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Graduate Student Survival GuideGraduate Student Survival Guide

Janardhan Rao DoppaSchool of EECS, Oregon State University

doppa@eecs.oregonstate.eduhttp://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~doppa

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Disclaimer

• This guide is based on what I learnt myself in the

past 4 yrs from – reading, talking to people and

my personal experience.

• These are general guidelines. Please follow

what works best for you – personalize it!

• Take this guide with a pinch of salt – some bias!

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School requirements vs. Your education

• “Never let your schooling interfere with your education” – Mark Twain

• Classes and program requirements are important, but what is more important is to become an expert in your area.

• Optimal policy depends on your reward function quickly finish PhD and get a high paying job

Take some more time to produce a high-quality thesis

…

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Taking classes

• Take fewer(no more than two) classes per term and spread out your classes over yrs you will have more time to do research work

• Prioritize your classes based on which courses will be useful for your research

when they are offered and their frequency

flexibility for special topics courses

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Getting started: “exploration” phase

• Explore different topics in your area of interest Talk to senior PhD students and learn about their

research

Attend reading groups, seminars and colloquium talks

Attend project meetings of different professors

Read recent publications of professors

Talk to professors whose work interests you

Use the first year(GTA period) as a buffer time for your exploration

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Choosing your Advisor

• Things you should look for mentoring skills – talk to his students

“active” researcher – look at his publications

funding – current projects at hand

time for each student – depends on the number of students, his academic activities -reviewing, editorship, conference/workshop organization and research fame!

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Choosing your Advisor • Young Asst. Professors

are dynamic and have lots of new ideas

more hands-on and work closely with students

sometimes can be impatient – remember they are also under pressure, i.e., tenure period

• Take home message “win-win” situation for both -- If you can work hard and

keep up with the pace, you can be highly productive!

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Choosing your Advisor • Senior professors

are experienced and leaders in the field

most of them are very good mentors

have the luxury to be relatively more patient

slight advantage in terms of advertising your work and job prospects – connections acquired over years!

mostly have less time for students – remember they are busy with reviewing, editorship, travel for PI meetings, conferences etc.

• Take home message If you can work more independently, you can reap huge rewards in

the end!

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Reading and understanding ability Grad school requires lot of reading Read and understand ideas -- quicker the

better Critically analyze ideas, arguments and

assumptions, and being constructive at the same time!

Grows your bag of tricks: may not see immediate benefit, but helps in the long run

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Technical writing its completely different!

start working on it from your first year, e.g., course

project and research progress reports

articulating your ideas and presenting them as a

coherent story

sell your ideas – conference papers accept/reject

writing good papers comes from practice – learn by

imitating good writers

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Presentation skills Making good slides – start working on your power

point skills

Giving good talks – advertisement to read your paper!

Comes from practice – learn by imitating good

speakers

International students should work on their speaking

skills

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Social networking No. I’m not talking about Facebook or MySpace

Meeting your peers and seniors at conferences,

workshops and symposiums

Talk about research problems

Bounce ideas off each other

Follow up after discussion through email and possible

future collaboration

Requires a lot of effort

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Skills needed to Succeed• Leadership skills

In research, teaching and academic service, e.g., volunteer activities,

community building ..

• Time management

To maintain a balance between work and life!

Leading a stress-free happy life

Time Management talk by Randy Pausch

• Patience

Grad school is different from undergrad!

Ideas may not work as you thought

Repeated failures, e.g., paper rejections ..

This skill will be helpful more generally in life as well

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Math skills Turning intuitions into formal arguments

• Working in a team See the big picture!

Be a good team player

Learn from your team-mates, e.g., different views,

different disciplines, other skills ..

Accept others mistakes as yours

Be generous about credit assignment

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Skills needed to Succeed

• Some software

To manage emails, e.g., pine, thunderbird,

outlook – Organize to save your time!

To prepare manuscripts, e.g., LaTex editor like

Texniccenter and WinEdit (windows), LyX and

Kile (Linux)

To draw your plots, e.g., gnuplot

To develop rapid prototypes, e.g., Matlab or R

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How to read a research paper ?

• Goal: understand the scientific contributions

• Read critically

Is it solving the right problem ?

Are there any simple solutions ?

Reasonable assumptions ?

Clear justification under the given assumptions ?

Breaking points of the solution ?

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How to read a research paper ?

• Read constructively

Reading critically is much easier – tearing

something is easy than to build it up!

Involves harder, more positive thinking

What are the good ideas ?

Do they have other applications or extensions ?

Can they be generalized further ?

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How to read a research paper ?

• Make notes

Highlight the important points

Write additional comments on the hard copy

Maintain summaries of all the papers you read

Will be useful later, e.g., writing paper or thesis

• See the big picture and connections

Compare it to other related works

How does it advance the field ?

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What to read ?

• Major conferences ICML, NIPS, AAAI, IJCAI (AI and ML)

SIGCOMM, MOBICOM, Hot-Nets (Networks)

• Major Journals JMLR, MLJ, JAIR, AIJ (AI and ML)

• Tech reports from Research groups Follow other groups who are working in your area

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How to write a research paper ?

• Keep your audience in mind, e.g., conference or symposium or journal.

• Write a good story

Describe and motivate your problem with real-world examples (What)

Why is it important ?

Short-comings of previous methods

How are your solving the problem ? (How)

Justify why it solves the problem (Why)

Theoretical proof or Experimental evidence

Comparison with state-of-the-art

Lessons learned from your work

Don’t give away your future work !!

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How to write a research paper: A recipe

• Top-down approach Section level outline

Sub-section level outline

Paragraph level outline

o More or less like a presentation with bulleted points

o Check for flow of ideas

o Think about the plots and tables you want to include

o Consistent terminology and symbols

• Get feedback from peers or advisor and refine

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How to give a presentation ?

• Keep your audience in mind

• Remember, talk is an advertisement of the paper

• Tell a good story Describe the problem

Motivate through real-world examples

Key intuition behind your solution

High-level solution

Briefly talk about main results

Use figures as much as possible and avoid text!

• Practice your talk

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General Advice on Research• Choosing the right problems to work on

Work on important fundamental problems

Keep you busy for few years

• Vision

What should your PhD thesis look like ?

Impactful research during tenure period ?

You should know your goal and take small steps to reach it!

• Build your reputation as a researcher

• Read books similar to auto-biographies by great researchers

The art of doing science and engineering: learning to learn -- Richard Hamming

Fermat’s enigma: The epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematics

problem

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Opportunities after a PhD• Academic positions

Post-doctoral researcher Look for those NSF funded CI Fellowships

Tenure-track Asst. professor

Non-tenure Research Asst. professor

Faculty at a teaching university

• Industry positions Researcher

Research Engineer

Engineer

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Questions ??