Growing Up in Science – Berlin with Dr. Nico Schuck

The Official Story

I got my Abitur as best of class in 2004, and then moved to Berlin to study psychology at Humboldt University. In 2007/08 I did a university exchange to University of Toronto, where I studied Machine Learning. Back in Berlin, I completed my psychology degree and I was awarded a stipend from the Max Planck Society to do my PhD in 2010. I did my PhD at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, and graduated summa cum laude in 2013. I then moved to Princeton University to pursue a postdoc at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. In 2016, I was selected to be a Max Planck Research Group Leader, which gave me the funding to establish my own lab in Berlin at the Max Planck Institute (since 2017). I published some major papers and obtained an ERC grant in 2019. More grants and papers followed. I work as a group leader at the MPI in Berlin until today.

His Unofficial Story

School was pretty difficult, and I almost did not make it into Gymnasium (in the part of Germany where I am from, Bavaria, students are “sorted” into separate tracks after grade 4; completing the highest track [Gymnasium] is required for entering university). I continued to struggle in Gymnasium, and often was the worst kid in class. I had to redo grade 8 because my grades were so bad, and the headmaster advised me to leave school altogether. Finally, in grade 10, I was forced to switch to a school in a neighboring state with a different school system (Hessen). My grades improved, which motivated me. To my own bewilderment, my grades continued to improve and I ended up graduating as the best student of the cohort. This gave me good cards to get a spot in a competitive university, but also a “nuanced” view on what achievement means (to put it mildly).

I was then nominated for a prestigious scholarship (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), and initially rejected the invitation for the interview. When I decided to try a year later, I was rejected.

At the same time, Psychology didn’t really seem to have been the right choice, and I was auditing different courses in various STEM subjects to find my calling. Fortunately, I got a RA position in a psychology lab that did research I liked, and this turned out to be a lot of fun. But I continued to “long” for a more quantitative approach, and therefore applied to study abroad, which eventually worked out (my first try failed). Without knowing what machine learning is really about, I ended up taking courses in ML with Geoffrey Hinton, who, as it turns out, is arguably one of the most influential artificial intelligence researchers of the century. The ML courses were hard, and I struggled. I had to work very hard to catch up on math skills and to follow along. But I loved the subject, and I learned a lot. Back in Berlin I felt I had found my calling in combining computational and cognitive research of mind and brain.

I was motivated to pursue a career in science, but there were many failures. I was rejected from the graduate school of my choice. The major paper of my PhD was rejected an estimated million times, and this really pulled me down. Through some happenstance (and some very kind people who supported me!), I ended up contributing to a paper with people from Princeton. When I applied to a postdoc there, I didn’t hear back for months, then was rejected, but finally invited for another position in the same department. By now perhaps you can imagine how it continued: Princeton was very challenging, and I felt like the dumbest person within a mile’s radius. I applied to some fellowships and got none. I started to be excited by the very stimulating environment and all the cool ideas floating around, which kept me from giving up etc.

His Biggest Mistakes

I sometimes have invested into topics that I am not really passionate about, and it would have been better to know/stick with what I want. 

My motivation for telling this story here!

I hope this story helps someone to deal with some of the mental pressures in academia. I remember how everyone more senior around me seemed like a knight in shining armour, and how that can make oneself seem like a failure. I am not sure my story is applicable to anyone, but perhaps openness to the failures behind a CV is a good start?