The Job Forum

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You're listening to locally produced programming created in KUNV studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5. Welcome to the job forum. My name is Mana Azizoltani and I am a PhD student at the Sahara College of Hospitality here at UNLV. On this show, we discuss the journey through college and into the workforce with recent graduates of different disciplines. Welcome to the Job Force. Alright, let's get this party started. So I'm here with Kaz today who is a postdoctorate research fellow at the International Gaming Institute here at UNLV and actually he just brought in $150,000 for research.

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Yeah, Kaz Raharian, but most people call me Kaz, postdoctoral research fellow at the International Gaming Institute here at UNLV. Just finished my PhD last year. What else do you want to know?

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Well, tell me a little bit about your academic background.

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Okay, it might be quite long, but I'll try and condense it.

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We got time.

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Okay. So I did my undergraduate in business and marketing back in England. That's where I grew up. After that, it was kind of undecided what I wanted to do in terms of work. I got into playing poker while I was at university, online poker specifically. So I was dabbling in that a little bit and decided just to play poker for a while.

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Were you dabbling or were you winning?

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I was actually doing pretty good. So it was about the time when Moneymaker won the world series. So that was like kind of this ordinary guy from the US who just like showed up in Vegas and won like you know millions of dollars at this poker tournament. So what it did was when that was broadcast on ESPN everyone was like oh I can do that. So you had all these half intelligent people going online playing poker. So even if you were like maybe top 50% of intelligence you'd probably win. So I was like I was like 52nd percent. So when did you figure out that you wanted to go to grad school? Yeah yeah so anyway so the poker thing the relevance of that is that I came to Vegas on vacation twice to play poker. Really liked it, didn't want to do online poker anymore as a job going to come here just for like two semesters. I was like, let me just come because I'm probably not going to like it. I'll just come for two semesters, do this accelerated degree they had and then I'll come back to England and find a job in a casino. Long story short, Met a girl, really liked it here, and just ended up staying for my master's, worked in industry for like 10 years after that, and then went back to school for my PhD.

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And so you did your master's and PhD here at UNLV?

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Yeah, that's right, yeah. So I did my master's in hospitality, and then worked in like digital marketing and analytics Las Vegas Sands and also Caesars. And then I did some other stuff for like three years before coming back to do my PhD.

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Okay, well, we'll touch on that later. I want to ask you about the difference between, well, we'll get there. But okay, so what was your experience going through the PhD then? We've had some people come on and talk about their college experience, but it's mostly undergraduates. So I want to talk about specifically sort of

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your grad school experience. Okay, yeah, I mean I really enjoyed my PhD experience. It was just another step on, like I feel like undergraduate is very, you know, I think the best way to distinguish undergraduate, masters, and PhD is your relationship with the faculty. I'd say as you move through those there's much more of that like peer to peer, like you're at the same level as your faculty and you're more collaborative with them, whereas undergraduate, you're not really, you're just kind of taking direction from faculty at that point. So I'd say the biggest distinction is that as you progress through the degrees, you get more and more on the same level with your faculty, if that makes sense.

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So they talk about, you know, when you're doing your PhD you should do research and teaching. Can you talk about maybe your experience with those two worlds?

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Yeah, so I had a research grad assistantship, so I don't know how familiar the listeners are, but you know, typically a PhD student has a grad assistantship to get them through funding. In hospitality, I think most of my colleagues had a teaching assistant position, so they had to teach one class every semester. I had a research post so my work allotment was to conduct research for the Gaming Institute, which I like. I like the research side of things a lot, but I also like teaching as well, but I really wanted to be focused on research during my PhD. I worked on a lot of different projects, kind of wrapped in my dissertation topic around it as well.

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Interesting. So now, in your experience, how did you get the teaching experience since you were a research

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assistant? Did they make you teach?

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So I teach a class now, hospitality leadership. It's going great. I'm really enjoying it. I'm really loving my students. They're really good. Yeah, I did some summer classes online. Every now and again I've done these presentations. I'd say where I got really comfortable and more experienced in terms of speaking to a group of people, I did practice as a sports nutritionist for a while.

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Really?

