While still a PhD student at the University of Bristol, I was asked by my colleague Hinke Osinga to write an article about my experience in dynamical systems research in the US compared to the UK. I have lived in Boston, Massachusetts since October 2001, when I took up a post-doctoral positon at Boston University. I find it difficult to believe that a year has passed since I was asked to share my thoughts, but in this time I have already developed a strong sense of the similarities and differences between the UK and the US.

As a teenager I developed a strong interest in the study of artificial intelligence, and the workings of the brain and the mind in general. I had no idea that I would end up as a mathematician at the time. However, during my undergraduate years as a computer scientist at Cambridge University, I discovered the importance of mathematics as a tool for capturing relationships between physical behaviour and the conception of how it works at different levels of abstraction. This led me to mathematical modelling in the bio-sciences. I attained a masters degree in nonlinear mathematics from Bath University and continued my studies at Bristol, where I wrote a doctoral thesis exploring issues of multistability in the context of small networks of neurons. My long-standing interest in the brain and mind led me to want to continue academic research along these lines, with mathematics as its basis. I utilized analytical techniques in writing my thesis that are popular in Boston, and so Boston became a favourable choice as a place to continue my studies. Thus I gratefully accepted a post-doc position at Boston University in the Center for BioDynamics (CBD).

Before my arrival in Boston, I was often met with the generalization that I would be a rich man in America, relative to my situation as a graduate student. At first this view seemed plausible, for instance on receiving my first pay cheque, and noting the quantities of fresh food and drink brought in for the group's weekly seminar. However, the cost of living is surprisingly high in many ways. The tech boom of the late nineties made Boston the third most expensive US city to live in, after New York and San Francisco. This cost is seen in many things, ranging from accomodation to beer. It is not easy to acquire a sense of comparative monetary values for daily items that are quickly swiped through the checkout with a debit card. It is no help that I am a mathematician, especially because I am of the abstract kind, rather than an arithmetic whiz. (Never go out to dinner with dynamicists and expect to get out of the building quickly after the bill arrives, if you know what I mean.) In some respects, I actually feel there's only a modest difference in my effective income to what I might have expected as a post-doc in the UK, in terms of spending money. At the same time, my perception of my standard of living does seem higher in Boston, because the quality of housing, public spaces, transport, and departmental resources, seems uniformly better, not to mention the shopping. In fact, there must be demographic value to be factored in from the fact that my local supermarket sells twenty kinds of toilet paper, thirty brands of pain relief, and more flavours of soda than you can shake a sugar cane at.

There are a number of advantages in moving country for a short time to pursue an academic career. Let's start with the easy ones. The US, even in New England, typically has "better" weather than the UK, for one, provided you like sunshine and heat. Even in the winter I would argue that the colder temperatures compared to old England are offset by brighter skies and less rain. The lack of a significant language barrier helps to ease the transition to the new job. It's one less thing to worry about when there are so many tasks to get done in the first month or two, like getting bank accounts, insurance, a social security card, buying furniture, and finding the good bars. Then there is the exposure to a different culture, which, even though the US pours its media and commerical wares liberally over the world, often surprises me in its deeper differences to the UK's or Europe's in general. For instance, digging into the semi-underground free newspapers you can find some very interesting articles about long-standing political and social issues. This is a great place to start examining the underbelly of the region, if not the country. I found an eye-opening dissent on US foreign policy in the wake of September 11th, which challenged the relevance of the phrase "War on Terrorism" in the actions and motives of the US in the Middle East. On another week a similar paper examined the puritanism of local government, which had unnecessarily messed with, and in the process stalled, new laws that would protect mothers so that they could breast-feed in public without hassle or prejudice. I'm not sure why, but it appears that the traditional liberalism of the region (despite oddly mixed with some conservatism that would make some English Lords look like Johnny Rotten), perhaps combined with the intense community of students and ex-students (Boston has the highest density of colleges in the US), stokes little fires of social revolution here, even if their smoke signals are absent from the most popular medium of television. Perhaps the strong sense of revolutionary history in Boston provides the slow-burning coals in the hearth -- this is, after all, where the English were famously challenged on their taxation policy on imported tea, sparking the birth of a new country.

I was also surprised by many things that are taboo/illegal here, and accepted/legal in the UK, and vice versa. Sometimes I am pleasantly reassured that there is progressive and intelligent commentary on the crazier of these mores, as I would expect in the UK, at least from the local press. Here are just two random observations that I cannot begin to understand: (1) Almost everyone drinks and drives (which never fails to put the fear of God into me), but people drive much more slowly around town (even when drunk) and are more accomodating to others, especially pedestrians (even when drunk, too -- I would never have believed it). (2) The standard 15-20% tip in the US for the service in bars and restaurants only brings many servers' wages up to minimum-wage level -- because employers can justify paying less than minimum wage by counting on tips to make up the deficit -- but the servers are usually more attentive and efficient than in the UK.

