The PSI Career Blog features PSI alumni and their career paths to highlight the versatility of the PSI community, and inspire the young generation. Today with Eric Wasson Burns, who is telling us about his PhD experience at PSI, and the transition to his current job as associate in the climate team of Deep Science Ventures.
What was your role at PSI?
PhD researcher in thin film oxynitride solar fuel materials in LMX-interfaces lab in NUM.
What are you doing now and where are you working?
I am an Associate in the climate team at Deep Science Ventures. I help build deep tech startups from the initial ideation to the eventual spinout to solve our climate challenges! It's a remote job out of London, and about half of the team works fully remote. I was most recently living and working in Paris - but now relocated to Helsinki.
How did you find your job?
I found it through a climate networking community and via the climate startup ecosystem.
Why did you choose your current employer?
1. Well-vetted impact builder: Our company brings together creative scientists to build companies across our 4 main divisions: Climate, Pharma, Agri, and Computation. Our work is also very impact driven: we build companies by working backwards by starting with the largest challenges facing humanity to identify the largest possible bottleneck that can be solved via the introduction of some key technology. Moreover we have a great track record in this line of work - we've built over 35 companies in the past 6 years across the natural science space with nearly 300 million euro in our portfolio.
2. Great colleagues/fantastic learning environment: We're a small team of some 15-20 internal employees with a high degree of organization and information transparency. It's fantastic being surrounded by a bunch of highly motivated, brilliant, and creative scientists - 2/3 of us have both a PhD + some business or startup background. To me, DSV feels like the ideal compromise between academia and industry. I really enjoy the fast-paced environment where both depth and breadth are highly valued - where I can enjoy deep academic dives into new fields and banter across disciplines, but where I can also start from 0, identify an initial idea and directly oversee the formation of a real company (we hire the first 2 founders).
What does your typical workday look like?
My work essentially involves driving 2-3 large climate topic areas e.g. solving water scarcity. I also provide support work for some of my climate colleagues on their topic areas. (Aside from checking slack messages,) my typical workday in general consists of three components worked in parallel.
1. Outcome graphing: When I was first starting with water scarcity work, my work day would primarily consist of building out and brainstorming an internal 'outcome graph.' Essentially I have to figure out how to break down the water scarcity area and iterate through constraints and possible solutions etc. and then assess possible approaches against each other once we arrive at that level of depth. During this time I would reach out to water sector experts and read through governmental reports, academic papers, and other water related deep dives.
2. Pitching and Hiring: Once the water sector is broken down into potential opportunity areas (e.g. solving inland urban water scarcity), we pitch to an external funding partner to fund a startup build. If approved, then we move to founder hiring where I then drive the founder search and host a series of interviews and case studies to largely determine scientific breadth and creativity.
3. Startup build: Finally, once a founder is hired, I work with the founder together to identify and evaluate every possible direction that can solve the problem our opportunity area is addressing. As the project progresses towards a final startup idea, the role turns more into a supportive role where myself and my team help assess the science, the business case, and pitch decks.
Admittedly from day to day this doesn't look much different from many other service jobs - lots of time on the computer and meetings with the occasional presentation or document for external people. The difference for me is the diversity of responsibilities and purpose.
What do you like particularly about your job?
Foremost I like how it feels like I am directly helping to solve climate issues, but I also really like how I have the flexibility to learn broad across so many areas including marketing and business development and learn deep into new areas of research.
How did you manage the transition into your new role? What was different, what was similar, what may have surprised you?
The hardest part of the transition was getting a hang of first-principles thinking and the workload + time it took for the learning curve to kick in. It was very different in how fast-paced and applied our work was in comparison to more fundamental research.
Which of the skills learned at PSI helps you in your new role?
Some of the biggest skill advantages I got from my time during my PhD was both breadth and depth of knowledge. My PhD gave me depth, but through talking to peers from so many different and separate fields, I was able to get a useful perspective across a range of sciences. The breadth helps me assess quickly what may be feasible and what may not - or at the very least, points me in the right direction to delve into literature. In addition, some of the most important skills I gained were soft skills during my time socializing, networking, and being part of the local 'Vereins'.
What did you learn after moving away from PSI?
I learned quickly that it's easy to take for granted the wide-array of resources (e.g. free access to publications) that are available at academic institutions.
Is there anything you miss now that you are no longer at PSI?
I miss the friends and spontaneous bus conversations and the motivated and awesome people in the PhD and Postdoc association and in their events. I also especially miss the wonderful people in the PSIchadelics band who provided me a welcome space for me to break out of my comfort zone and play in some really fun concerts. :)
What advice do you have for your younger colleagues?
I think one of the biggest advantages of a PhD is the choice to more flexibly determine where you want to put your time than almost any other career. For me this was probably one of the most rewarding factors.
Thank you Eric for sharing your experience with us!