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Yeah. I spent seven, eight years in hospitality in Vegas. I got really into like sports science and sports nutrition. So I actually did a master's degree in sports nutrition because I had a, so I had this startup company that was like nutrition focused, but like data analytics. It was like taking consumer wearable data and I recommended them nutrition. And I was like the founder of this company. So I was like, Oh, if we want to get investment, I need to show that I know what I'm talking about. So I did a master's in sports nutrition. The start-up failed and then I started doing nutrition coaching on the side. I worked with my buddy, his name is Will Gurling, he's actually a professional nutritionist for a cycling team now. I was working with him at the time and we were hustling. He was one of these guys, he was trying to start his nutrition consulting and we used to go and give presentations to like Random clubs and groups so I I think that's and these were adults right, but you know University Edwards adults

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Well once you have once you learn how to do that skill. I mean yeah, yeah, so yeah, we'd show up and like

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try to talk about cycling nutrition or triathlon nutrition and all of this and You know yeah, I used to give presentations like 45 minutes, which is like a class right? Right, I mean basically the same skill. Yeah and then

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also like coaching one-on-one with a client as well. You start to learn how to talk with people, how to motivate them, that kind of thing. Wow okay that's interesting. So we talked about presentation skills then right in terms of making you successful as a PhD Where, what are some other skills that maybe would

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help you through your PhD or that you gained in your PhD that allowed you to be successful later? In terms of presentation or just more broadly? Any skills, you know, maybe in terms of research. How about maybe a skill that helped you in research? Yeah, I've really had a benefit of having a great committee. I think once you get started in a PhD, I think on the top of your to-do list has to be to identify faculty that you're going to work with and just get that sorted early on. Because I really think that's the path to success, having a really good support system in terms of your committee. I was really lucky enough to know who I wanted and stuff. I had the benefit of knowing some people already, whereas others, they're new to the university, they might need to do some introductions, but I know plenty of my colleagues who did a great job at networking and stuff.

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I definitely have that same advantage, my dad in college, I've known these guys forever. And so getting in here, I knew exactly who I was gonna have be my chair, who was gonna be my committee, and what I was gonna do. So it makes life so much easier for me versus, you know.

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Yeah, yeah, so you had a similar experience to me but you know I had a colleague her name she's at Florida now and she's from Iran she she got here yeah yeah she did she she didn't well she probably did she probably like networked before she even got here and I knew but like she's like that but like other some of my other colleagues they did a great job at networking identifying who's aligned with their interests, that kind of thing. But yeah, I think the committee is really good, and they can guide you in terms of how to conduct research, that kind of thing. So yeah, I think my research skills have really, really stepped up a level during my PhD. And then because my dissertation was focused on machine learning, that skill has really stepped up as well.

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So did you need sort of, what were the skills that allowed you to be successful specifically in research?

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I wouldn't say for me it's necessarily any skills, but more personality traits. I think like...

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How's that?

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Well, if I'm hiring a researcher, if I'm looking to work with someone, the first thing I'm looking for is a curious mind. I want someone to be curious. I want them to be driven to find answers to questions, whatever the question might be. Yeah, I want them to be passionate about the topic, but I think if someone's curious, I don't think it necessarily matters what the topic is. They just have that curiosity and drive to find the answer. So, that's not a skill, but a trait, I guess. But I guess you could learn how to be curious.

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Yeah, ask the right questions, I guess. Me being, starting out as a PhD student, right? One of the first things that I learned was being a PhD student or being a PhD is not really about sort of being quote-unquote intelligent, right? It's just, it's a different way of thinking. Yeah. So my first semester, I spent the whole time getting trained how to think, how to analyze, how to read, how to all that kind of stuff.

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So I think you're right in terms of maybe it's not certain skills, but it's sort of a whole. Yeah, you learn how to structure questions, right? You learn how to conduct research properly, ethically, to get the right answer. You learn how to conduct robust experiments, how to formulize the correct methodology, what are the methodological options available to me to answer this question. So yeah, I think a PhD in any discipline, I think any PhD is a research degree, right? You're learning how to conduct research. I don't think you necessarily get like a broad, no you definitely don't get a broad intelligence from a degree because like the biggest joke now is like now I've got my PhD like with my wife, it's like I don't know, open this jar, I thought you had a PhD. It's like or like any topic that comes up she's like, you're Yeah, you're supposed to be an expert. I'm like, well, my rebuttal is like, all a PhD is, you know, a lot about one little thing.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Like that's what a PhD is. My friends keep making fun of me. They're like, oh, you're doing a PhD in hospitality? What are you getting in? How can I help you? Yeah.

