How to compose a great recommendation letter? I was asked to compose a recommendation/reference letter for a Computer Engineer that works as a Researcher in the Research Center I am supervisor. I don't know if Academia is the right site to post , but since the nature of the job is Research and people involved "Research Engineers", I believe is the right place.

So, I need to write a great recommendation/reference letter, but the problem is I have never written a letter of this kind before. I've seen many of them, and even more on the web but the problem is that they all look "copy-pasted" and not written in a way that would make me believe that the author of this letter really spent time on it, believing in the skills of his employee and really wanted to recommend them.

I've already written the letter, the best I could and I will like to ask about some parts of it, how they sound and if they could be any better.

As a first paragraph, I wrote who I am, the position I have in the Research Center and what is the purpose of this letter:

  My name is... I am a ...
  The purpose of this letter, is to serve as a reference to my cooperation with Mr ...

In the second paragraph I wrote about the position of the person (Research Engineer) and for how long he worked with us:

  Mr. X  joined our team in the X Research Center as a full-time Research Engineer under an ongoing X month contract...

At this point I don't know how I could point out better the fact the the person was under a normal full-paid contract and not just given a "European Grant" to work with us. I wrote they were full-time, but still there are many people that join programs after studies that work for a few months as Engineers in Research Centers. In this case, I want to stress that they were working as a normal Research Engineer, especially chosen for skills and paid a normal salary for the position as Engineer. Maybe add something like "full paid contract"
In the 3rd paragraph I wrote under what framework the person worked (European project) and a few words where and how they were involved. I didn't want to go into great details here as I believe this stuff could be easily read from their great CV. Is it wise to describe exactly what he did (Names of real-life applications that was part of developing etc). I pointed out that they deeply involved in what they did, how well they integrated with the rest of the people and how motivated they were and that they actively contributed in the project. Anything else I could add here?
As a last line I would like to show that I can't recommend them enough, but without getting "too excited". I want it to be serious, I want it to leave no doubts. Also since the person is young and is interested in continuing with post graduate studies, or working as a Researcher or even getting a computer engineer position in a private company. Is it okay if I mention all of them? Usually we recommend someone for one type of position. But this position, working as computer engineer doing research (aka Research Engineer), leaves no doubt that he would be great as a PhD student, as a researcher or as a software engineer. So I wrote:

  For all the aforementioned reasons I would like to highly recommend X, as a strong candidate for future postgraduate studies, research and employment offers.

What do you think about it? How could I make it better and is there something I should change? If you don't like some part and you give me an alternative please point out why you don't like the part, as some times its a bit of personal taste and not that something is wrong. Would be great, if you could post some examples of letters you composed or parts of them, or an example from the web that you consider great.

There was a good link that I'd found on this topic, while applying to graduate school:

Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers

The above link is a pithy list of points to be kept in mind by new letter writers. As a summary, I'd like to highlight some sections of it that I've found repeated in other such articles as well:

  Be Concrete

  If you take away just one piece of concrete advice, let it be this.

  The single biggest problem with most letters is that they are filled
  with abstract generalities and infinitives. If we don't know you or
  your institution, we can't judge what any of these statements mean
  relative to our standards. Always consider the illustrative anecdote:

Due to deadline pressure, I asked him to grow a pumpkin in just one month. As you know it takes over 100 days to grow a pumpkin, but over the weekend he devised a new method to accelerate their growth. On Monday morning I arrived to find not just a pumpkin but a steaming, flavorful pie.

  Anecdote about acts of raw coding are only so helpful in understanding
  research potential, but they're better than nothing (see the section
  on Corporate Letters, below). An extra book or paper they read, and
  demonstrated understanding of (again, be concrete about why you
  believe this), goes a long way.

  Corporate Letters

  An important special case is the corporate letter: when you, the
  letter-writer, work in industry and have no academic affiliation. Many
  corporate letters (like many academic letters, but more so) tend to be
  vapid, clearly written in a different culture and for a different
  audience. Unless they actually did academic research with you, here
  are some suggestions for improving them.

