Andrew King, Director of Performance Research
Andrew King completed his PhD in Computer Science in 2009 with a theoretical thesis focused on graph colouring, which describes how networks of objects can be organized. Today, he does experimental research on quantum computers as Director of Performance Research at D-Wave Systems.
Q: To get things kicked off, when and why did you decide to do a PhD?聽
I did my masters at the University of Toronto and I got one or two recruiting emails from big companies looking for applicants, but I decided I was not interested in getting a job. I was more interested in continuing to study things that I was interested in. At the time, my brother had recently done an NSERC USRA at 黑料网爆吃瓜 over the summer. He told me there was a prof working on graph colouring, which is what I was interested in, and that he鈥檚 probably taking students. So, I emailed him, and I joined him at 黑料网爆吃瓜 in 2004. He ended up being an excellent supervisor and a great fit for me, so it worked really well.聽
Q: What was your experience like establishing your relationship with your supervisor and figuring out how much feedback you needed?
That was a really difficult thing. I鈥檓 sure it鈥檚 a really difficult thing for a lot of people. My supervisor is definitely more on the informal side, a little bit maybe towards the disorganized, mad scientist, personality type. He鈥檇 come up with an idea for something for me to work on and he鈥檇 explain it to me鈥nd I wouldn鈥檛 know what he was talking about. He鈥檚 kind of an intimidating character, so it was a real struggle for me to frequently go back and say, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what you鈥檙e talking about, I don鈥檛 understand any of this鈥�. You kind of feel like you snuck into this position of being his grad student and you don鈥檛 want to admit that you don鈥檛 know the research area. Admitting your ignorance is something that is an extremely valuable skill in my professional life, and I like to think it鈥檚 something that I developed as a grad student.聽
Q: Going forward in the timeline, what was your career outlook or career plan? Were you planning on becoming a professor?聽
I had hopes of landing a faculty position, which didn鈥檛 happen. I did what was supposed to be a postdoc in the Czech Republic, but I never managed to finish my dissertation before I left, so it ended up kind of being a victory lap on my PhD and I wrote up while I was there and defended when I got back. Then, I did a postdoc at Columbia University, and I did a postdoc at Simon Fraser University, then I landed in industry.聽
All the while, I was looking for a faculty position. Towards the later part of that process, I was getting some promising interviews and I actually had a pending decision when I took the job at D-Wave, where I am now. I decided that if I was going to do something other than being at university for the rest of my life, then it was a good time to do it. At the level that I was at, I could have found a faculty position, but I would have had to be a bit less picky about where I was going to live and what kind of school it was.聽
Q: Can you tell me a bit about what your job is now? How does it compare to the type of work you were doing as a graduate student?
I work for a company called D-Wave Systems. It鈥檚 probably 25% PhDs. Most people that I work with have a PhD.
D-Wave builds a certain type of quantum computer called a quantum annealer. It鈥檚 bleeding edge technology, so what I work on is trying to figure out what it does well, why it does it well, why it doesn鈥檛 do other things well, and trying to produce research results that showcase its strengths.
The work is much more experimental than what I did as a grad student. Personally, I think that it鈥檚 a much better fit for me. I was a bit ill-suited to theoretical work, actually. I was OK at it, but I was never amazing. I think I鈥檓 very strong in experimental computer science and, because I have shown an ability to choose projects that are likely to succeed and follow them through, I鈥檓 given a lot of freedom at work.聽
It鈥檚 a very academic environment, but, of course, we don鈥檛 have teaching responsibilities, which is amazing. I get a lot of time to focus on the work that I want to do.聽
Q: Are there any specific lessons or experiences from your PhD that serve you in your current role?
Actually, one thing that sticks out is that my adviser was a real stickler about writing and communicating technical ideas very clearly. With any draft it was kind of that clich茅 situation where he sends it back, and sends it back, and sends it back. It鈥檚 one of the reasons it took me so long to finish my PhD, but in hindsight, it was very valuable.聽
For him, you had to be communicating extremely clearly all the time and choose the structure of every sentence very carefully. Being in an interdisciplinary environment now makes that much more difficult because you need to choose your nomenclature such that you broaden the scope of people who will understand what you鈥檙e talking about.聽
Q: Can you comment on the differences between the challenges that you had to overcome during your PhD and the challenges you overcome now in your work?聽
There鈥檚 a really big difference between being stuck in an experimental research project versus a theoretical one. A theoretical one is way more frustrating because you hit a dead end and often you just have to give up and abandon it because you can鈥檛 find a way through or because you realize that there is no way through. But with experimental work, in the worst case, you can always blame the person who made the apparatus [laughing闭.听
I find that it鈥檚 much less frustrating and is even interesting to find incongruities in my research now and ask 鈥淲hat is this problem? Where is it coming from?鈥� It often leads to identification of problems with the quantum hardware that we hadn鈥檛 known about before. So that鈥檚 rewarding. It鈥檚 more rewarding to fail in an experiment than it is in theory.聽
Q: Is there something that you know now that you wish you knew when you started your PhD?聽
I would consider my story a huge success story for a PhD going into industry because I have a very high level of compatibility between my work and my area of research, and I鈥檓 very happy with it. But it took me a long time鈥揑 didn鈥檛 get the job until I was 33.聽
As an academic, you uproot yourself and then hopefully land somewhere. Thirty or forty years ago, you land a faculty position before you鈥檙e 30, and then you can have your life. But when you鈥檙e drifting around from postdoc to postdoc, moving from city to city every two years, it makes it really difficult to have a life. As you get into your 30s, that becomes more and more problematic. I don鈥檛 regret doing a PhD, and I鈥檓 really happy where I landed by all the coincidences of life, but I do wish that I had started looking for industry positions a little bit earlier.聽