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I'm just like, dude. That's why I kind of like the UK and a lot of places in Europe. The PhD model's a little different. You don't take any classes at least in the UK. So in the UK they offer these, they're called studentships. And like a GDship basically? Basically yeah and it's a fully funded research project. So you know the principal investigators source this funding to study this topic that he or she is really interested in and then he or she recruits you know people who want to do principal investigator guides that person through the whole research for three years on that one topic and that's all you do. You just do your PhD. That's nuts. That's that one topic. That just seems so foreign you know, like what I'm doing now. Yeah, so when I was because I

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know I know about all this because when

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I was in the nutrition I was actually applying for PhDs in England, in the UK in health. So there was a two I applied but then I ended up, me and my family didn't like it in England, so we came back to Vegas.

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So you really have to know what you're interested in in order to do a PhD?

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Yeah, I had to write like a paper, so the studentship was on the role of vitamin D in like muscle mass. I basically, like my application was like a 5,000, 10,000 word paper, like a research proposal on what I do to study that topic.

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Wow.

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Like very, very different from what you do here.

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Wow, that's nuts to me. So let's move forward then and talk about sort of what you're doing now. Yeah. How did you get into this position now as a postdoc?

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So unlike a lot of my colleagues, you know I have two kids now, we've already moved about, we moved to England in 2016, moved back in 2019 so I could do my PhD. We figured out that we really like Vegas so we want to raise our family here so I don't have the luxury in quotation marks of like applying to anywhere else because me and my family want to stay in Vegas. But yeah you know I've tried to work my arse off during my PhD and thankfully they've hired me on a postdoc at the International Gaming Institute. So yeah, so that's kind of how it came about. It was kind of a funnel, I guess. And UNLV are doing this program now, it's called Post-Doc to Doc. They're like post-doc tool program specific for in-house PhDs.

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Oh wow.

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Yeah. So they're trying to keep their own, basically.

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Yeah, and put them on a successful path towards faculty.

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Wow, that's really interesting. I didn't know that.

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Yeah.

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So how did you, I mean, I know you did gambling research

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in your PhD, right?

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Yeah. Is that kind of how you fell into?

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Yeah, so it was actually a long time ago. So it's back when I kind of first moved here. I think there was two professors that really impacted me. One was Dr. Bo Bernhard. The other was Dr. Anthony Lucas and Dr. AK Singh as well. When I took their classes, especially like the casino math stuff, Professor Lucas's classes on casino marketing and stuff. That got me really interested in how you can look at like the data and how it can answer questions. So I did my master's on a topic that I discussed with Lucas. It was on casino slot floor optimization, so how you can maybe use a data-driven methodology to configure the slot floor, which was historically done by just a slot manager saying, oh, we're going to put 20 machines there. We're going to take these ones off. We're going to put this one here. Whereas I wanted to maybe approach it mathematically. So it started with that, basically. And ever since then, even in my work in hospitality, even in my work as a nutritionist, I've always just been data driven. So it's just, it took me that long to figure out, oh, you know what? It seems as if everything I do, I do it with Excel and data or whatever I can use. I'm like, why don't I just do this as my job?

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Yeah, makes sense. So what was the interview process like for a postdoc position? Or was it just kind of like, oh, you already had the in,

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and they just kind of picked you?

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Yeah, I think I was in kind of a unique situation in terms of my unique skill set and my experience like there's not many people that could have fit the bill like you could yeah i understand yeah i'm doing like machine learning in responsible gambling and harm prevention it's kind of a niche field yeah that's true yeah you're probably like the expert on it or if not yet you will be trying to be yeah trying to be i'll be i'll I'll remain modest. There you go. So I guess like my question is now I guess so you got the job because you had the in right so how important is networking in the academic world? Well yeah it goes back to my point right I mean that might sound like oh this guy just got kind of lucky at the same time what is luck right? I believe you can make your own luck. You make your own luck yeah that's the saying I was looking for and I wholeheartedly like believe in that and I try and practice that. You're not going to like going back to my that slot floor optimization paper, right? All master's students and PhD students struggle with getting data, right? It's so hard to get data. I was a master's student. I was living in this in apartment block. I was like, I need I need data on slot machines. Walked into my elevator to go up to my bedroom, to my apartment, sorry, and this guy walked in, I saw his name badge, it was like, VP of slot operations at the M Resort.

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No way.

