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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 ??
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