Studying in the UK for a Master's degree, still worth it? I am an Italian student who is about to get his undergrad degree in Computer Science. As I look to further my education, I'm also looking at universities outside of my own country, also in the UK. In the past years, I always thought studying there would be a great opportunity, although expensive. But now, with the Brexit looming over, I wonder if it would still be worth it.

Preface: I want to apply to some of the major universities in England (for example UCL, Edimburgh Un., Bristol Un., so on...), and of course I need to be accepted first. It seems that universities will not be raising the tuition fee amount for EU students for the academic year 2019/2020 regardless of Brexit. I have some savings which would cover for most costs.

Assuming I get accepted to an university, what I'm looking at in the UK is: one year of studying, the average tuition fee is around 13.000€ (12.000£), the housing seems to hover around 7000€(6000£) for the period I would be studying. So far I can afford this without taking loans and such. I didn't take into account living costs yet for most cities (except London, I know it really expensive in any case), but I'm covered for another 10.000€ more or less. All of my savings gone (I'm "fine" with it, I saved because I wanted to study abroad after all)

In Italy: two years of studying, about 200€ (two-hundred) per year in tuition fees, an average of 3500€ for housing (if I can get a scholarship then I would get a room for free in most unis). Living costs would not be much a problem anywhere.

Is it worth it, spending so much money and moving away? I'm very worried about Brexit. Deal, no-deal, hard Brexit, whatever. How would it affect me as a student? I'm assuming that university-wise it would not change much, but as a person living abroad in the UK? And how would it affect me as soon as I graduate? If there is a hard Brexit, would working in the UK be worth it (assuming is would be possible).

Now I can't really talk about the quality of teaching, going by the ratings, Edinburgh, UCL, and Bristol are some of the top universties in the EU. Most universities in Italy rank as "average" in most ratings. Is it such a massive difference significant for finding a job after graduating? Of course by staying home I would be giving up the networking opportunities that I would have in a UK university (which a generally very diverse), and I think that would be that biggest loss maybe.

I would like to hear some opinions on the matter. Thank you guys, have a good day.

Brexit will not affect the quality of the education you receive from UK universities, at least in the short term. (Longer term things are not clear, as it may become harder for UK universities to recruit faculty.) That is the main factor you should consider.

Potentially the exchange rate will make it cheaper (measured in euros) to live in the UK. Potentially it will be harder and/or less desirable to get a job in the UK after graduation. However, I can only speculate about such other factors and this is not the right place to discuss them.


How hard is it to get a good to great grades in undergraduate school? I am currently studying undergraduate school in Europe and am toying with idea of applying to a U.S. collage for graduate school.

So I‘ve read a bit online about GPA requirements and there it says that one should have a score of at least 3.0. My current GPA would be way below that and I‘m not a crazy outlier at my school. All of my friends have grades similar to mine.
At the same time I know a few friends in America who all never have grades worse than a B.

So do I just coincidentally know two absolutely non-overlapping groups on either side of the Atlantic is it easier to get good grades in America?

It is hard to answer this question as the educational systems in the US and the EU are very different at the undergraduate level. A bachelor's degree, say in mathematics, in the US includes many other courses such as writing, history, philosophy, etc. Only about half of the program is mathematics. In the EU the degree is normally much more focused on maths. But for any given course in maths, I'd guess that the level of difficulty is about the same, though this varies widely from place to place.

So, a GPA (overall) in the US means something quite different from one in EU. The GPA in field is a more comparable number.

But, with more focus in the EU, some courses that would be taken in graduate school in the US show up earlier in the EU.

You have to work hard on both sides of the pond to achieve success. Don't expect lower standards in either place.


Can I still publish my thesis elsewhere if I publish it "closed access" with ProQuest? My university requires that I upload my PhD thesis to ProQuest. ProQuest charges $95 for "open-access" publishing, while "traditional" publishing is free. I want to confirm my understanding here. "Open access" in this context really just means that ProQuest will make the PDF available in perpetuity for free. However, it does not mean that I cannot host or disseminate my thesis myself or use other open-access services, such as my university's library or arXiv. Does anyone know if this is correct? I’m pro-open access publishing, but I’d like to avoid paying this $95 fee.
Clarifying edit: This is not a duplicate of this question. That question is about the distinction between two different grades of open access publishing. My question is about whether or not I am interpreting a specific (and massive) open-access publisher's policies correctly. I've also edited my title to be more clear.

Here's ProQuest's author rights agreement for the "closed access" option (linked to from here). As you can see, they only ask for non-exclusive publication rights. So yes, using this option would leave you free to disseminate your thesis through other avenues. In my opinion, if you can host your thesis in some kind of stable repository (e.g. one provided by your university library) for free, there's no real reason to pay ProQuest for open access publication. Of course, if you want to, or can get someone else to cover the fee, there's no harm in redundancy. However, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to appreciably affect discoverability through search engines.


Is it possible to overcome poor undergrad performance with a masters at a much lower ranked institution? I have browsed extensively on academia.se and generally understand from similar questions (e.g. Doing bad in undergraduate but good in a masters program and How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students?) that Ph.D. admissions committees care most about an applicant's most recent performance.

Is this still true even if the poor undergraduate grades were at a highly ranked university, and the good masters grades were at a much less competitive program?

I am interested in applying to top statistics PhD programs, but I have very poor undergraduate grades (2.8 GPA, 3.3 major GPA in math/stats) from a top 15 department. My grades in the masters program are good (>3.9 GPA), but at a state university that is not so highly ranked.

If the grades from the less competitive masters aren't enough to overcome the poor undergraduate grades, is the quality of my masters thesis likely to help me secure admissions to a top PhD program? What about a strong but not top 10-15? There are faculty doing high quality research here that may be able to supervise my thesis.

Edit:  This is not a duplicate of the linked question, while that question has great answers it does not specifically address my situation, namely I am working on a master's thesis and have a particular pattern of grades. Also difference between quality of undergrad and current institution.

As Roger Fan says in the comments, great recommendation letters would probably get you into a top program.  People at any decent research school will know people at top schools, so their letters can be trusted, and most of your faculty should be experienced enough to compare you with grad students at top schools.  (This is assuming you're at a reputable research-oriented state university, such as the main campus of a state university---there are some branches of state schools where I would not put much trust in the letters of recommendation).

As for you question about a great thesis, yes that help get you into a top school, but the most likely way this would happen is because a great thesis will generate great letters.


Citing a secondary (indirect) quotation in the epigraph In my thesis I want to use the following quotation in the epigraph of a chapter:

  It is very difficult to predict — especially the future.

There are many variations of this quote, and the authorship is attributed to many different people. Very often it is assigned to Niels Bohr, and one of the oldest secondary sources I have found dates back to 1971.

How should I cite this secondary quotation in my epigraph?

Something like the following? —Niels Bohr (Mencher, 1971)

For something like this it is unlikely that you would be expected to cite the original source. Cite what you have found.

An exception would be in research directly related to studies of sourcing and such, but I doubt that is your need here.

Some things are lost in the mists of time, of course, and others are apocryphal.


Can we buy licenses for e-books and lend them to students? We are thinking about buying new textbooks for our students. Is there an established practice of buying digital copies of books for students? I expect that e-books should generally be cheaper and we might also be able to save money on delivery.

If the school were to purchase 10 copies of some particular title (e.g., this condensed matter physics book), would it be possible to loan these e-books to one set of students for some period of time (2 years), and later use the same licensed e-books for the next set of students?

Edit

I'm asking is it legal to give the same e-book file to multiple student generations, given that the particular licensed copy is only used by one student at a time.

If it is legal, I'm interesting in the established procedure for doing so. Are there any special considerations for different vendors or for different e-book formats?

Generally speaking, when you purchase digital content, you are usually purchasing a license for said content. You will have to read the license to find out what the terms are. For example, here is the general license agreement for the Kindle store. It states that as a general rule:

  Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party

which would prohibit the scheme you suggest in the general case ("unless specifically indicated otherwise").

Similarly, for books sold in the Google Play store, the license terms include the following:

  You may not lend or co-own any of your Books on Google Play purchases with another person.

The specific license terms can vary by content distributor, publisher, and individual book.

In cases where lending is permitted (e.g. some Kindle books), it's usually very restricted - for ordinary customers. Libraries can purchase licenses for some books that are more permissive for lending purposes. You should consult with your university librarians about what options are available to them.

You may be able to find an appropriate book for your purposes with a permissive license that allows lending (maybe even some open educational resources, if you're really lucky), but this will probably take some work.


Estimate of travel expenses for a Colloquium abroad - what does this include? This summer I will (hopefully) be attending the Logic Colloquium 2015, as a Ph.D student in Logic. The organizers will make available Travel Awards for grad students, and I would like to apply. One of the requirements is an estimate of my travel expenses.

My question is: what does "travel expenses" usually include in this situation? I imagine airplane tickets and accommodation expenses are included. What else could reasonably be included in my estimate?

