Category: Education and scholarship Page 1 of 2

I had an interview with a Texas A&M professor yesterday that was genuinely disappointing. The professor represented himself as someone who was highly knowledgeable about ML/AI and image processing in an agriculture related domain when he obviously did not know the language nor the technology at all. He runs a big lab with many PhD students and I shudder when I think about what they have to endure to get through his program. It has me rethinking how I want to go about all this and realize how spectacular were my professors, committee, and the entire program for my first PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

I am well into the second half of my introductory (lay level) book on the philosophy of mind titled The Soul by J.P. Moreland, so the timely arrival of Science and Its Limits by Del Ratzsch in the mail was greatly appreciated. I expect to start in on it at the same slow pace am taking to read The Soul.

I spend a great deal of time these days either using Artificial Intelligence to figure stuff out about health, finances, educational pursuits, and all kinds of trivia or literally building AI framework for my day job as tools for cell culture instrument work. Side-by-side with that, I have started reading about Philosophy of Mind and consciousness, maybe partially because of the AI work, but mostly because it has been an interesting topic to me since long before AI was on my radar. Right now I am firmly in the camp of non-believers in AI ever arriving at consciousness. That does not seem to be a rational position to me.

I started a conversation with an experimental psychology professor at Tarleton State University in Stephenville yesterday. It is about the possibility to collaborate on one of her research questions and possibly consider starting another PhD there if we are a fit personally and the tool set I bring can add value in her work. Lorena and I drove down there this morning and were stunned with the beauty and size of the campus. It is bigger and more beautiful than we expected. We are also investigating whether it makes sense for Lorena to finish a bachelor’s degree there and it looks like it might work out if enough of the college credits from her associate degree transfer cleanly.

I am starting to hear back from the emails I sent to a bunch of particular professors at universities in the region to see if they might entertain the idea of me providing volunteer work on a research question or data set they have as a way to explore whether it would make sense for me to start a PhD program with them. I have heard back from one good prospect at Texas A&M University in College Station who completely got the concept and understood my unusual skill set and proposed educational path. I also heard back from two who were not really interested–I really did appreciate the responses. Finally, there was one from UNT in Denton who said he really did not have a PhD slot for me, but he had a grad student that might be able to use the skills I brought to bear for her dissertation and he would be willing to talk to me about collaborating on that. He did not say anything about using that as a way for us to determine whether I might be a good PhD candidate for him in the future, just that he would be willing to collaborate if the project was right. He either did not read the email closely or was looking for a free resources so I marked that one off my list.

I have been to a lot of graduation ceremonies, but I have seen absolutely none that surpass those of University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The guy in the left in the photo is Dr. John Stranzl. He just finished his degree under the tutelage of the guy on the right, Dr. Troy Gilmore, who also served as my PhD advisor. This has been a labor of love for all three of us–we hope and expect to continue working together on GRIME Lab projects. These are two of my very best friends in the world. Lorena and I are watching the live stream of the graduation with great joy. We are all very proud of John.

I sent out four emails to Experimental Psychology PhD programs over the last couple of days. The one sent yesterday was to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas which is close enough so I could attend in-person. That is attractive to me as I am interested in participating in the community and that is not impossible, but harder remotely. I wrote to two additional schools in Texas, Texas Tech in Lubbock and East Texas A&M University in Commerce. It would be possible to drive to those schools a couple times per semester so that would not be a bad compromise if the program and professor is the right match. The last was at University of Alabama Huntsville because it seemed like a very good match with my skill set. I am hoping for a quick answer to get the ball rolling with one or two of them although I am really in no hurry to matriculate.

I am not sure anyone will be interested in taking me on in Experimental Psychology, but I definitely am interested and believe I have a research skill set that could be attractive to the right professor. If I cannot find the right program, I will reset my expectations and look for another field that is fundamentally different than my academic background, but that could benefit from the tools and experience I have to offer.