collaboration - How to find an academic mentor as a professional

I'm a professional programmer with 15 years of experience, working in game development as a game and engine programmer, currently working at a prestigious game company on two well known games.

I've submitted a paper to a graphics journal (jcgt.org), and am waiting on the review process. (2.5 months into an expected 3 month process!)

In the meantime I'm working on a computer science paper which doesn't pertain to game development, but is more related to cryptography and metaprogramming.

That realm is a little bit more of a challenge for me since it isn't my area of expertise, so I don't know as many obscure things, proper terminology, or what people expect to see, etc.

How would someone like myself - who is a professional with no academic ties - find a more academic minded mentor who knows more about these areas, that I could ask questions to, bounce ideas off, etc?

Or is that even a likely possibility?

Answer

I think it this can be achieved. Here are some thoughts on how I would do it.

Many academics lack practical skills but require practical skills to evaluate and test their theories and get the publications they desire. These are the kind of academics who will be interested in working with you. To find them, you should first find areas of research that you are interested in where your skills are relevant. Find researchers in those areas who are looking for people with skills you possess (look for what they want for their funded PhD positions and Post-doc positions). Based on this information prepare a clear value proposition - a set of things which you can offer the researchers, and what you would want in return.

Make contact. Ideally do this through a mutual connection who is well liked and respected. If that is not possible then you should try to talk with the academic face to face or on the phone so you can make it as easy as possible and create trust more quickly. Academics are often very busy and cautious of having their time wasted so this is important.

The suggestion above might seem like it involves too much commitment, but you will almost definitely need to show you can provide some sort of return for an academics time before they will work with you so unless you can show how working with you will get them publications or grants they probably won't be interested in helping you with your personal interests.

With that considered, if you are successful with your journal publication you will have a much better chance as the academics will be able to see that you have what it takes to write papers and thus infer that you will be likely to be able to get more publications with relatively little help from others.