Thank you.

Tickets and accommodation are typically by far the largest items.  You can also include other transportation expenses, such as travel to/from airports (or parking fees if you drive your own car to the airport and leave it there).  You should generally choose the cheapest option that's not too inconvenient.  For example, an airport shuttle may cost much less than a taxi.

Meals can be handled in many different ways: sometimes there is a fixed per diem amount to cover such expenses, sometimes you can be reimbursed but need receipts, and sometimes meals aren't covered.  The per diem approach is generally easiest for everyone, but it depends on how much funding there is and where it came from.

Other forms of travel expenses are less common and may or may not be covered, but it can't hurt to ask.  Childcare is a particularly messy issue, because this can severely limit travel plans but conference organizers are not necessarily prepared to provide funding or local recommendations; still, it's worth asking about childcare if it's relevant.


Should I leave this PhD and start another one? Would I be in trouble? I am currently doing a fully funded PhD in a European country. I just finished my first year. The topic is ok but i dont feel very passionate about it. I dont feel i connect with the topic even though my supervisor is a nice person. the uni is depressing and i feel lonely. Both me and my partner do not really like the country we are living in.
I have another PhD offer from a better uni, in another country( i have close friends there) and in a field that i care much more about. The immigration status after graduating is also very important for me and in this country, i would have easier and faster ways of becoming a permenant resident.
I am very tempted to leave my current PhD and go for the second option. However, i have just finished my first year here, have been getting paid and my supervisor has been putting time and energy into helping me. I feel awkward talking to him about leaving and dont know how he would react.
What should i do? it is a very difficult decision for me. I am also worried my current supervisor would get angry and try to destroy my academic reputation. I know the funding i currently have is very generous and my supervisor worked hard to secure it for me. Im just simply not happy with what I am doing and where I am living...

The comment of astronat is good. Most people would support you.
But there is more. If you are happier, then you will probably do better work. Being in something that you aren't happy with is not good place to be.
If there is any sort of retaliation it would be, I think, short lived and can be overcome. Other than lying, the person has no real way to say you are not suitable for academia.
Everything seems positive about the switch, both personally and professionally.
But, it would be worth the effort, unless you have contrary evidence, to have a conversation with your advisor giving two messages. First that you are happy with their guidance, but have both personal and professional reasons for a move. They may be disappointed, but that seldom results in harmful action. Clean up joint work before you go, of course.


Should I mention in my manuscript's cover letter that I am a PhD student? I am a PhD student in Mathematics. My adviser told me that I can submit our manuscript to some journal. So I am writing a cover letter and I am just wondering if I should mention in the cover letter that I am a PhD student.

If a cover letter is needed at all, its purpose nowadays is usually to include information for which there is no appropriate form in the journal’s submission system (which can inlude suggested reviewers, unwanted reviewers, informations about prior submissions, etc.) – see also these two questions.

I do not see how the information that you are a PhD student is relevant to the editor or anybody involved with the paper, so I wouldn’t mention it. Every spurious information in that letter just wastes the editor’s time. I submitted a few papers as a PhD student (with and without coauthors) without mentioning this fact and did not encounter any problems that I would even remotely relate to this.


Why should I write a good undergraduate thesis? I am nearing the end of a semester-long bachelor thesis in computer science. My supervisor suggested I set aside the last month (around 20 working days) for actually writing the thesis document. As such, I have begun this period now.

Why is a thesis important?

Given limited time, I am confused as to why I need to write a good thesis. I am not against writing it, I just want to understand why a good thesis is important so that I can optimize my time accordingly and focus on the important sections.

For instance, if I were writing a paper for a conference, my goal would be to convince potential reviewers (as well as the research community in general) about the merit of my proposed ideas and their novel contributions. As such, I know the intended audience and the intended message for such a paper. Along these lines, who is the intended audience and what is the intended message for a bachelor thesis? Firstly, I doubt many would be interested in reading a bachelor thesis, so this confuses me when I think about who I am writing this thesis for. Secondly, should I consider the intended message as convincing the reader of my ideas, in which case the thesis essentially becomes a long research paper?

I am dealing with these questions because I've found that I can write better and more persuasive matter when I think from the reader's point of view with a clear message to convey to him/her. But currently, I am neither clear about the audience nor about the point to make with my thesis.

I spoke to my supervisor about this. He said the thesis document is a report of all the research activities I did during the time allotted for it, which includes all experiments irrespective of their results. In contrast, a research paper focuses on one method which worked very well. With this in mind, one could say that the intent of my thesis is to inform, so that all experiments (with positive or negative results) serve as some kind of knowledge contribution to the research community. However, this still leaves the question of who the reader is, what should I assume about them, etc.

Which sections are the most important in my thesis?

Part of the reason for asking the former question is to obtain an answer for this question. Which sections are the most important in a thesis and why? From my understanding, the sections which stand out (like the abstract, introduction and conclusion) are the most important as they're the most likely to be read by potential thesis examiners, peers, etc.

Is there any other section that I should especially focus on?

The audience
The correct, but somewhat cynical answer is that the main audience for a thesis or dissertation is the examiners. They'll have to grade it (or at least sign off on it), so you want to convince them to give you the grade you want. The next audience you'll want to target is actually yourself.
Some years from now you'll have forgotten some of the details. You can try to track them down again, but if you've written stuff down in a format that's helpful to you it's going to be a lot quicker and less painful. Basically, if you write the document well it can be a great reference. (I admittedly haven't opened my bachelor thesis many times, but I looked something up in my Masters thesis just yesterday.) Sometimes the thesis can also be useful for students doing their projects on the same topic, in the same research group, etc.
The other big point is that writing the thesis is supposed to be practice for future writing of e.g. dissertations or papers.
What sections are most important?
From the practice angle, all of them. To convince your examiners, probably introduction, results and conclusions - but different people will have different priorities. However, it's a case where you have a few people who are supposed to read your thesis, so an excellent abstract is less important than in a research paper. Basically, you want to show that you understand the field, and have done good work.


Is it normal for a PhD supervisor having no PhD students staying in academia after their graduation? I am looking for potential PhD opportunites in engineering and I found a potential PhD supervisor. Personally, I plan on entering academia after my graduation. However, it seems that during the past 12 years, the professor had no students staying in academia after their graduation. I also found that some of the PhDs have very good publications in top journals and excellent experience in being a research associate but they all eventually entered the industry or even finance companies.
One reason for this might be that nearly all of these students were sponsored by industry. For me, I wonder if it is normal for a PhD supervisor to have no academic "descendants" in universities or other research institutes and if the professor is suitable for me if I plan to enter academia after finishing my PhD. I would appreciate it very much if you could give me some suggestions on this.

The first thing to bear in mind is that only 3.5% of those that graduate PhDs will end up in faculty positions. If one takes on a student year year of a 30 year career, that means that on average each supervisor will have one student that eventually becomes permanent faculty. This makes sense, as each supervisor needs to replace themselves with one person to keep the academic population stable. If on average, 1/30 students will go on to be faculty, 0/12 is not particularly worrying. Also bear in mind that 12 years is a very short time to make it from starting a PhD to making faculty in many fields. In biology for example, I believe the average time is more like 15 years.
However, it's not quite as simple as this, as some supervisors do have many students who go on to be faculty, so it stands to reason that there are some supervisors who will have none over their whole career. Some of this will be random chance, but my feeling is that the variance is too high to just be accounted for by pure chance.
Things will also vary from discipline to discipline. In some disciplines, the industry options are very attractive, in others there is not much to do directly related to your PhD other than academia. If you are in a computing or engineering field, it is likely that there are so many options that are more appealing than academia, that an even larger number of students than average will leave academia for industry.
In conclusion: it is not necessarily a red flag that 0/12 students went into academia, when that is what you want, but it is obviously more comforting if they do have students that have taken that path.


Should I indicate an invited paper on my CV, when I am one of the authors, but not the invited author? Should I indicate on my CV that one of my papers is an invited paper, when I am one of the authors, but not the invited author? If yes, how do I do this? Should I list it with my other conference papers but with a remark, or should I create a separate 'Invited papers' heading?

I believe that the key distinction here is not whether the paper has been "invited" or not (since there are lots of different types of invitations with different implications), but whether the paper has undergone meaningful peer review.

If the paper has undergone a normal peer review process, it doesn't matter whether it was invited or not: it can be reasonably collected with all of your other peer-reviewed manuscripts.

If the paper has not been peer-reviewed, then it should be separated for listing as a non-reviewed publication---still potentially significant, but definitely a different category.  Again, the invitation itself is not really the issue, but the standard to which you have been held before publication.


