Pejman Mirza-Babaei (part 1) on being strategic, the fast track to tenure, and finding his path

Pejman Mirza-Babaei is an Associate Dean Industry Partnerships, and an Associate Professor of User Experience Research, in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Pejman’s story spans Iran, the UK and Canada as he discusses his path from Masters to working in industry to doing a PhD closely tied with a start-up, and then his experiences moving into a tenure track position immediately post PhD, well in fact before his PhD, and later taking a break to work back in industry before working out that academia is what he wants to. What’s particularly interesting in his story is how strategic he has been in exploring his options and making decisions, leading to him getting tenure in very quick time. And what else is interesting is how he is always seeking feedback and open to learn. There is a Part 2 of this conversation (coming next) where he talks about the uncertainty of life post-tenure and how he has navigated these new choices, as well as what he has learning moving into more faculty leadership roles. “One thing I do a lot is ask for feedback… The important thing about feedback is to listen carefully but not necessarily do all of them… Ultimately it’s your decision and you know what is good for you.”“Going to a faculty position with mindset that you are doing everything is the fastest way to burnout. “ He talks about… [You can download a full transcript here]2:05 Pejman talks about his background, doing a Computer Hardware Engineering undergrad degree working in a bank as a network manager, finding it boring and deciding to continue his education and ended up at Sussex Uni doing a Master of IT for Commerce and took an HCI course there. But never knew what he wanted to do.5:05 Being fascinated by computer games as a kid, but never thought of it as a career. Working in a college back in Iran then coming back to Sussex to start a PhD. The teaching part got him excited about a PhD. Originally wanted to study something to do with technology to support people with visual impairment but ended up working with Graham [McAllister] doing games user research.7:20 Geri provides background on the serendipity of it and Graham being new at Sussex, bringing an interest in games and starting a games user research company. 8:15 Pejman talks about his PhD being relatively unique, working with a start-up games company and working on real cases. Changed his understanding of approach to research questions and how to communicate results back. Applied research. What was challenging then but he benefits from it now was that many academic papers couldn’t be applied to the commercial work they were doing which was more formative evaluation and usability studies, similar to papers but needing to think more on how to apply it.10:35 Did it feel stressful then? No. Didn’t have stress that this one study had to be the best. Had loads of opportunity to iterate as always new game to test next week. And supportive supervisor. Both understood no-one had done this before, no recipe to follow. Now very proud of what they did in the projects. 12:50 Turning this into a thesis? At some point it felt like a job he was doing. Learning a lot. End of second year [of a 3 year program], tried to capture what he learnt from each project – wrote a page for each and put them on the floor to look for connections. Knew broad aspects eg physiological measures etc but not sure how the story would be. Last year of PhD then more...

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