Making a career in Sydney, Australia by Hinke Osinga (University of Bristol, UK)
	Martin Wechselberger in his office in Syndey

Some of you may recall the article "Mathematical Biosciences Institute at The Ohio State University" that Martin wrote for the January 2004 issue of DSWeb Magazine about the research at MBI in Columbus, Ohio. His postdoctoral position came to an end in 2005 and like so many, he was trying to find a job for this academic year. Maybe surprisingly, he opted for a permanent post at the University of Sydney in Australia and started in September last year. A research trip that took your editor to Sydney created the rare opportunity for a personal interview on site.

Who is Martin Wechselberger?

Martin was born in Austria, in one of the small villages in the mountains where everybody is related to everybody else. He studied mathematics at the Technische Universität Wien, in Vienna. As is custom in Austria, he stayed at this same university to pursue his PhD research on the dynamics of singularly perturbed systems under the guidance of Peter Szmolyan. After receiving his PhD in October 1998, he had to interrupt his research for one year for his civil service.

While totally unrelated to mathematics, his civil service was a very interesting experience. He worked in a camp for Bosnian refugees. The refugee camp was established in Vienna by a famous musician Ostbahn Kurti and was a big building housing about 30 families. The center's aim is to prepare the families for living in Vienna; there are language courses, the center offers professional psychological treatment and councelling for war traumas, they train people for specific jobs, and there is an on-site kindergarten. Martin's memories clearly travel back to this time. His normal job was to do any hands-on tasks, help carry things, etcetera. "As we say in Austria, I was `ein Mädchen für alles' but one day I was asked to help out at the kindergarten. You cannot imagine how difficult that was. These kids were completely traumatised; they would constantly be drawing pictures about the war and their experiences. At the same time, they were also trying me out, like any class would do. At one time I had several kids pulling at me and some others jumping on my back and I had no clue what to do. I just sat there and started screaming really loudly... That helped, they stopped and were dead silent, but I felt completely powerless. Overall, however, it was a fantastic experience. It felt great to be able to help these families, finding them a new flat and getting them ready to go out into society again."

		A whole year with no mathematics meant that it was not easy to find a job afterwards. Fortunately, Peter Szmolyan had offered Martin a postdoctoral position in Vienna that he could come back to. He stayed in Vienna for two more years before taking up a three-year postdoc in the US. "My work on singular perturbations was very theoretical. I wanted to get more into applications and knew that models with multiple timescales were quite common in biological applications."
View of Sydney from Martin Wechselberger's office
Since Martin could not find any programme combining singular perturbation theory with biological applications in Europe, he started applying for postdoc positions in the US. "From my geometric singular perturbation theory background I knew about Nancy Kopell's Biodynamics Center in Boston. Then I found on the internet that there was going to be a new institute in Ohio. I had no idea where Ohio was or what it would be like, but the scientific program presented on the MBI website (http://mbi.osu.edu) caught my eye."

Postdoc at MBI in Ohio

Martin was one of ten postdocs to start at the MBI in August 2002. He was the only one coming from abroad. "And it showed. I asked when I should come to start my job and they said, naturally, that I should arrive on the first of August. However, when I got there, I was the only one. Moreover, there was nothing there yet, no building, no office, everything was still under construction! The programme officially only started in September, which is when everyone else showed up. At least I had the fun of watching the rapid progress made to get everything ready for the first workshop in September."

The three years in Ohio were divided into three themes of one year each. The first year was devoted to neuroscience. "This was a relatively established field of research and I already knew many people who participated in this year: John Rinzel, Nancy Kopell, Bard Ermentrout, David Terman, they were all there. I also got to know many biologists and people who are funded by NIH. I learnt a lot on the application side. You know, mathematicians tend to speak in formulas, but biologist speak in abbreviations, so neither one knows what the other is talking about!" The second year was devoted to cell biology. "I had not expected how interesting this research is. All the ideas that work in neuroscience can be applied there as well!" The third year was on bioinformatics (the genome project) and of less personal interest to Martin. It was time to start applying for a new job.

"From my own career point of view, my move to the US was fantastic. Within two years I had given about ten seminar talks and met lots of people. I had several projects going and people showed an interest in what I was doing. Those years gave an enormous confidence boost. For example, I decided to organise mini-symposia at the Snowbird meeting and at the SIAM Life Sciences meeting (Portland, OR); it was great to see how big an audience these got, a mix of mathematicians and biologists. Very quickly I had built up a reputation and it felt natural to try to apply for a tenure-track position." Mathematical biology is a rather popular topic at the moment, though there are relatively few people with the right background. Hence, as a postdoc from MBI, Martin could afford being rather selective where to send his CV. "I mainly applied in the US, probably because I only checked the AMS and SIAM jobs websites. Also, the vacancies in the US tend to be advertised at least two months earlier than in Europe."