Understanding the works of intellectuals I'm a master's graduate in biology. I completed a thesis recently on 'Social science in the age of biology'. It discusses how social scientists and biologists approach and answer questions pertaining to human behaviour and organisation of society differently. I was able to complete this thesis because I was guided by a social scientist. I developed a keen interest in the social sciences.
I am now reading Foucault's ' Madness and Civilization' and Marx's ' Capital' and am finding it very difficult to decipher the text, even after understanding the individual words. Why is it that I'm finding it so difficult to make sense of the works of intellectuals in the social sciences? The amount of abstraction is also lesser as compared to the sciences, in which I have some training. My reading and comprehension skills are also reasonably good.
What can I do to bridge the gaps in my ability to comprehend the works of intellectuals in the social sciences?
Is doing coursework necessary?

These authors wrote for a particular audience and you, as a person living in 2017, are not who they had in mind. Part of comprehending text is being able to attach it to something that provides context to the text. You probably don't have this. Before reading books such as these try reading a modern summary that also provides context. This will give you a better chance at comprehension.

Additionally, the style of writing has evolved substantially since these books were written. Today authors (should) write for clarity. This wasn't always the case.


How to create PDF of slides with audio? When creating online learning materials, I like the idea of sharing slideshows with audio commentary for each slide.  I know it is possible to do this with PowerPoint (e.g., see this MS Office tutorial).
However, I prefer to create PDF slides using tools like beamer.

Questions

Is it possible to create PDF presentations with embedded audio?
What is a good workflow for implementing this (e.g., recording the audio files, storing the audio files, sharing, etc.?

Ideally, the solution would be cross-platform and minimise external viewer requirements.

If you don't want to pay for Adobe Acrobat Pro, as @schultem mentions, LaTeX can do this with embedded hyperlinks. See this page, Section 3.5 for more information. Note that if you use this method (as far as I know) you will have to click for sound, it cannot be automatic.


Identity of a supposed anonymous referee revealed through "Description" of the report I received a referee report from a journal (with single blind peer review policy).

If that matters, the journal uses "Editorial Manager" system.

By clicking on "View Attachments", one can see 5 these information "Action", "Uploaded By", "Description", "File Name", "File Size".

The content of the column "Uploaded By" is "Editor".

The content of the column "Description" is  "from prof. X"

Hence the identity of the referee is disclosed.

I am wondering if it is an unintended mistake from the Editor or it is the referee who has written such description.

The referee has done a substantial work to evaluate the manuscript and has proposed many suggestions leading to the improvement of the manuscript.

My dilemma is that, as I know the identity of the referee, should I use his real name in the acknowledgement or just thank an anonymous referee?

If the review itself is not signed, it sounds like the unblinding was not deliberate. I would:

Reply as if the review were anonymous
Notify the editor in a separate, private message saying there may have been an error in showing the reviewer name


What license to choose for my PhD thesis? I will soon submit my PhD thesis. The thesis is written in Latex and version controlled with git. I want to add a license file, but don't know what to choose. For my software, I choose the permissive MIT license, but I have no clue if that is suitable for a thesis as well. Searching on the web, I found that many use the Creative Commons (CC), but I don't know why. And there are also several types of CC. What I want is: everyone can

use the knowledge in the thesis even for commercial purposes, supposing that my work is cited
use, modify and redistribute the helper tools (files for compilation, document format, etc.) supposing that the original license is kept

EDIT
Finally, based on your suggestions, I chose the CC-BY 4.0 license and set the repository containing the sources to public.

CC-BY seems to be the industry standard license for open access papers, see Why CC-BY? for a discussion of the reasons. It's a well-known license, that allows various kinds of later use (including commercial), and hence it's a good choice for papers and (I think) theses as well. The BY part requires "appropriate attribution". For academic reuse you can pretty much count on the attribution coming in the form of citations.

Note, however, that CC-BY is not a "viral" license. That is, modifications don't have to preserve the license. If you want that property, there is the CC-BY-SA (share-alike) variant, but my understanding is that it can make it problematic to create repositories of documents. This is one of the reasons for recommending CC-BY for papers. However, you could always put a CC-BY license on the thesis, and a stricter one on the helper tools.

Just make sure that whatever you choose is compatible with any copyright policy imposed by your university. Places I'm familiar with just request non-exclusive distribution rights to put it in their online library databases, but I imagine other places can be more restrictive.


Switching postdoc position (station) in China I had applied for postdoc in a university in China, all documentation went through and my was successful in that funds were approved @ 120 K RMB (lowest) + 30K and housing etc. I received the work permit from the school, and then the pandemic came, I wasn't able to even apply for the Z visa. This happened around December 2019 - January 2020. The permit expired and as of today I haven't heard anything from the school. In the meantime, I have found another better postdoc offer from Beijing, the documentation hasn't started yet but I am concerned that my information might already be in the system linked to the previous school. How do I get rid of the previous school or do I need to worry at all? Because I never started the first position in the first place, and I prefer to chose this new offer instead of the previous. Anyone who has experience with Chinese postdoc system might be able to help and guide. Thanks.

Did you go through the process of registering on chinapostdoctor.org? If so, then you are probably right that you are in a system somewhere. However, this should not affect anything because you never actually started your original position.
Nevertheless, I would proactively explain your situation to your current prospective supervisor so they (or their students) will be prepared to help you in case of any snags.
No matter what, it will not be an issue that derails your appointment. If there is an issue, it will be a clerical one that can be sorted out by the school with a phone call or two.


What is normally not acceptable to budget in a grant I seem to have much more freedom in industry sponsored grants, so this is specific to government grants.  I have never been allowed to budget in a 'Computer', but I can budget in 'a CPU'.  I mostly work with computation, but I assume the computer issue effects many fields.  I also cannot budget in tables and chairs, but through overhead from the institute I can buy those.

Are there other issues for budgeting funding for items that are not allowed that may be more specific to fields?

For example, are there usually restrictions on a microscope, for people in that field.

First of, Marc has it right - these things need to be defined in the grant rules / grant agreement. There is no universal truth in these matters. For instance,  European Union funded projects almost always contain travel budgets, which can be used for project meetings or research-related trips (e.g., conferences). The  Austrian Science Fundation (FWF), on the other hand, explicitly disallow travel budgets for conference trips and claims that these expenses need to be covered by overheads. Contrary, the Swiss National Science Fundation (SNF) works very similar to FWF, but allows for travel budgets.

That being said, typically only costs that are specific to running a project and which would not have been accrued without the project are covered. Besides personnell costs, that typically includes buying special hardware that is essential to the project, but which is not usually used in the rest of the PI's research. What is usually not covered are indirect costs that stem from hiring any researcher. This includes mundane things, such as the office space for the researcher, desks, telephony costs, coffee (if you work in a place that buys such things for employees), and IT equipment.

As for the "why are CPUs covered, but not entire computers?" case - I presume that your grant does not allow you to buy just any CPU from your grant, but it should allow hardware specific to your project (e.g., buying or renting a powerful server or cluster for number crunching in relation to a computationally intense project). It will likely not allow you to buy just a regular desktop CPU, just as it would not allow you to buy the entire desktop computer.


Do teaching an advance course helps in evaluation and tenure? Do teaching an advance course helps in promotion or it does not matter?

Within my U.S. math department, teaching a successful, energetic, research-oriented graduate "topics" course is a plus inside the department. It is also essential, within the department, to have demonstrated "acceptable" capacity to teach bread-and-butter courses, such as ... calculus.

The engineering departments that determine the course of the "college of science and engineering" (due, I imagine, to the size of external grant funding... and the concommitant "overhead") view math, physics, and chemistry fundamentally as "service" departments, and, indeed, the size of these departments is hard to justify on any practical grounds except for the hordes of freshman and sophomores taking filtering/weeding/service courses. In any event, when tenure cases reach the "college" level, demonstrated success in teaching those lower-division courses is considered essential ... research success is taken for granted, and considered of mostly internal interest to the department, not to the college... and minimal involvement or non-involvement with lower-division teaching can ... upset... the engineering faculty.

So, at that level, it would be unwise to have exclusively done advanced teaching, even if "only" at an undergraduate level.

Within the department, it shows a certain kind of energy, I think, because it may well require more psychological effort to do the best job with higher-level material than to do an acceptable job with low-level material aided by a phalanx of teaching assistants. But there seems to be a watershed in preferences about teaching graduate courses, so new faculty preferences in that regard are mostly construed as a matter of taste or opinion, not essential.


Asking to not present in a conference on Saturday I am about to submit a paper to a conference. I just found out that the conference falls in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Since I am an observant Jew, I don't want to present on Saturday. What are my options?

I thought to submit the paper, and if it is accepted, explicitly ask the organizers to schedule me to another day. Is this possible/acceptable?
Another option is to submit the paper, and if it is accepted and scheduled on Saturday (and the organizers don't agree to change this), then withdraw the paper. This is of course less preferable as it, probably, creates bad reputation if I don't present an accepted paper (I am also not sure if it will be published: Presented a paper in a conference, but my paper did not get published in proceeding )
The third option is not to submit at all, in order to prevent the option that I have to withdraw an accepted paper.

