How do I know if my research skills is valuable in industry if majority funding is from government? As a postdoc, my research is funded from a grant that's 70% government and 30% aerospace industry.
I work in collaboration with experimental groups and these groups have the collaboration with industry. The part of the industrial funding was acquired by the experimentalist PI working on the project. My PI who works on only modeling/theoretical research, doesn't have direct industrial contacts.
How do I know if my research skills is valuable in industry if majority funding is from government and the industrial funding is predominantly acquired by the experimentalist group?
I like what I do. My research and predictions is commended by experimentalist and since it's very applied, it gets published in experimental focused manufacturing related journals.
But I don't see my skills directly being used or sought after in industry. This would be a problem if I plan to move to industry in the future or in a tenure track position apply for my own individual research grant.
While I am no expert in material science, I know that a lot of people leave academia and very few of them do exactly what they have done before.
So I would not worry too much, especially as you are already on the applied side.