotionally engaged. This means it must have opportunities/if not a requirement for continued learning. It needs to present technical problems that need to be solved, preferably at a conceptual level. It needs to have some aspect of returning to my community (professional, generational, and or geographical). My thoughts about options to meet these goals have tended along these lines:

Start a boutique/lifestyle business: I’ve done a couple of venture capital backed startups and feel confident that starting a small business is a realistic possibility. There are several issues with this direction, but perhaps most significantly, nothing I’ve identified as a specific business has a service to community component or involves work that I think would hold my interest over time.

Teaching physics and math: I spent 7 years of my life studying math and physics, and then followed a profession where those skills atrophied from disuse. The current buzz about science, engineering and math education suggests a ready demand for these old skills. Re-energizing those physic and math synapses appeals and meets many, but not all of my encore goals.

Become program manager at a research granting government agency: I have often toyed with the idea of going to DARPA, the ARO or the NSF to develop and manage research contracts and programs. The idea of sitting on the other side of the table is appealing. It would be challenging work that would meet my encore career objectives. While I’ve started down this path several times in past years, I have never followed it to the end.

Medical infomatics looks like an interesting career direction. With two medical schools, SAS and multiple pharmaceutical companies in the triangle, it would seem that there will be many job opportunities. Also if the rules being established by ONC and CMS under HITECH, if not unwound by TEA Party Republicans, strongly suggest that medical infomatics should remain a growing field. With respect to service to my community, as a baby boomer, I sit at ground zero of two fiscal ticking time bombs, the social security trust fund and the cost of medical care for an age skewed population. Continuing to work is about the only contribution that, at my pay grade, can influence the social security situation. However, a career in medical infomatics seems like a meaningful way to contribute to the solution of an important problem that our nation faces. My current judgment is that this direction represents the best option for meeting all of my encore objectives.

Two aspects of medical infomatics appeal to me in particular, 1) the policies and methods involved in aggregation and analysis data from large population groups, and 2) the policy and technical challenges of defining and meeting the requirements for information security and privacy when aggregating data across institutional boundaries. As indicated in my cost and quality impact essay, I see a great potential for reductions of medical costs and improved medical intervention outcomes through data aggregation and analysis. There is a complex tension between the goals of data aggregation, information security, and individual privacy that must be dealt with in order to realize this potential. The problems span technology and policy. Diving into these issues appears to be both challenging and rewarding.