If your paper is accepted is it perfectly appropriate to ask them to observe your religious guidelines. A lot of people will give special date restrictions when presenting in a conference for lesser things like they need to fly home by a certain date, their funding doesn't cover hotels for the length of the conference, or they just don't have a desire to stay the whole time.

Good luck with presentations!


Does one usually get a notification of receipt of a PhD application? I sent a PhD application almost 3 weeks ago on a thursday afternoon. As it happened, the next friday was a holiday. Something I noticed after sending the application.

Does one get a notification of receipt after sending an application?

My fear is that I sent the e-mail on thursday, when the PI and professor were already out. That, together with the 3 day weekend, and the mountain of mails probably coming on monday, buried my application and it went unnoticed.

It really depends on the school, and the channel of communication. I usually follow up after a week of sending an email if I were applying to a specific professor.

Using the example of my school, PhD applications are handled centrally, and you only get an email of further inquiry or rejection.

In either case, there are probably a lot of applications that the professor needs to sort through, a smart follow up is usually necessary.


how to deal with incorrect speaker introduction at conference At some conferences I attend(ed), plenary speakers are introduced with more than just name an title of the talk, but also a short CV by the session convenor.

While I don't know how these intros are compiled (do organisers run background checks on the speakers? do speakers provide the summary themselves?) it may happen that the presented information (roles the speaker holds / held) are incorrect. (Misunderstandings between the convenor and their sources, not full awareness of subtle seeming terminology differences, …)

I expect mostly nobody cares about the details in such a speaker introduction, but there may be cases where the speaker gets a role attributed which they didn't hold and the award of the role was disputed or a politically delicate topic.

I'm wondering, what is the correct way to deal with such an incorrect introduction (assuming the speaker didn't deliberately provide false information)? Should one embarrass the convenor by correcting them before starting the presentation or let it slide and off-stage apologize to those in the audience who will feel offended because the convenor attributed their reputation to the speaker?

In case your name is pronounced wrong, just let it slip. You cannot expect someone to know all of the correct pronunciations of strangers' names.

As for the title, I would recommend to only speak up when you are introduced with a status higher than your real one. A side remark like "Oh, and I do not actually hold a PhD" should be enough to clear the confusion and to show people you are not adorning yourself with borrowed plumes (taking false credit). Any further would probably unnecessarily embarrass the speaker.


Resources/methods to teach how to perform research logically Can you point me to resources (e.g. book, articles, etc.) or methods on teaching students how to think more logically/systematically about doing research?

I've seen a number of intelligent graduate students who do great in performing experiments, but struggle to make logical arguments about their research and conclusions. For instance I see students making statements without providing evidence/arguments for such statements (e.g. "increasing the temperature will cause the experiment to proceed better" but no evidence/reasoning is provided). I see writing from students that is an organized mess with no clear path or direction. I often see short confusing descriptions in written drafts when thorough explanations should be given. I see students put together graphs that are incomprehensible. On and on...

It seems that many students don't "get" how to think scientifically or research-oriented. I know this comes with time and experience, but perhaps there is a way to teach students the underlying principles and approach to doing research?

Of course there's a way to teach them: have them enroll in a research oriented PhD program and practice for five years! An effective approach to research is a skill that takes a long time to develop and will have prerequisites that also take a long time to develop (e.g. how to read scientifically, how to formulate scientific questions, how to verbally express a scientific thought clearly).

That being said, engineering degrees are largely aimed at formalizing the skills that would take a decade or more to acquire through practice. If you can describe a procedure formally in enough detail, maybe, students can just follow the procedure exactly and get acceptable results. I don't know whether this would work or be a good idea for research (BS in Research Engineering anyone?) but it's moot because science programs tend to emphasize content rather than process.


Does the GDPR cover reviewer blacklists, and if so, how? I've served as an area chair for several conferences.  Following the review period, the program chairs asked the area chairs to submit to them an annotated list of problematic reviewers. Mostly these were reviewers who failed to submit a review at all, despite repeated reminders, but we were also asked to identify reviewers who submitted exceptionally low-quality reviews, such as reviews that were so short/vague as to be useless, and reviews whose factual errors were so glaring that it was obvious that the reviewer either lacked even the bare minimum subject-matter knowledge, or else didn't bother reading the paper at all.  The purpose of collecting these lists was to construct or to supplement a blacklist for use with future program committee invitations.  That is, people on these blacklists would not be invited to review for future conferences operated by the same scholarly society.

I am wondering whether the coming into force of the EU/EEA General Data Protection Regulation has any implications for these blacklists.  In particular, is the blacklist itself considered "personal information", and is it even lawful to compile such a list?  Can the reviewers mentioned on this list use the provisions of the GDPR to force its maintainers to disclose their presence on the list or even to remove them from the list?  How about the area chair comments used to construct the list—are these something that blacklisted reviewers can force the conference organizers to turn over to them?

I realize that this is a question about legal principles and practice, and so might be also (or maybe even better) appropriate for the Law Stack Exchange or a lawyer.  But since the question treats a uniquely academic scenario, I'm hoping that someone here might belong to a scholarly society that has already looked into the matter, and can therefore provide a brief summary for the present academic audience.

The GDPR of course doesn't cover all possible scenarios. However, it's fairly logical. You're not allowed to have and use personal information, unless you meet at least 1 of 6 specific reasons. "Consent" is the best-known, because we've all been asked hundreds of times in the last year. But obviously that's not going to fly for a blacklist.

No, the reason which can justify a blacklist is (6e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller. Academic publishing is probably not done "in the exercise of official authority", but it definitely is "a task carried out in the public interest".

Having established that there's a reason, most of the other GDPR requirements become technical. There's a right to ask for factual corrections, but if the facts are in dispute you only need to record the objection. You are not forced to decide.

Now the biggy is of course the "right to be forgotten"/right to erasure. This is not an unconditional right. The person invoking this right must state a reason, and this must hold. "Withdrawing consent" is a reason, but it only applies when consent was originally necessary, which is not the case for the blacklist. "No longer necessary" might make sense if someone retires entirely, but we know that in academia retirement is often not a black&white matter.

The good thing here is that you can reason about actual removal requests if and when they arrive. There is not much preparation required other than the general GDPR rules for good recordkeeping.


Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles? I have several questions related to open-sourcing the source code used for a research article.

Is there any research/study that addresses any of the following:

What percentage of research articles are provided with their source code? (i.e. the source code is made available somewhere online)
What percentage of research articles provide the source code at or before the publication date?
What percentage of research articles who promised they will release the source code actually do so?
What percentage of research articles provided the source code at some point but then the latter disappeared?

I am mostly interested in the field of computer science > machine learning, and English-speaking venues.

Here's a relevant study on computer science systems research that addresses your first question, "What percentage of research articles are provided with their source code?". The study is described in a tech report:

  "Measuring Reproducibility in Computer Systems Research." Christian Collberg, Todd Proebsting, Gina Moraila, Akash Shankaran, Zuoming Shi, Alex M Warren. March 21, 2014.

The authors of this study observed the following protocol to determine code availability:

  We downloaded 613 papers from the latest incarnations of eight ACM conferences (ASPLOS’12, CCS’12, OOPSLA’12, OSDI’12, PLDI’12, SIGMOD’12, SOSP’11, VLDB’12) and five journals (TACO’9, TISSEC’15, TOCS’30, TODS’37, TOPLAS’34), all with a practical orientation. For each paper we determined whether the published results appeared to be backed by source code or whether they were purely theoretical. Next, we examined each non-theoretical paper to see whether it contained a link to downloadable code. If not, we examined the authors’ websites, did a web search, examined popular code repositories such as github and sourceforge, to see if the relevant code could be found. In a final
  attempt, we emailed the authors of each paper for which code could not be found, asking them to direct us to the location of the source. In cases when code was eventually recovered, we also attempted to build and execute it. At this point we stopped — we did not go as far as to attempt
  to verify the correctness of the published results.

Here is a summary of their findings:

Total papers examined: 613
Papers that appeared to be backed by source code (not purely theoretical): 515

Of these 515 papers, 105 were excluded from consideration so that the resulting set of papers had no overlapping author lists. That leaves 410 papers, with results as follows:

Papers with link to source in the paper: 85
Papers not in above category, where source was found via web search: 65
Papers where author shared source following email request: 81
Papers where author declined to share source following email request: 149
Papers where author did not respond to email requests for source:  30

More details of methodology and results, as well as all the data and other materials used in this study, may be found at this web site.

There is an "Anecdotes" section appended to this tech report, which I think you may find very interesting, as it relates to some of the other points in your question. It documents the author's struggles to get authors to give up their source code :)


Is it bad if my mom comes to a conference with me? I am going to my first conference and my mom wants to join.  (She can probably get funding from her university to accompany me, even though she is in a different field.)  Will it reflect badly on me if we stick together?

You ask about "stick together". This is probably not an ideal idea.