Academically, Boston is a great place to be working in the bio-sciences. Locally, I am part of a large seminar circuit, ranging from the hospitals to the many mathematics and physics departments. (MIT and Harvard are just over the Charles river, Tufts and Brandeis are a little further away.) I am also in a position to make trips around the country to groups that work in my field, and to various conferences. Simply because of the sheer size of the US there are more such opportunites within easy reach. I feel these opportunities are important at this stage of my career. I see my presence amongst a larger nearby community of like-minded researchers as my chance to make a bigger splash in the field. I may one day be working in a small department, or trying to start my own group from humble beginnings. Therefore, I think now is the best time to work in a close-knit and high-profile group of people from many backgrounds, in order to establish both my reputation and my ideas about multi-disciplinary research.

I want to explain more about the benefits of being at a center such as the CBD, particularly in its ability to kick-start a career. Research at the CBD is often more closely driven and monitored by experimentalists than it is in traditional applied math groups in mathematics departments, and in some ways has several over-arching themes which help to produce a coherent output from the group. In many ways this is by virtue of co-director Nancy Kopell's broad and insightful perspective into the application of the many layers of knowledge and practical skill that is on tap at CBD meetings. The CBD is a multidisciplinary group, essentially an intersection between several university departments, including mathematics, biomedical engineering, and psychology. We have one weekly general seminar meeting involving experimenters and modellers, besides engagements for specific projects or tutorials. These mostly involve people who are based in departments in close proximity to the meeting rooms. The tight geographic distribution of the departments involved in the CBD is one accidental boon for our group, but nevertheless, the level of interest and patience present in discussing topics beyond our background training shows that there is more to the collaborative atmosphere than a convenient location. The upshot to this is a better guarantee of relevance for the application of my abstract and mathematical skills. Also, I am learning new techniques in maths and experimental biology through our internal seminar series, so that I can broaden my own appreciation for biological issues. The atmosphere of dilligence has even inspired me to drag myself through our group's tutorials on advanced statistical methods*. This situation is hard to reproduce in smaller universities with tighter budgets, but my experience has been that Bristol's Engineering Maths department actually manages this very well, despite a seemingly never-ending squeeze on resources from the Powers That Be. I think there's some truth in the old stereotype of "plucky Brits" pulling through valiantly in spite of continuous hardship! (And of course in the UK those attitudes rub off on, or have attracted, like-minds from overseas.) The very fortunate thing about the situation in Boston, in contrast, is that here these things can be achieved in greater comfort and with longer-term security. I appreciate that some of the luxury and security I perceive in the CBD is due to the fact that its remit is the very en vogue subject of mathematical biology. Such is the nature of industrial- or medically-driven research areas in any Western country, no doubt, but I currently know little of the wider political and economic issues involved in university financing to compare with the UK. At least on the day-to-day level, I find support and respect for higher education from the state and the city to be greater than in the UK.

* joke

There is a more personal difference as well. The mental well-being that arises from my new situation was quite astounding to me. Instead of a vague sense that I am an ant struggling to justify my existence against a sceptical system, which is ever poised to cut my funding or oust me from my office, I am instead working in an environment that makes me feel like a valued professional, worthy of nurture! Of course this is not a difference that arises at all from the attitudes of my colleagues, my seniors, or my students. As is well known, academics belong to one of the few truly international communities, and are characteristically very liberal and open-minded people. The dedication, professionalism, sense of community, and good nature in my workplace is equal in every way to that which I found in England or in universities I have visitied elsewhere in Europe. I am in no way surprised about this, but I have realised that it is one great comfort to travelling internationally as an academic, that you get for free.

On the flipside, there are a couple of obvious disadvantages to moving from one country to another suddenly, which needed to be weighed in to my decision. If, like me, you haven't lived abroad before for any length of time, or perhaps not even travelled a great deal, the culture shock and sudden removal of familiar friends and surroundings in your daily life is a lot to deal with. I strongly believe that visiting the place before you move helps a lot, if this is possible. Even better, is trying to meet some people before moving, perhaps through contacts of family and friends, on housemate-search websites, or just through emailing the post-docs/grad students at the department you'll be joining. They can help you choose where to live, put you in touch with people from whom you may wish to ask more specific questions (e.g. asking other foreign students about jobs that you'll need to do when you arrive), and generally getting some correspondence going with someone you'll be working near. Leaving your friends and family behind is an ongoing issue to get over while you settle in, but a shorter-term and equally intense problem is the trauma of physically moving. It is stressful and costly. You have to pack up a few representative things to take with you and store the rest somewhere. This typically requires a professional shipping company to transport your boxes overseas, which is a daunting journey fraught with forms and credit card receipts. In the meantime you have the headache of preparing your visa and hoping it will arrive in time for your flight. From personal experience I don't recommend submitting your PhD thesis in July/August and trying to start a new job overseas in September/October!

In helping me settle in, and continue my work in as smooth transition as possible, I am grateful for the many similarities between the US and the UK, at least on a daily level. I wasn't looking for a "fantastic journey" into the unknown in coming here. The academics I am around have diverse interests away from mathematics, and they are as clued up on politics and social issues as on the latest hot topic in Scientific American. The bottom line is that if I squint this looks and feels a lot like working in the UK after all. The economic and cultural differences are mostly superficial, at least in their effect on my working life so far, although the relative novelty of being English in this city is enjoyable and entertaining. Boston is cosmopolitan, large enough to be intriguing and exciting, and when I wade in the warm Atlantic at the beach I can imagine I'm not so far from home.