Creating a research brand

In the search of approaches and tips claiming to be expert in a particular research theme , today, I have found that   Jeffrey J. McDonnell publish small advice on science. The advices can be summarised as:

• Define research theme or brand that interests you and that you can do it very well

•  Define proper research brand width: not too much wide and too much narrow 

• Disseminate it to the world everywhere you get chances: through published  paper, conference   talk, through research webpage,  journal commentary, perspective paper, or review linked to your research brand

You can read it for yourself here.

Similar advices has been published by my advisor, Riccardo Rigon, at his blog abouthydrology.  For instance, first one is some general comments how to do research in general and how to follow "smart" person (here), and the second is very specific to hydrologist and some practical advices (here). 

The overall message is that its is very important for one early researcher to define research agenda (realm) and follow persistently to standing out among the many young scientists. And follow those mentioned advices for improvements.  As to my research agenda, well, at the moment I will not have much agenda that is not agenda of my  Professor, but, I would like to connect those research brands that interest me and I am very good at it. For the moment   they are described in this post, and will be further refined.  

Reclaiming Agenda

Reading a book "The Motivational Manifesto" by Brendon Burchard, he mentioned that one of the important characteristics of high achiever, in whatsoever work (or field), is the claim of  agenda of life, and clarity on the purpose of their work. It is true that life with no clear agenda could not be a charged life. This is even more applicable in research that, spending fraction of time here and there, and diffuse attention allover, does not help a researcher to be high achiever.  As young hydrologist, I tends  to wonder around in many aspect of the subject, of course to those interesting too learn, but that probably would limit my achievement and research result production. Though it is early to clearly define my life time research agenda, I would like to start tune to some of the following general subjects:

• Understanding  hydrological processes ( rainfall-runoff processes, Evapotranspiration processes, ecohydrology) 
• Estimating water balance at the basin scale (all the sciences and efforts to improve estimation of water cycle components such as remote sensing, interpolation skills, data assimilation)
• Understanding the interaction of Vegetation-Geomorphology-Hydrology (Eco-Hydro-Geomorphology )
• Excel in the use of tools and program(ing) languages  that are important for spatial analysis such as GIS, R, and Java. 

Of course they all are interrelated.