Background: I am pursuing PhD in a Canadian University in mechanical engineering.
My PhD work is computational and I work in collaboration with experimental groups. I am in my 4th year and I have published two journal papers till now. The funding in my group acquired by my PI is always in collaboration with some experimental professor in our department.
These experimental professors have direct contact with big industries and other large universities. It always feels as if my group is piggybacking on the influence/success of the experimental groups.
Now my advisor has good standing in computational mechanics research community, but I don't think she has the influence to acquire funding without the help of the experimental groups. All the past members of my group were Chinese and they have got academic positions in China and few are pursuing postdoc. I think many wanted to stay in Canada and enter into industry but couldn't due to poor contacts of my advisor. While the graduates of the experimental group go into both academia and industry due to their advisor's closer contacts.
Goal: I want to be in academia but I am also open for research scientist position in Industry.
Issue: However, I have a feeling that considering my research group has poor funding record, it means I will always have poor future prospects post graduation.
Question: Is this analysis true?