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I was like, literally just struck up a conversation as we were going up in the elevator, he gave me his business card, went down there like the next week, he's like, yeah, let's do this, gave me all of his data, let me work in the office there, rest is history.

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Yeah, I completely agree with that. It goes back to like, kind of that black swan theory, right, you know about that? No. Where like, you basically can work little by little by little by little to foster sort of a place

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where opportunities like that can just like pop up.

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Yeah, yeah. Like yeah, if I had not looked at his name tag and off that if I had not just spoken up, yeah, maybe I would have just.

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You could have marveled and said, wow, this is the VP in the elevator with me, not said anything, you know, but.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Yeah, I'd completely be with that 100% so I mentioned you touched that like Presentation skills and that kind of stuff. So how important is it to be presenting at conferences and you know that kind of stuff?

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Yeah, I know you're organizing a conference right now. Yeah

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Yeah

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We're organizing the international conference on gambling and risk-taking happens every three years Which is going to be here in Las Vegas in Las Vegas May 23rd to the 25th at Park MGM. There you go Good shot up. Yeah website in the show notes.

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There you go. Website in the show notes.

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Yeah, website in the show notes. So I wish I had presented more. Obviously, I did my PhD during COVID. So I didn't really have the opportunity to do in-person conferences. I did a few online presentations and stuff, and I figured out quickly I hate presenting online.

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Yeah, it's a little odd. What are you, like staring at the camera or like the screen?

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I'm actually currently refusing to teach online because I just I got for me teaching is like I don't know you need the interaction. It's personal. Yeah. But yeah, so but as I said, I did the nutrition presentation. I did a lot of that. I've tried to like do more now. I'm doing teaching now. But I think not so much presentation, but like what we work on in PhDs is so bloody complicated, right?

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Yeah.

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Like only you get it. So I think the biggest skill you can work on is how to disseminate what you're working on in lay terms and just simply and like explaining complex things simply is such an in-demand skill.

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Well, I think it's just like, yeah, in general.

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Yeah. Like I listen to a lot of data science podcasts and they're like, number one skill they want from data scientists is that, to be able to explain this mega complex neural network to a VP who's got five minutes. That's what they want from a data scientist. They don't want, oh, can you do R, Python, et cetera. They want that.

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Wow.

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Yeah.

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I'll have to work on that then. Yeah, you should. So we talked about this before that, you know, as a PhD student, you kind of have two options. You have going to academia and going into the workforce or industry.

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So do you want to tell me a little about work-life balance in academia?

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Yeah, so I think in academia, there's definitely like this ebb and flow, like you're super busy in periods and then you're not so busy. So during those busy periods, yeah, I won't like work out as much or go outside as much but I still I make it a point like for me it's like I go work out four times a week yeah I go climbing twice a week and I ride my bike twice a week and that usually keeps me like level-headed but if I don't work out like you're an addict yeah pretty much well I used to be much better I used to do like six seven days a week I was like my cycling um but figured out like actually need to rest and it's actually better for my mental state but yeah anyway and you know just spending time with my family and stuff I think it's obviously important I think everyone knows that now but yeah it's very easy to get caught up in those like really busy periods and forget or I'd be like I'm too busy to do that but I think it is actually worth it like to take that hour because then you're more productive when you come back yeah I've done a step myself too.

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Aren't your kids still sort of little too?

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Yeah, 18 months and six. Wow, keep you busy then. Yeah, but I have a supportive wife, she's great. We're a team.

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There you go. So what about keeping projects sort of in the pipeline? Do you want to talk about that too? Yeah. Because you have busier periods and slump periods,

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how do you sort of keep projects coming? Yeah, I think actually attending conferences have really Helped me make sure I'm keeping up to date with what what's what's relevant and it also sparks ideas as well like I was at G2E last year and I was like, oh this needs to be researched. So now you know I'm in IRB process right now, everything's getting through something and that's why I think attending concerts is one thing that you can do and then just like extending your research right whenever you do research you write those limitations and stuff what further work could to be done I think it's just snowballing it like that. Yeah. Also like speaking with other people, like colleagues, networking, because now on this project I'm working with Nassim. So we're working on it together.

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Yeah.

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Can you talk about that? Like the connection that you get from people that are in your cohort?

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Is that how?

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Yeah. Again, with us doing it during COVID, I feel like we didn't have as many social gatherings as maybe other cohorts did. Then again, we still did. We still really connected with each other, supported each other. You know, at times, there was people having a tough time. Like, it's quite hard work. And you know, just to be there and be like, oh, you need help on this. Like, let's do this homework assignment together for this class.

