Dos and don'ts of being a researcher: some lessons I've learned on the way

Abstract

In this presentation, I will share some of the insights I developed in more than 20 years of life as a PI, including the research philosophy that helped me obtain two ERC grants, but also bad decisions and attitudes that led me to dead ends and burnouts. I will share my personal perspective on topics such as creative research, interdisciplinarity, competition, the industry/academia dichotomy and work/life balance.

About the speaker

Marco Baroni is currently an ICREA research professor affiliated with the Linguistics Department of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Marco has a an interdisciplinary track record, including a PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, faculty appointments at the School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Bologna and at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento, and, most recently, five years at Facebook AI Research as research scientist. Marco's work takes inspiration from machine learning models to understand the dynamics of human language, and from what we know about human language to develop better machine learning models. His work has received widespread recognition, including a Google Research Award, two ERC Grants, the ICAI-JAIR best paper prize and the ACL test-of-time award.

Participation

The participation is free, but it is mandatory to register online due to Covid-19 restrictions that limit the seats in the room.
In compliance with Covid-19 restrictions, the access to the room is allowed only with the Digital Covid Certificate (Green Pass) and face masks must be worn at all times.

Next story on 30 May at 1 pm. Good practices learnt as a young PI by Fabio Poiesi, Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Pi Stories: A series of seminars aimed at providing the opportunity to the PhD students to learn the success stories of some of the most talented researchers in the world. Each speaker will present a research project he/she led as a principal investigator. The presentation will cover the scientific scope of the project and the most important results the project achieved. The speakers will also share their own experience of turning a research idea into a successful project winning a competitive grant.