Establishing International Collaboration: How It’s Done

Vjačeslavs Kaščejevs talks about the research project in a nutshell: “We conducted a unique experiment in a seemingly well-known field of solid state physics. We set the quantum pump for throwing exactly two electrons at a time, hoping each of them would follow its own route. For an unknown reason they did just the opposite and we couldn’t explain their attraction force. It was the conclusion of our experiment.” The research is fundamental, so no one expects results to be applied to  practice at this stage. “It would be wrong to assume we could start producing nanoelectronics for Intel or Apple right away. There is a reason why we collaborate with foreign laboratories: at the moment Latvia’s not able to compete with their  human capital and infrastructure investment”, says Kaščejevs. Although he wouldn’t deny that a certain product oriented research is already being conducted. There are other ways of looking at this research project: once the paper is published, other scientists can refer to it in their works. This  paper  published in March 2014  has already been cited in four other publications. New research results are especially important for experimental scientists from various fields of physics to continue their work and prove their hypotheses. Competition between scientists exists in any field of science, including those scholars involved in our topic of research. At the moment similar experiment is being conducted in a laboratory in England. “We’ll be certain that our results are positive only when someone unrelated to us repeats the experiment in their own way”, says Prof. Kaščejevs. He’s looking forward to hearing results from England. A little unusual Prof. Kaščejevs engaged in the research project in 2012 during his visit to the German National Metrology Institute (PTB) within the Quantum scope project. PTB scientists focus on physics of exact measurements and develop nanostructures. Prof. Kaščejevs was told that one of the lead authors of the research had the results ready, but there were problems interpreting them. “It was a little unusual”, says Prof. Kaščejevs, because he engaged in the project when the empirical research had almost been finished. “It brings an element of surprise, a taste of discovery to this case. All key measurements had already been carried out, but we did additional work afterwards”. Result interpretation was done both in collaboration with the German professors and in separate working groups. “We saw that the initial data that we couldn’t understand was a clear anomaly in the probability language. It was necessary to draw conclusions from the anomaly, whether it was a correlation or another explanation is needed. I’m passionate about theory, sophisticated arguments and theoretical calculations with various models that show which of the standard explanations don’t work”, says Professor. The whole research project lasted for about two years. Social network for scientists Prof. Kaščejevs is the only collaborating author from Latvia. Most of the scholars are from Germany, and he had already worked with them before. He and Bernd Kästner met in 2006, when Prof. Kaščejevs was working on his dissertation in Tel Aviv. He already had several papers published on the topic, and Kästner e-mailed him asking to examine unusual research data. “In a couple of days I e-mailed back my ideas on the subject. They were very surprised and immediately suggested meeting in Cambridge.” That was their first acquaintance. “Bernd Kästner is the chief experimenter in the field of quantum pumps”, says Kaščejevs. Kästner and Kaščejevs have already established successful collaboration. Kästner also remembers his first contact with Kaščejevs: “Theory of Vjačeslavs Kaščejevs corresponded to our experiments. Since then the experiment and theory helped us identify new questions and respective solutions.” Further collaboration between Kaščejevs and PTB was predictable since PTB is responsible for the empirical part and Prof. Kaščejevs – for the theoretical basis of the experiment. “We owe the lion’s share of the success to Niels Ubbelohde”, says Kaščejevs. The measuring device used in the research was the dissertation project by German scientist Ubbelohde at Hannover University. “He spent days, weeks and months carefully calibrating and measuring”, says Kaščejevs about the empirical research. Ubbelohde describes collaboration with Kaščejevs as highly constructive: “Kaščejevs played the major role in the theory development using the results of our experimental physicists in Hannover.” “Social networking of scientists drives science forward. Real relationships are made between people. Scientists must be creative and understand how to help each other. There is high added value in meeting fellow scientists face to face, and, of course, ambitions, competition and wide range of emotions. Physicists can be pretty cool colleagues”, says Prof. Kaščejevs. Collaboration and main challenges The project participants spent little time working face to face. Prof. Kaščejevs points out that they’ve been working separately for about a year. He then received a grant funding and spent three weeks in Germany actively discussing the research manuscript. Prof. Kästner emphasizes that the experiment is very specific; therefore each of the involved researchers specializes in his own field, like cryogenics (low temperatures physics) or production of samples. Prof. Kaščejevs specializes in theory development and he successfully described the results of the research. “We proposed and discussed hypotheses and analysed them very carefully. We met in person several times, it speeded up the process and gave great results”, says Prof. Kästner. Prof. Ubbelohde argues that there’s work that can be done independently, for example, experiment preparation, measurements and development of theoretical model. He considers the Internet one of the most useful tools for exchanging information. “However, it’s still important to establish contacts and collaboration, but it requires travelling and funds, that sometimes can be difficult to get”, says Ubbelohde. Prof. Kästner also thinks that distance and funding can be problematic. “Some states have more money than others, therefore this way they can define research directions and means of cooperation”, says Kästner. He has been collaborating with scientists from other countries for 15 years and he’s certain that nationality doesn’t define whether the teamwork will be successful or not. He is certain that scientists do compete with each other, and there is little difference whether they compete at national or international level. Prof. Ubbelohde agrees that nationality is not an obstacle for international collaboration. He is certain that science itself is international. He describes his long-term collaboration