Generally, in a conference, you want freedom of action. Going with your mother may induce you to "talk to the known" person whenever you are unsure; i.e. you talk to her whenever you are not sure how to approach people - the notorious "escape route" - but this is exactly what conferences are not for.

When I went to my first conference, I made a point to talk to as many people as I could. At the beginning, it is quite a leap of faith. But later you find, it is fun, you get to know people, and you get to know new research directions and ideas. Sometimes it feels difficult, but remember: all you people have one thing in common - the topic of the conference. You are very unlikely to go wrong starting a conversation about that.

If you are unsure how to start, start with people which look like they are alone at the conference, and probably a bit lost. They will be grateful to get somebody to talk to; you may meet interesting colleagues (don't think that, because they are alone, they are not good scientists - good scientists may not be good at socialising), and notch up a good deed, to boot.

It is fine to take your mother to social events and the like, but I recommend that, if she joins the conference, say, because she is interested, that she stays mostly in the background and does not send signals of "supervision" to others or - even more importantly - to you. If you can keep that balance, then, by all means, bring her with you.


To what degree does earning a pure math PhD in dynamical systems limit my career options outside of academia I am a 2nd year math PhD student. If one specializes in pure math (say dynamical systems with no particular real-world application in mind), how difficult can it be to transition into industry after the PhD? What are measures one can take to make this a smooth transition? I am not particularly interested in applied math at the moment, but I'm not too optimistic about the future of the pure mathematician (unless he/she solves some Millennium Prize Problem!!). I would like to think that I have the option of switching from academia to industry if I had to. I am haunted by words of one of my undergrad math professors: "No one should major in pure math. You major in applied math and you continue to study pure math if you're interested in it."

I have a M.A. in math, and my thesis was concerned with estimating the fractal dimension of sets arising in dynamical systems. My ideal profession with a PhD in math would be to teach and to do research. My research need not be limited to pure math.

A lot of PhDs in theoretical mathematics end up "in industry" of one part or another.  Many times this is not by choice, which is sad, but it also means the learning curve is not too steep.  There is a reputation, reasonably well-deserved, that a PhD in mathematics teaches you how to think and solve problems in a rather fundamental and robust way, and that all other skills can be overlaid on top of that.  Certainly I've seen PhDs in "purely theoretical" mathematics with no programming skills, actuarial or statistical knowledge, etc. be hired by industry.  In fact many of these people get on-the-job training in the first year of their job...while they are getting well paid.

Well, but the job market is pretty tight all around these days, as perhaps you've heard.  If being totally clueless outside of theoretical mathematics can land you an industrial job, being less than totally clueless will be even better. I advise PhD students that as soon as they have real thought of a non-academic post-PhD career they should explore this in a positive way, including mentioning it to their advisor so that aspects of their program of study can be adjusted. For instance, in my PhD program you need to take two exams in foreign languages, but one of these can be replaced by a computer project.  Although I think the computer requirement would serve many would-be academics better as well, if you think you may go into industry, then reading in a third language is obviously not going to be as marketable as computer skills.

While you're in a PhD program in mathematics, talk to the students and faculty who have connections and experience in industry.  (Realize that your thesis advisor may not be such a person.  For instance I have zero industrial experience. I do not pretend to give advice in this area -- well, not specific advice, anyway! -- but I try to find other people who can.)  Don't be shy or embarrassed about this.  It's your life and you get to do what you want to do.

My feeling is that solidifying basic industrially applicable skills -- e.g. programming and even lower-level tech-savviness like spreadsheets, learning how to share and transfer files, etc. -- and supplementing with coursework and other training (e.g. taking actuarial exams; taking one solid course in statistics or financial mathematics) is a better bet and easier to do in your spare time than trying to change your thesis topic to something more applied.  As above, my feeling is that most industrial jobs don't care what you did your thesis on, and having done it on something rarefied and inapplicable is actually fine with them as long as you have, or can make them confident that you can learn, the skills you will need on the job.  But again, talk to people other than the academic lifers like me!


Open Access Crowd Based Publications (StackExchange like) I am a PhD student in computer science and sometime in the (more or less) near future I have to publish my results. Yet, I am rather sceptic about the current state of publishing, aka peer-reviewed journals, especially when they are not open access. I have published before on Elsevier and honestly I am not sure whether I should do this again. I have political concerns as well as concerns about the quality of the peer-review process.

I wonder what "new ways" are out there for publications?
I am a big fan of StackExchange (especially StackOverflow :-) ), so I am asking if there exists a very similar forum for scientific publications?

Accordingly, a publication happens in form of forum post like this one. Instead of anonymous peer-review, every member of the forum can comment and rate the publication. Is there something like this out there? Thanks a lot!

Edit: Great that someone had the idea a year ago :-) (Towards a Stackexchange-like comment/reputation system for research papers)

Have been there any attempts to create such a system since then?

Instead of anonymous peer-review, every member of the forum can comment and rate the publication. Is there something like this out there?

Yes.  The forum is called "the academic community," the comments are called "what they say about your paper in their paper," and the ratings are called "citations."  They are not anonymous.  Actually, citations alone are misleading, since they can be negative as well as positive.  The real way to determine if your idea is good is to see if people use it to build new, interesting ideas / explanations / products / companies / whatever.  (I think they call that "impact?")

In other words: publishing is the easy part (these days).  Getting people to say good things about your research is the real challenge.

I do think you are wise to think about publishing in open-access journals—and not for some self-righteous political/philosophical reason.  The real reason for making your paper freely available is: more people will read it!  Plenty of interesting people in the world live behind the Great Paywall of Academia.


How to propose alteration of study subjects in college? I've been studying and working with Game Development for quite a while and I can't help to notice that I'm not using anything that was presented to me in college.

My college is focused in gaming programming, BUT all that is taught is basic programming like basic loops, conditions or object oriented programming. Most of the teachers don't even know how to build a game or what a game engine is.

I believe it's taught this way because there's no teacher with experience in the area and the topics are very wide, like "programming class" without specifying a programming language and what's going to be learned.

Is there a way I could propose a change of the subjects we study in class? Or even bring attention to the matter, so that someone could take action?

In the comments, you explained that you are currently a student. I would suggest you have a friendly conversation with your professors. Perhaps you know your advisor a little bit, or one of your professors from your class and you're comfortable talking to her or him.

For example, let's say you decide to talk with Professor Smith. I would go up to Professor Smith (e.g., during office hours) and say: "Hi. I had a cool internship at Gaming, Inc. I learned some interesting programing methods X, Y, and Z" (follow their interest in their methods here, you might end up deep in details or your professor may not care). Then ask something like "We haven't covered the methods in my classes. I think they would help other students in our program. Are they included anywhere in our curriculum?"

This will start a conversation with your Professor about the curriculum. Most reasonable professor will be open to your conversation, just don't put them on the defensive. For example, avoid saying something like "our program sucks..." or "you should do...". Also, keep your suggestions positive and avoid being arrogant. Perhaps your program is revising their curriculum now and you do not know about it.

As an aside, I had a similar experience as an undergrad wildlife biology student. During a summer internship, I worked for a government agency using management approaches not covered in class. I asked a friendly professor why we were not learning the topic during an informal office hour. The friendly prof said a couple of reasons (basically their curriculum had not been updated) and then another, crotchety old professor jumped in and though my idea was stupid (he was dinosaur who did not like change). The friendly professor actually changed his view point and started defending my question/view-point. In my case, I was not able to change the curriculum, but I did learn why it was what it was.


Is not including a letter of recommendation from all of my research advisors in grad school applications an automatic red flag? I graduated in 2014, and my situation is that I have been out of school for three years (as of fall 2017 it will be three years). My first recommendation is from an undergraduate research advisor who I've worked with extensively, and who I published with this year, so it's current.

My second is a research advisor from 2015 when I received a fellowship to do to research abroad. He is in a subfield that I want to do my grad research in.

My third is my undergraduate major advisor, who knew me well and who I worked as a TA for for two semesters. We've kept in contact over the years and he's been a real help in helping me receive scholarships/fellowships when he wrote me letters in the past.

My question is this: I had a research experience in the summer of 2014 at a national lab, but I have not asked my advisor there for a letter for most of my schools that only require 3 letters. The research was not in the subfield I'm looking to go into, but it would be the next most recent item on my CV, and more importantly, it would be a research reference. It's not a case of being on bad terms with this person. He is able to write me a strong letter, as I explicitly asked this of him for schools that required a fourth letter (and he easily agreed), but I genuinely think my third letter writer as indicated above is stronger. That professor was instrumental in designing many of the courses in my major department (and so has intimate knowledge of the curriculum and what my grades actually mean in those courses), and is known for writing excellent letters. Additionally, the national lab internship was only for three months, which is a very short amount of time.

