I am proficient with C and Java mostly along with UNIX commands and some auxiliary skills, but really have more interest in cool problems to be solved rather than the latest/greatest web fads like Ruby and so on. My question would be, how does one, having "cut one's teeth" so to speak in commercial software, sort of "transition" to more research. I also have a bit of a side-interest in AI as I have some experience with back-propagation neural networks written in C as a solution to predict energy markets. I think my biggest interest is sort of "big problems" that require heuristics to solve them but since while I think I have a pretty solid resume in terms of work experience, both in the area of mobile research optimization and in logistics, I don't have the academic "cred" (e.g. B.S. degree) to sort of "back that up" so to speak.
Most recently I have come across the concept of functional programming, of mathematical interest to me, so my current idea is to study a bit more about that. I just wondered if anyone in the HN community had any thoughts in terms of how to "transition" from a rather sucessful career in the commercial/enterprise software world towards more getting into the research/theory end of things, without perhaps the letters after my name to back that up, lol. Any thoughts appreciated! :-)