[HTE diary class3]: when my research is walking out of laboratory.

"I wish to be a professor since I was in high school" this is the first sentence in every versions of statement of purpose that I write, and after that, "I want to be a professional in research area" come afterwards. Anyway, I also have another intention that I never ever wrote in my statement, but I would write it here, I want to make my research create mega huge impact to the world.

Seem like making my innovation commercialized is not that bad way to make it hit the entire world. See how the God of Apple integrated all the high end technology together and create iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and another iP- that might come up soon, or the anti-AIDs drug that is useful for around the world. Once I was young, I discussed this topic with dad (who worked in the hospital for all of his life), but recently I might need to change my vision.

Now let's consider, if I want to create one alloy that I can use as artificial knee-joint. How long I need?

1. 2 years for material development: Maybe it would be this short, but normally it is longer than this. One Ph.D. student takes all of his 5 years life doing a thesis on certain material.

2. 1 years for test the biocompatibility in vivo: (cytotoxicity) you need to test whether the material is proved to add into human organ by plant cells on it, and check whether that cell die or not.

3. 2 years for test the biocompatibility in vitro: the material would be implanted into animal model, for example, rat or pig.

4. 2 years for test in actual human: and test it in human. After this step, our material would be approved by responsible organization and ready to use in medial application--I mean, to be commercialized. (Added by my professor, it might take another 6 years to wait for legally approval from FDA...)


With drug research required around 6 years as well, this incubation time might be shorter in the technology that no need to deal with biological issue. This period is reduced by larger budget or take forever if without money, and yeah, depend on invisible hands.

Let me give you other cheerful examples, Metallic Glass is developed from Caltech since 1950's but the first company commercialized this glorious material namely LiquidMetal is just established on 2000's. On the other hands, LED screen technology by Samsung take 6 months for development and distribution on shelf. Now do you have any idea what is that invisible hand I refer to?




Come back to our time platform. All I just a research period! Not include the time that you need to make it go to the market. Ideally, after finish developing technology, we might want to commercial it as soon as possible, but it might not. Three years ago when I first saw iPod Touch, I and my friend are talking about bigger version of iPod so I can use it as lecture note. Two years after that Steve Jobs presented iPad to worldwide.  I can say that the technology architecture for iPod Touch and iPad is exactly the same, even all the technology is already available about3-5 years ago. Why he need to wait?

The keyword of the day is "customer perception".

Slide from my HTE class

Do you see something here? If Jobs suddenly announced iPad with TV, maybe the market couldn't adjust their life style and except it and finally our product fail. So we need certain time to prepare our market and make our goal product acceptable, how long? who know.



Now I feel so tried, the reason is since it is very long lecture-style blog, or because now I realize how long I need to take before my research could walk out of lab.