I have read on here that omitting such a letter could in some cases be a red flag to admissions committees, especially if it is recent, but I'm wondering if perhaps this case is a bit different. I already have two referees who can speak strongly to my research experience, and they're directly in the subfield I'm interested in. I don't think the other research referee would say anything that these referees have not already touched on, but I do think having the undergraduate advisor, who I've worked for and who has known me for a very long time in an academic context (but non-research context), would be valuable.

What should I do in this case?

It is not a requirement that you include letters from every research advisor you've ever worked with as part of your graduate application. Since you already have letters from multiple research advisors, you can choose your third letter accordingly. If you believe the letter from your academic advisor is more helpful to you, then you should continue to use that letter. For example, your third advisor could more helpfully comment on your teaching abilities, if that is something you feel is important in your application.


Postdoc application, different team, same institute A month ago I applied for a postdoc in a renowned institute in my field. Through the process of evaluating the different candidates, an assessment was performed by other professors from the same institute but from a different team.

An assessment here means a paragraph written by someone in the field but not the potential PI that summaries the candidate studies and experience and ends with: qualified or not qualified for the job.

My assessment was very positive so I reached the interview stage but at the end I didn’t get the job. Two weeks later the professor that wrote my assessment published a postdoc position ad, and I’m very interested in the offer. The institute is famous in my field and the position fits with both my expertise and interest.

Question: Do you think that applying for this postdoc position only after few weeks will be regarded negatively by this professor? Do you think that I will look like someone who wants to work in the institute no matter what?

Update:
Thanks everyone for your valuable replies;

I indeed applied for the position, I wrote a personal statement from scratch and I had a really great time reading about the proposed project, I really learnt a lot while preparing for the application.

However, I couldn’t even pass the first stage of pre-selection (I think my transcripts are to be blamed).

But I have no regrets, as everyone here said; if I don’t apply, I won’t get the position. as Buffy said, Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Thanks everyone again!

If you're interested in the new position, just go ahead and apply! If the two teams in question are working in closely related fields, the new position is presumably a good fit for your profile anyway. In that case you're unlikely to look like someone who just wants to work at that institute. If they're in rather different fields (maybe they fall on different ends of your spectrum of interests) make sure you really explain why you're interested in the cover letter.

In any case, what's the worst that can happen if you're viewed as only looking to get into institution X? You don't get the position there? Well, you're even less likely to get it if you don't apply for it...


What kind of career path might be possible for a professor following a plagiarism scandal? Prior to transferring to another university, I attended a college in a different state with a renown reputation for integrity and academic rigor. The year before I left, I enrolled in a course that was taught by this new professor. It was the only 8:30 a.m. course that I eagerly woke up for- the professor would literally jump around the room, making the lessons lively and hilarious. He'd even devote the last 3-4 minutes of class to discussing some of the most insane industries around the world. I didn't enjoy my time at that college, but his classes were downright memorable.

Outside of class, he was much calmer, but always with a warm smile and approach. People only spoke good things about him, and his respective department decided to hire him full-time, on a tenure-track position.

The autumn after, I left that college and even switched majors. I kept in touch with a few individuals from that college, and one day, they told me to check out my old college's website. This professor was discovered to have plagiarized multiple papers. I won't get into the details, but the extent would make a slam-dunk case for blatancy. He no longer teaches.

If you Google the professor's name, the first page or two will only show a massive plagiarism scandal.

I tried reaching out to my former professor via email or Facebook, because for whatever reason, I feel bad for people going through rough times, even if they're severely at fault (contingent upon remorse, etc). There was (and still is) no contact information available, and after much time scouring the internet, I can't seem to locate any social media profile. It only then occurred to me how screwed up this person's future must be: never mind having a portion of your grad school wasted (although one could argue it was wasted when he plagiarized anyway), any background check on him will yield really unfavorable results.

My question is: what does a person like that do from this point forward? Is academia pretty much a "no-go"? Does he count on connections in the industry? Does one change his or her name? I thought I'd ask here since several users here have had experience with plagiarism in one way or the other.

TL;DR A professor that I used to like got busted for plagiarism, and his name's all over the internet. Does someone like that have a second shot at academia? How would he go about getting into the workforce? ...etc

Past a certain point in their career and education, I think it's hard for somebody to ever clean off the stain of serious, prolonged, and deliberate misbehavior.  The more that a person has built up authority and trust on a false foundation, the harder it is to ever trust them with regards to that subject again.

When a young student engages in academic misbehavior, we treat it as a teaching moment.  When an undergraduate does it, we try to put fear into them and rehabilitate them.  When a graduate student does it, we try to figure out whether it is worth salvaging.  When a professor does it, it pretty much destroys their academic career.

And to my mind, I think that's OK.  We're talking about serious and deliberate professional malpractice that undermines the basis of the whole endeavor.  That can waste millions of dollars or leave people injured or killed.  Would you ever again trust a doctor who deliberately injured their patients, or an engineer who deliberately mis-designed a bridge so that it might collapse?  I think that it is the same for an academic who engages in massive and systematic fraud.


Advisor to spend some funds to buy things that make group members feel better working at home. Is it selfish to request a tablet and stuff? Due to the recent COVID-19 event, all of the members in our group have been working at home. My advisor proposed to get us some items to make us more productive or happy when working at home. I feel like a tablet would be very helpful in reading paper and books. Additionally, I'm working home using my small laptop and the screen is really small. It also helps if I could get a large screen to connect to my laptop. I have a bit of a quandary because those things are kind of not really necessary because, after all, I can use my laptop to read paper and work. On the other hand, they are not cheap. Would it be selfish for me to ask my advisor to fund me to get a monitor and tablet, those things?

Surely these are precisely the sorts of things that your advisor envisaged buying when they offered to get "items to make you more productive or happy working at home"? A decent monitor (and keyboard, and mouse) for your laptop are fairly essential if you're going to be using it all day every day for the next N months. A tablet is perhaps a bit more of a luxury, but hardly excessive. Remember, as a fraction of the total cost of supporting a PhD student, an iPad is small change.

If you're concerned, phrase your email making it clear that you are presenting a list of suggestions rather than demands, as you're not sure how much money the advisor will want to spend.


What to write in email to potential PhD advisor? I would like to apply for following PhD studies in the Nordic countries, particularly in the field of Computer Science. The problem that I found is that it says in the admission procedure that "before applying one should get a Professor or Researcher that agrees to supervise the applicant".

I have checked up the personal webpages of the Professors and I have found their topics of interests, publications and so on. I like a lot of the topics in which they make research, but I do not really know how to address an email to them asking if they would agree to supervise me. Particularly I have the following doubts:

Should I make a small research article putting my ideas about one research interest of them? The problem here is that I believe I would not have the enough time to go through a lot of papers made on their reseach groups. What can I do if do not have the enough background? Time is running fast for submitting the application and I do not believe I would have enough time to study in deep their research.
Should I send my CV and ask to a specific Professor that I have interest in following PhD studies under their supervision, and if it would be possible if he or she to send me some open question or open research task so that they could see that I will manage to do it well on his or her research group?

I will transcribe what the ad specifically says:

  You must do your best to find a suitable supervisor at the department who agrees to supervise you. Please see the research pages
  of the department, and especially the descriptions of the research
  groups.
  You must agree on a study plan, a research plan and a financing plan together with your (found) supervisor,  and submit an application
  to the steering committee of the department's doctoral programme.

also about the supervisor it says:

  A student who wants to become a PhD student should start the
  application process by finding a supervisor at the department, who
  works in the field of interest of the student and who is willing to
  supervise the student. If the student is unsure of which supervisor to
  contact, he or she may first contact the research coordinator of the
  department who will steer the student in the right direction.
  Generally, a supervisor is a professor and/or principal investigator
  employed by the department.

For what I read it seems, at least to me, that one should really have in mind a good research proposal before applying, am I wrong? or only with an email will suffice to contact the potential supervisor?

What should I do in this situation?

Thanks

If you have a specific potential advisor at a university, start by sending a brief (and polite, of course) email. Ask whether she would be willing to take a new student and say a few words about your background (what you did in your bachelor/master, where and with whom). Thus you can show that your background is compatible with the advisor's research. If you manage to add a few words about how you liked something specific about the advisor's recent work, that will certainly be a big plus. End by thanking the supervisor for her time and say that you are ready to provide more info if necessary. The advisor can then help you get through the formalities if she sees a potential in you.


Is there a Post-doctorate Equivalent for an ABD (All-But-Dissertation) status? I am an ABD (all- But-Dissertation) student. I have done all my work, completed my credits, passed my qualifying exams, I passed my oral exams, but I am having trouble finishing my thesis (advisor problems) , and
I was wondering if there may be some variant of the standard post-doctorate for
people in an ABD status.

EDIT: Basically,  are there post-doc programs that will accept someone who did all the work but did not finish their thesis? Or are there programs similar to a post-doc for people who have

SECOND EDIT: I am in a Mathematics Program. Does anyone know of schools that will
allow me to transfer with relatively few requirements, i.e., not needing to take years worth of classes?