  A common mistake is to focus on teamwork. This is important even in
  academia, but often this is the primary focus of the letter, which
  makes it less valuable. Of course we care about it, but it's secondary
  to their technical skills.

  Tell us if they learned something particularly quickly, mastered a
  complex technology, or solved a problem others were stuck on. Give
  us a paragraph of details.
  If you have a concrete reason to evaluate research potential, do so concretely. Otherwise, don't bother.
  Give us a brief bio-sketch, including educational qualifications.
  4.Put the applicant in context, and tell us the context. It's fine to relate it to your own student days, or to your experience hiring students.
  E.g.

  Compared to the students I studied with at Cucumber and Melon University, and the ones I now recruit from there, I would put him in
  the top 10%.


Accused of cheating, without anyone witnessing it? During a 3 hour midterm, my phone was confiscated because I had it on my person, when we weren't suppose to have the phone with us. My phone was on the chair in between my legs, but I was not using it.

Before the exam started I was reading a forum on my phone (forum for that course) and then I put my phone in my bag. The first hour and a half of the exam (approximately) the prof failed to put up the time. I was extremely worried about my time and I was not wearing a watch. I quickly took out my phone, checked the time and then left the phone on my lap. I checked the time twice and then I realized that the time was on display.

When I was done with my answers, I then realized how bad it is that I have my phone on me. I was about to put my phone back in my bag when I noticed that a TA was watching me. She probably suspected there was something going on because I was jittery and I was moving a lot. Before the exam was done, the TA asked to give up my phone and I did and I told her I just checked the time. Which was the truth. She asked me to open my phone and show it to her and I did. She only looked at the homepage and didn't go through my phone. She put the phone on my desk and I continued checking my exam.

A week later I got a letter that I had to attend a meeting with the department because I was cheating during the exam.
What are my options here? How are they possibly going to accuse me of cheating when it never happened? I've been thinking of witnesses, asking the girl who sat beside me or the girl who was sitting behind me. Do professors or the head of the departments actually believe what anyone would tell them the truth? What if the girl feels the need to lie that I was cheating?
The other thing that worries me is that I usually answer questions very nicely and sometimes word for word. That's just how I memorize things sometimes. Can that work against me?! can they tell me that the answers are too close to what was on the slides and that could count as cheating?!
I am in good academic standing in my program. The lowest grade I've ha din the last year was a B. I don't want this stupid mistake to mess up my future.
I appreciate your insight.

You admit that you knew that phones were not allowed in the testing room (being realistic, that they were not allowed on your person/in-plain-sight) during the exam. Yet the fact of the matter is that you had your phone out in-plain-sight, in the testing room, during the exam.

The short answer here is that there's isn't much you can do -- it's your word against the TA's, and unfortunately the evidence is not in your favor. I believe that you're being honest -- but I'm a random individual on the internet. And even if your professor/instructor/department believes that you're being honest, they can still fault you for having your phone out, period.

So the only advice I have: be honest, acknowledge that you made a poor decision but deny that you were actively cheating, buy a cheap $10 watch, and accept that there isn't much you can do here. Best-case scenario is that you get a stern warning; I can't tell you if that's likely or not. There's a variety of worst-case scenarios -- I'm sure you know that though.

As for the individual questions at the end of your post:

What are my options here? Be honest with your department. Study up on your school's honor code violation policy and be aware of the possible proceedings, as well as your rights as a student.
How are they possibly going to accuse me of cheating when it never happened? You had your phone out during an exam when you knew you shouldn't. That alone might be their motivation. As to "how" -- again, read the honor code violation policy to see what official actions they would have to take.
I've been thinking of witnesses... This may be helpful in an official proceeding, but only if these women can explicitly testify that you weren't cheating. Which, unfortunately, is unlikely if they were focused on their exams. In any event, I wouldn't bring this up in the meeting with your department.
The other thing that worries me is that I usually answer questions very nicely and sometimes word for word. Could go either way. You're not that different from a lot of students most likely -- but they could also cite this as evidence that you were reading the slides on your phone. Unfortunately, not much you can do about that now.