The campus of the University of Sydney

The decision to go to Sydney

Altogether, Martin applied to fewer than 25 places. Sydney was one of these, because it was advertised on the AMS jobs listings. "The advertisement for the post in Sydney had the right job profile. I always had some affinity for Asia, but Australia was still missing on my map. For sure, Sydney would be a nice city. Even though I had never been there before, I knew about it from the Olympics. Furthermore, a big city right on the beach sounded nice; they never told me about the blue bottles!" [Ed: Blue bottles are a type of jelly fish with very long tentacles whose sting seriously hurt; the number of blue bottles along the Australian coast has never been higher than this summer.] When I checked out the University website, I found that there were people working in mathematical biology and also people working in dynamical systems. While they all were in related areas, nobody worked on things that I was doing, and I realised I could fit in very well. Admittedly, I did apply mostly out of curiosity. However, I had met James Sneyd in my second year at MBI. He is based at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and I wanted to work with him. I figured that Sydney would bring me close enough."

A couple of weeks later, Norman Dancer was visiting the IMA in Minneapolis from Sydney. "He also visited Ohio State and specifically went to my office and knocked on my door! `Are you seriously considering coming to Australia?' he asked, and I didn't think twice to tell him `Sure! Why not?' Then it dawned on me that I was a serious candidate and I started to get more information about Sydney and Australia." In particular, Martin talked to Jack Boulant, a physiologist at Ohio State University, with whom he collaborates on body temperature regulation. "He told me of many people he knew in Australia who work in this field. Especially in physiology, there are actually many Nobel prize winners in Australia. I also found out that many authors of the papers I had read were actually based in Australia." Indeed, Australia does have a thriving research activity in applied mathematics and specifically mathematical biology. The existence of ANZIAM, the Australia and New Zealand version of SIAM, means that there is an active research community and Sydney is considered as one of the top universities.

Martin visited Sydney for his job interview in April 2005 and immediately fell in love with the city. When he got offered the position, he decided to go for it. "I did think it over very carefully and knew it was, in a sense, risky to leave the nice environment at MBI and the US community as a whole." Indeed, many people reacted with suprise: "How can you leave the US?" or "How can you isolate yourself?" But with email and the internet nowadays, it is not such a big issue anymore. "It may be easier to stay in a known environment, but I believe that it is always better to jump in at the deep end. This has always had a positive outcome for me: I had ideas about research while in Europe, but these changed and I got new ideas by moving to a different environment in the US. I expect new ideas again, now that I moved to Sydney. It is important to be forced to rethink what you do, especially in mathematics."
		"Birds I would only see in a zoo just walk around here on campus!"

Sydney is the place to be

The move to Australia was in many ways exciting, but also surprisingly easy. "It was so much easier to get work permits and things organised for Australia compared to the US. Australia is a true immigration country; you don't even have to be married to bring your partner and your partner will get a work permit as well!"

Now that Martin lives in Sydney, he has set himself certain rules to keep his collaborations going. "I have to go to the US and Europe once a year, and want to participate at major conferences." Unfortunately, it is not easy to attend conferences if you live on the southern hemisphere, because the semesters are half a year out of phase with those in the northern half of planet Earth. However, Martin is not so afraid of that. "I can always leave for one week during term time if a colleague is willing to take over." Another main reason that there are usually not many participants from Australia at conferences is the financial support. "It is very hard to get travel money, but people understand this when you apply and you try to include it in a bigger personal grant application." Martin has start-up funding, which is good for one trip to Europe, but he already received a travel grant from New Zealand to visit James Sneyd and Vivien Kirk at the University of Auckland. "Of course, the university supports a visitor programme; the good thing is that when colleagues have their summer break, they can come here, and vice versa. This means that we can visit each other every half year!

With several universities in Australia nearby, Martin enjoys the exciting and active research environment in Sydney. "My colleagues are very nice and I get along very well with them." As a word of warning to all readers who are now dying to work in Australia too: "The sun is different here; you do notice the hole in the ozon layer. If it is really sunny it takes only a few hours to get a serious sun burn. It is just like Snowbird!"