Thanks.

The fundamental misconception is that there can be "someone who did all the work but did not finish their thesis".  The thesis is the focus of a Ph.D. program, while coursework and other requirements are nothing but preparation for the thesis and are of negligible importance in comparison.  Postdoctoral positions are meant to give people a chance to deepen their research experience beyond what they achieved while writing a thesis.  If they haven't written a thesis, then they haven't completed graduate school and do not yet need to move beyond it.

Occasionally people do begin a postdoctoral position without yet having received a Ph.D.  This happens when they have completed their doctoral research but have not yet graduated, for example because their institution awards degrees at only a couple of times each year.  I've never heard of someone starting a postdoc if their thesis wasn't at least nearing completion, and I think it's so unlikely that it's not even worth looking into (although I can't conclusively rule it out).

Although postdocs per se are not the right program for this, one could reasonably ask whether there is anything else.  There are plenty of postdocs intended to help recent Ph.D. graduates gain additional experience, but are there any programs aimed at helping students who are struggling to finish their degrees (perhaps for reasons beyond their control) become successful and productive researchers?

Unfortunately, I don't know of any.  The general feeling is that this is the responsibility of the department you are studying in.  They know better than anyone else what you have accomplished so far and what your future potential is.  If they have faith in you, then they can help you try to find additional funding, transition to another advisor, or whatever might be appropriate.  If they don't have faith in you, then it will be difficult to convince outsiders to take up your case.  It could happen in theory (if, say, a faculty member somewhere else is impressed with you and helps you transfer), but I don't think it's likely.  Looking outside your current department/university will be seen as a sign that they have given up on you, and unfortunately that will tend to put other institutions off.


How to communicate with the advisor if someone wants to downgrade his PhD to Master in university A and then apply for PhD in university B? I am a M.Sc. graduated from a developing country and I recently got admitted for PhD in one of the reputed universities in Canada (rank 20-30th world-wide), say university A. In fact, because of the compulsory military service I could not exit the country with an M.Sc. admission letter, so I ended up applying for the PhD programs.
In general, I am completely happy to do my PhD in A and the university is considered a good place to research, however I thought that by doing research with great scientists there and completing a M.Sc. degree I probably would have a better chance of getting a PhD admission from a better university (e.g. a top-10 place), say university B.
As I have an interest to work as faculty in future, studying in B may slightly  increase my chance for my future carrier.
So, I would like to know is it anything bad or immoral to express my idea to my potential advisor when I arrived in Canada? Please note that I would be perfectly happy to work as a PhD student under his supervision in case that he is unwilling of the downgrade but I fear that the proposal in itself burns the bridges or implies that I have not interested in doing research with him. All in all, I would like to know that what is the best (safest) way to express my desire to my advisor?

P.S: regarding the university policy, I checked and the university accept it if the advisor agrees.

Your wording here is perfectly fine for explaining your situation in university A. Your advisor is the one who works there and knows about internal dynamics of the university.

And also, name of the institution is important at a certain level. What values you as a scientist is the quality of your publications and thesis. Finishing a PhD in university B might be a challenge, but you can set your goal to make better publications than people who have PhD degree from B.

For the last point, there is always postdoc, which will probably be the most productive period of your life. You could finish your postdoc at university B and achieve your goals anyways.


Establishing the list of authors for a comprehensive/review (conference) paper I am about to submit a paper for an international conference in condensed-matter physics. I want to present work which has been done over a number of years with different people. In particular, I want to include i) work that I did during my PhD with set of collaborators A; ii) work done also with set A but more recently; and iii) related work done also more recently but with a set of collaborators B.

In a way, this could be regarded a bit as review of methodology/older results plus new results, all in the same field/theme. All the results I will be presenting are already published in different journals, except for the work done in collaboration with set B which is under review at the moment (note that our conference culture differs from CS, where the conference is typically also the publication venue for the work).

My question is regarding how to manage the list of authors for my abstract. In the past I always presented very specific bits of work for which the author list was clear. In this case I do not know how to handle it given the more comprehensive nature of the presentation. I am considering the following options:

Use only my name as author and reference appropriately the relevant publications. Then acknowledge my collaborators with a slide at the end of my presentation.
Use only the names of the most important contributors to the work in the list of authors, then acknowledge everyone at the end of the presentation.
Use everybody's name, then again use a slide at the end with pictures etc. where the roles of the different collaborators are highlighted in more detail.

I am biased against 3. because of practical considerations: if I submit an abstract with lots of names then I have to get everyone to agree on the abstract's and presentation's contents. I am also afraid that 1. might come across as if I was trying to neglect the contributions made by others and could be unfair to them, especially those that contributed most.

I am looking for some advice on how to handle this kind of situation in such a way that the contribution made by everyone involved is appropriately acknowledged.

The way that I think about this sort of situation is that co-authorship of an abstract and talk is very low-stakes, and there's little reason to be stingy with it.  The most important thing here is to preserve a good relationship with collaborators that you value, and so I would recommend asking your collaborators.

If it's a collegial group with good working relation, then you'll probably get a quick consensus on one of the three options.  My own experience with many co-author situations like this is that many collaborators are happy enough to go along for the ride; a few will make constructive (or at least neutral) suggestions, and most just want to make sure their name isn't getting associated with anything embarassing---most people will only try to micromanage if you invite them to.

One important note, however: if the consensus ends up going with option #2, where some people get designated as "important", then let your collaborators decide if they should be on that list.  Again, the authorship of an abstract and presentation like this is pretty low-stakes (unlike for journal papers, where it's good that it sounds like you've already got clear boundaries drawn).  It's extremely dangerous for good relations if you put yourself in the position of telling Juan that he's less important to you than Marie.

Now, if you've got a problem collaborator who is not likely to be collegial or who is going to try to operate you like a puppet on stage, that's a different problem, and one whose resolution is likely to require very specific help and advice from some of your senior collaborators...


How do I find out more about former PhD students of potential advisor? How do I find out more about former PhD students of my potential advisor? Shall I ask him/her himself/herself, or how would you go about this? I do not want to make somebody angry, at the same time I do not only want to speak to pre-selected students who are going to tell me that everything is awesome when it isn't. How do I create a realistic picture of my (potential) future professor?

Ask directly

It is a typical part of the application process.  Prospective students want to know what career paths previous students have ended up taking.  I would find it concerning if the potential advisor was threatened by this.

As for this concern:

  I do not only want to speak to pre-selected students who are going to tell me that everything is awesome when it isn't.

you can ask any students who you are put in touch with to tell stories about other PhD students they knew at the time they were there. Such non-vetted students might give you a different picture.  That said, PhD students typically end up knowing all of their advisor's strengths and weaknesses, so if you are put in touch with several, you should be able to assemble a good picture of what you are getting in to.

Note that advisors want a good fit with their potential students as well, so all of this should be in their interest too.  No need to hide it.


Advisor is moving. Issues with quitting PhD and settling for a MSc I'm an international student. I have been in a PhD program in the US for 1 year and this is my second. My advisor informed me earlier this year that he is moving to another lower-ranked school. How to cope when PhD advisor quits midway deals with this issue. This is not what this question is about.

I have not been doing a lot of research and have been overwhelmed with coursework. By the time I finish my coursework, I'll be in my third year already. I also find that my advisor's work (after having spent some time with his group) does not interest me and is very different from what I thought I would be doing. I do research in a very specialized area. My advisor does work in a different area but is interested in how what I'm doing can be applied to what he's doing. However, we disagree on methodology.

I'm also not interested in research/teaching as a career and originally decided to do a PhD to gain more knowledge/training in this very specialized area that is not available in industry. My original plan was to finish my PhD and get a job. However, my advisor's move is making me reconsider this plan. Even though my advisor is moving, he will still advise me remotely until I satisfy my coursework requirements (and then I could move as a visiting student at this point).

By the end of the second year, I can quit my PhD and get a MSc but I see the following issues:

How should I handle this on my resume? Do I say that I'm doing a PhD or that I'm doing a MSc?

If I say I'm doing a PhD, how do I explain not getting it?
If I say I'm doing a MSc, does that violate an F1 student visa?

How should I handle my relationship with my advisor? At what point should I announce my plan to quit?
Will quitting reduce my chances of getting a job? If I say I'm doing a MSc, then chances are my employer will not seek a recommendation from my advisor but if I say I'm doing a PhD and decided to quit, then chances are my employer will do that and will seek an explanation.
Is it a good idea to get an internship this summer before quitting for a full-time position?

Oct 9 If you have an answer to only one or a few of these issues and not the others, please consider posting it.

Honesty is the best policy. It means you should not lie. It does not mean you must say everything about yourself on your resume. For example, you do not need to say where you attended high school on the resume. If you do not have PhD, do not say you have it. If you have MSc, say you have it. You do not need to say you were doing PhD unless they ask you that question.