with Prof. Kaščejevs as very fruitful, especially in the PTB working group. Prof. Ubbelohde thinks that international collaboration has a number of advantages: “It provides a different perspective, new methodology and discussion as such”. Collaboration that is often based on diversity of fundamental research, facilitates progress in various fields of science. The aim is to get published in Nature “Scientists like to gamble: will you get in Nature or not?” Prof. Kaščejevs passionately describes the common goal to get published in Nature. „One wall of a coffee room in the largest institute for nanotechnologies in Grenoble has Nature Physics, and the other has Nature Nanotechnology publications pinned to it. Prof. Kaščejevs says that Nature is an Olympus for physicists and it’s a challenge to get published there. Nature is a prominent scientific journal and is a European equivalent of American Science. “We had to turn the research into a jewel”, reveals Kaščejevs. “We had very high expectations and the paper followed Nature Nanotechnology requirements.” Despite the fear that the paper might be too specialized for the editor and not interesting for the reader it got accepted. But it wasn’t the end of the story, as “the battle with the reviewers begun”. When a paper is being published, an extended annex is “a demonstration of experts’ high competence which was fundamental for our research.” The first version of the paper was published without the extended annex. Prof. Kaščejevs says that during that summer they were intensively collaborating online for the annex to be credible. Kaščejevs warns against focusing on publicity and prestige too much since “there are very many high quality and topical research projects that are not published in prestigious journals”. Nevertheless publications provide visibility for scientists and greater chances to get invited to another research project. Published academic papers is another way to show students the latest trends in modern science, and prove that research papers are  written by ordinary people not by gods. Prof. Kaščejevs tries to incorporate information on latest research into the UL study programme. Students’ perception changes as they see how classic theories are being used in modern science literature. He says, though, that “published academic papers are mainly read by field experts and their interested students”. Research reveals today’s topicalities Arnis Katkevičs is a Master’s programme student at the UL Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and a physics technician in Prof. Kaščejevs’s quantum nanoelectronics research group. Arnis claims that the fact that Latvian research papers are published in prominent scientific journals proves the research quality. It inspires respect for Latvian academics . Katkevičs also speaks highly of the work done by Prof. Mārcis Auziņš and Prof. Ruvins Ferbers at UL Laser Centre. “It’s nice to hear that research conducted in Latvia in such fields of science as medicine gains a wide public response. It proves that Latvian science system is diverse and high quality”, says Katkevičs. Does Prof. Kaščejevs talk to his students on partitioning of on-demand electron pairs research? “After the paper was submitted to Nature , Prof. Kaščejevs organized a seminar for students who take part in his research projects and asked for their ideas on further development and possible solutions”, says Katkevičs. Besides, Prof. Kaščejevs often talks about his foreign colleagues and their work. Science is global How do scientists find each other? “Can you see what I’m constantly looking at while talking to you? [www.arxiv.org is a database of academic papers – L.A.] Everything is global. I can monitor all the developments in my area of interest daily”, says Prof. Kaščejevs, arguing that scientists get noticed by new articles and new results. “I follow how and why my papers are referred to and how it develops further.”  He says it’s important to use references for already published information to avoid any misunderstanding. An author might be invited to collaborate with other scientists if their new idea is valuable. Attending conferences is a way to meet many scientists in one place. “Conferences provide a great overview of new trends and developments”, says Professor. It’s an opportunity to establish new contacts even though most of the players are already known. “Last year thanks to Latvia’s state funding my colleague Jānis Timošenko and I were able to go to Brazil. It was a bit painful to sign for my travel allowance“, says Prof. Kaščejevs. But nevertheless was a unique experience to meet quantum pump makers from all over the world. We’ve established contacts with representatives of the National Metrology Institute of Korea and The Australian Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology Science has no borders Prof. Kaščejevs says that working abroad helps to gain a fresh look at anything, not only physics and science in general. “It’s impossible for any internationally competitive field of science to develop in isolation”. He is certain that science has no borders and scientists should prove themselves in the international arena. “In any case, we have to communicate. Things develop, and your competitive advantage will be gone in a year. Keeping up with the latest trends is also important because the most valuable ideas emerge working hand in hand. If I hadn’t met Niel, the quality of the research would be different and we wouldn’t have noticed the very fundamental aspect that now has become a research subject itself “, Prof. Kaščejevs argues. A student’s opinion about Prof. Kaščejevs and work in research groups Arnis Katkevičs, a Master student at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and a physics technician in  Kaščejevs’ quantum nanoelectronics research group: “From what I know, Prof. Kaščejevs had developed the theoretical material a year ago, before joined his research group. It takes several years to write a scientific paper, and as Prof. Kaščejevs puts it, nine out of ten ideas are rejected by the theoretician, so successful outcome is the result of long and hard work. But Vjačeslavs is always enthusiastic, especially when it comes to quantum physics-related issues.  His research group collaborates with major science institutions in Germany, UK and Sweden. Thanks to data we get from our foreign colleagues, we are already able to conduct theoretical research here in Latvia. They have access to expensive equipment necessary for acquiring that kind of data. I understand that it’s fairly easy to continue studies at one of the foreign universities, and several students from the group led by Prof. Kaščejevs did their Master’s theses in Sweden and France. Nevertheless, I’m more interested in theoretical part of physics and the UL offers high quality education in this field.”