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And there's like nobody else understands what you're going through, too.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. And as I said, I think the teaching assistants, they've got it the hardest.

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Yeah, they do.

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Yeah, they got it the hardest. It's a lot of work. I mean, I'm teaching a class now, and I wouldn't like to do my PhD concurrently while teaching this class. It would be a pain.

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Yeah, I got so lucky. Somehow I managed to skip the teaching for the first year, and I overloaded my classes, knowing that later when I have to teach, it's going to be more work.

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So I'm trying to sit pretty. Time management.

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I don't know about time management. I don't do that very well, but maybe short-term planning or something like that. So what exactly do you do on your day-to-day, week-to-week? I know it's different, but do you wanna talk about

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maybe what's a day look like to you?

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I can just talk about what I'm doing right now. So yeah, so I've got two papers I'm gonna review. So yesterday I was just going through the reviewer responses. They want this changed, they want that changed.

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They want their paper cited.

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So I was doing that yesterday, got the revision submitted. We're working on the conference we're doing in May, so I'm working on scheduling, because we've got like two, three hundred presentations that need to go into four rooms during the time slots, which is nothing, I mean it's like that's like event planning, but I mean it's part of academia right, you hold academic conferences, you've got to know how to do this stuff. Yeah and then you know requests are coming in for that like, oh I missed the submission deadline, can I submit this paper? Or I'm doing this presentation, can I do it on this day? Oh I'm doing this like poster

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Oh my first million leads.

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And you don't think about how many people are going to ask that stuff.

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Right.

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You have like three or five hundred people asking it. So yeah we're doing that and then as I said just submitted a paper research proposal to IRB because I want to try and get that through before next month and then grading. I was grading this morning as well for my class. One thing I really haven't figured out yet is how I'm going to read and keep up to date with research. That's the one challenge I'm having at the moment. I've got so much to do. I need to spend some time just reading some papers and stuff, and I haven't figured out when I'm going to do that yet. I need another hour, if you have one.

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Yeah, so like, well we're starting to run low on time here, so I'm gonna ask you about advice that you give to PhD students now or someone that wants to get into a postdoc, but before I do ask you that, I want to ask you a personal question that I have. So something I struggle with is being able to sit down and actually do different things. How do you sort of like manage that? Like how do you block your time? You know like yeah? I have this time to do the research is this time to do my grading at this time to do my gym

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Or yeah, you know um yeah, I think I'm actually By the sounds of it I I don't think I'm very good at it But I I feel a lot of people like you where they like really struggle with it, so so maybe I am quite good at it so oh Why do I use, you know the task list on Gmail? Yeah. I'll just put that, like my main, major projects I'll put in that, like the one I'm doing in the library right now, that research project is an item in there and the one under review, that's an item there. So I've got those like high level, big tasks that are going to take weeks to do and I don't set a date on them, I just know they're there. So that's like my macro level, then micro level, usually I'll come in every morning and just on a little notepad. I'll be like, okay What am I gonna try and get done today? I'll just put like three things and it will obviously work off of that macro list. That's in the Gmail. Yeah And yeah, that's why I do oh And I like I'll try that. Yeah, I mean yes and Obviously like sometimes I write those three things down. I don't do any of them, right? Other times I get all three done and I've written two more down and I've got those done as well. You've just got to be flexible and just know that it's okay.

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To be more productive than other days.

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So okay, then last thing, generally speaking, what advice would you give to another PhD

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student? I think the biggest one I said earlier is network, get a good committee. The other one that I tell a lot of students who meet with me now, try and weave in your dissertation as much as you can to the classes you're taking. Like don't double your overload yourself with work when you don't have to. If you have an assignment in a class and you can somehow tie it to your

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dissertation, do that. Don't just do it on something that's not your

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dissertation. So like every assignment

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you do in every class, just think about how

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It's not going to be a waste of time, but you know what I mean.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for coming out. I really appreciate your time and all the lessons that you've given me and other students out there.

0:28:38
Yeah, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, if anyone wants to get in touch, happy to talk with anyone.

0:28:44
Thanks so much for listening to the Job Forum. If you want any more details or have any questions, visit my website at manaziz.com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z dot com. M-A-N-A-Z-I-Z dot com. Welcome to the Job Forum.

Transcribed with Cockatoo