If and when they ask you whether you were doing PhD, you should tell the truth with brief explanation why you did not get it. This will hurt your chance getting an academic job. Most industry people would not care that much. They are more concerned with your ability to make money. However, you probably will not get an industry job if PhD is part of job requirement.(Some companies do want PhD only)

You need to ask the international student office at your school or immigration office to see the requirement for F-1 visa. They are the authority to answer that question. We are not.

Internship is always helpful. You gain experience which you can put on the resume.


Does anybody know why some journals have "Topical Collections"? What does it mean "Topical collection" within a journal? Are the papers published under "Topical Collections" better promoted?

These are just ways to allow folks to find articles of interest within larger (less focused) journals.

Good examples are topical collections within a larger Mathematical Biology journal like the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology that correspond to subgroups within the society: https://www.smb.org/subgroups/

I think this will become more and more popular as journals get broader and broader.  Think about a journal like Nature Communications that takes science from any field... it's hard to 'browse' this journal in the way that you might browse a journal IN YOUR SUBFIELD, because the vast majority of the stuff is completely unrelated.  In a topical collection however, you might find things of interest.


Can participation in online academic competitions destroy patent rights? I have developed an algorithm/software that does a specific task. I want to let the algorithm compete in an academic competition, where the code is run on a password protected server on a secret test set by another researcher. I will describe my research vaguely in the few lines that each researcher must submit about their work to be able to compete.

Will any of this destroy my chances of acquiring a patent for the algorithm afterwards?

It very well could. Talk to a patent attorney. If you can get the contest runner to sign a non-disclosure agreement, then you might be able to protect your patent rights.

That being said, algorithms are not patentable in most jurisdictions, and software is quickly losing its patentability in the US.


Is it wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on exams? I've noticed that many professors seem to impose extremely tight time limits on their exams, even though the subject in question would never have such extreme time constraints in real life. For example, I cannot imagine a situation where I have to write 50 lines of code on a piece of paper in less than 15 minutes.

Is it reasonable for me to complain about such constraints or is it normal to expect fast exam performance from students?

Note that I'm not talking about the actual exam difficulty, just the time constraint built around it.

The objective of an assessment can vary from one lecture to another. Quite often, the point is simply to validate whether the expected learning outcomes of the lecture have been met. For instance, if an expected outcome is to know almost by heart how to write an array sorting program, then it's quite reasonable to ask to write a small amount of lines of code in a fixed amount of time.

If, on the other hand, the expected outcome is at a higher level of understanding (in the sense of Bloom's taxonomy), for instance by asking to design and assess a new data structure to handle a new problem, then it could be more reasonable to expect more time.

The problem you are referring to by "would never have such extreme time constraints in real life" is addressed with the notion of authentic learning (Rule, 2006), which identifies the four following themes for a learning to be authentic:

  1) the activity involves real-world problems that mimic the work of professionals in the discipline with presentation of findings to audiences beyond the classroom;

  2) open-ended inquiry, thinking skills, and metacognition are addressed;

  3) students engage in discourse and social learning in a community of learners; and

  4) students are empowered through choice to direct their own learning in relevant project work.

Authentic learning comes with its upsides and downsides (the reference linked acts as a survey paper, if you are interested), so it's not necessarily the best approach. In particular, (Lombardi, 2007) note that the reliance on traditional instruction is not simply a choice made by individual faculty—students often prefer it. For instance, not everybody wants to be tested on writing code in a highly complex environment, using bugged code written by other people, implementing specifications that are sub-optimal, but the client want them in this way, which could be a typical real world situation.

I don't think you should complain about time constraints, but if you believe that authentic learning would be more beneficial to you and your fellow students, you should probably discuss with the professor about the objective of the assessment.

Lombardi, M. M. (2007). Authentic learning for the 21st century: An overview. Educause learning initiative, 1(2007), 1-12.

Rule, Audrey C. (2006). The Components of Authentic Learning. Journal of Authentic Learning, Volume 3, Number 1, Pages 1-10, August 2006


A potential collaborator and PhD student took a commanding tone with me (faculty) – how should I react? Background about me

I am an early-to-mid-career teaching-track faculty (four years of cross-curricular teaching experience in engineering) in the USA.  I teach courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level.  I also try to keep up with research and publish a conference or journal paper or so every year.  It is hard work and my maturity is growing.

(About ten days ago, my research was identified by a rather senior faculty member (twenty years of research and consulting experience with multiples millions of dollar in grant money and more incoming) as being quite promising.  I had a rather pleasant conversation with him and he was genuinely interested in my work and wanted to collaborate. Happiness abound!)

Main question

A few days ago, his PhD student stopped by my office to discuss my research.  There are some common ideas I and the student are both working on.  I found that although he is a smart student (yet to pass his PhD qualifiers), his attitude was a little off-putting with a superiority complex I have not sensed in the hundreds of students I interact with every semester.  He wants to collaborate with me but kept saying things like “you should do ...” and “you could do ... for my research”. It is okay for a student to suggest a line of action, but I still feel that an instructor–student distance should be maintained.  I certainly did not speak to my adviser in such a fashion and neither did my colleagues (to their advisers, during their PhDs).

I appreciate the exchange of ideas but I am somehow repelled by the idea of a student who I have barely only met has a superiority complex.  This probably stems from him working with an adviser who is pre-eminent in his field.

I know that working with this student would likely lead to being co-PI on research grants but somehow, as mentioned earlier, I am repelled by this idea.

Is this common in academia, to come across PhD students with such a high superiority complex?  Am I just being overly conceited and self-absorbed by feeling repelled?  I am not sure if the student met with me on the behest of his adviser, but my gut feeling is to communicate research ideas directly with his adviser.  At the same time, I feel that ignoring the student could impact my relationship with his adviser (unfounded fear perhaps, but I don't know).

I am reaching out to the larger advisers on this forum to get some perspective and thoughts on such situations.  This is an immense opportunity for me to break into prominent research ranks after somewhat wallowing in teaching.

While your, I hope preliminary, assessment of the student as having a superiority complex may be correct, I think you might want to consider another option.

It may be that the student was told to try to impress you that he isn't the dumbest rock in the pile and so laid it on thicker than normal. It might be hard for a normal student to find an appropriate balance if he is new to this.

Since you indicate that there would be advantages from an association with his advisor, you might want to withhold judgement until you know and observe more. One think you might want to pursue is a talk with the advisor and work in the question "Is he always like that?". You might get some insight on how the student normally behaves that might make you more or less willing to take on the task. Of course, you might also learn that the student has, indeed, thought hard and deeply about the issues before approaching you. It isn't always easy to work with a truly brilliant student, but there is something to be learned from it.

If you have won a Fields Medal (mathematics) but come up against a student who makes you feel small it can be quite a shock. (Movie Reference: Good Will Hunting)

True enough that some people play dominance games, of course.


Career Options after PhD in Math (International) I'm an international student, originally from a country in South Asia. I have been admitted to a PhD program in Mathematics. The school is ranked in the top 70-80 range.

While I'm interested in getting an academic job in the future, I'm aware that it would be very difficult for me to get an academic job after having graduated with a PhD from the aforementioned school. Therefore, I'm seriously considering keeping my options open to enter the industry as well. I'm especially considering this option since I, ideally, don't wish to move back to my home country directly upon graduation.

My questions are as follows:

As of yet, I'm looking to complete my PhD in analysis/probability/PDE's. Would this allow me to keep a options in the industry open? If so, what options are generally available if one has a PhD in these field(s)? Is the job market robust? Or should one consider completing a PhD in a different field?
Is it especially hard for international students to find a job in the industry (or academia) after graduation? I'm open to looking for a job in multiple countries. I'm also considering the possibility of moving/transferring to a statistics program to keep more job options open.

In a nutshell, what can students like myself do now to achieve the best possible outcome which can be achieved by attending a middle tier graduate program in mathematics.

Edit: With regards to post-doc positions, I am assuming that it will be very hard for me to find a good position after having graduated from a top 70-80 school. Given this additional information, could someone please guide international students like myself who may want to keep as many options open in the industry?

You seem to be completely ignoring the possibility of getting a postdoc in a better school.

In addition to being a great opportunity to expand your social network, it would give you the chance to do more (hopefully good) work before applying for faculty positions.


How to tell about mistakes made in a previous publication to adviser? I am currently a PhD student. I have a previous publications on my field in a top tier conference. Now my adviser wants to extend the work. The problem is when I started working on that again, I found some results were not correct in the published paper. I did mistakes unintentionally interpreting the results previously, but somehow the reviewer did not notice that. Now I am too worried telling about this to my adviser. Can you please suggest me how to approach this to my adviser? What can be the consequence of this to the published paper?

One way or the other, you will have to build a relationship with your adviser in which you can discuss such questions. In this regard, your relationship with your adviser is no different than with your wife or girlfriend: waiting too long doesn't make the problem go away.

This might just be the right time to start talking about difficult issues.