Mistakes happen. If this is your first run-in with the school's honor code, odds of it destroying your future are slim -- I'm not sure I've heard of someone being suspended or worse on a first offense. But make sure you learn from this experience -- that's about all you can do now.


What percentage of the code should be yours in a final year computer science project? I have a final year project in Artificial intelligence and I need to make a facial recognition project. I'm confused how to start this project and how plagiarism works in terms of coding? No one would make a project from scratch but the thing is my coding ability in python is very limited and the code that I have seen for facial recognition using the K nearest algorithm is like 70 lines. If I change that code with my variable names and create functions and add that code into those functions would that be a problem ? what do I do ?  I would obviously cite where I got this code from and say that my code is inspired from this. But if i just change the variables and make a few functions and add their code clearly I have done very little work in terms of coding aspect.

If I change that code with my variable names and create functions and add that code into those functions would that be a problem ?

That seems like blatant plagiarism: Taking code and changing variable names surely only serves plagiarism. Creating new functions from existing code surely only serves plagiarism too.

what do I do ?

Use as much external code as you like. That code should appear as-is, with any ownership, copyright, and licensing information intacted, where ownership information is missing, perhaps add it, at the very least, document the fact that code isn't yours.
Write your own code that uses external code. That's your contribution.
Occasionally, you may use an external code snippet within your code. Mark such code with comments, e.g., /** BEGIN: Code from xyz **/ and /** END **/.
Ultimately, your goal should be to achieve your objective with minimal code.


Is doing Ph.D from a US university regarded as an absolute advantage in future career for international students? According to the UTD Top 100 Business School Research Ranking, there are some Asian (Hong Kongese) universities that rank higher than many US and Canadian universities. What are important factors to consider for international students in case of Ph.D admission especially with respect to funding, region and ranking of the university?
And with respect to future career, networking with academics, publication, shouldn't international students aiming for a Ph.D prefer the US first?

One of the most important factors is in which country you plan to work after getting your diploma. E.g., if you plan to work in France, some French diplomas are just as valuable as "top" US schools.


How to advertise the grad course that you teach? I accepted an offer to teach a graduate course at the university, as an adjunct professor. This program has a minimum threshold for number of students signed up. In other words if not enough students signed up by the deadline, they won't offer it.

I wonder how do you advertise the courses that you teach? I think the subject and content will be very interesting to many students, so the question is how to disseminate the information about it to potential students outside the graduate program that it is part of?

It's a national university in USA, ranked in top 100, not top 20 or Ivy league type. I believe that this course will be available for students of a regional consortium of universities to which this uni belongs. The course is elective, and a part of a small Masters level program, but will be listed in the catalog and should be available to students outside the program. The course is a STEM subject in STEM certified program, so it should be compatible with similar programs

First, make up an attractive one-page flyer that details what your course is about and when it's offered, and that it's STEM certified (sounds important, but I've never heard of it).

Then, contact departments at your university and at others in the consortium that may be interested in your course and ask if they would send out your flyer advertising your course to their graduate departmental mailing list.

You might also note there needs to be a minimum enrollment (encourage people on the fence to sign up).

Where I'm at, this would usually be an advisor's job, or maybe a program coordinator, but if you know a sympathetic professor in the department you're contacting, they could also reach out to whoever manages the mailing list.


What can a professor do about an exam that was too long for the allotted time, after the students have completed it? I just finished a midterm exam. It was very easy but I was only able to finish about 3/4 of it. And I rushed through some parts in the final moments.

Talking with other students, there's a consensus that there wasn't enough time. Some of us mentioned this to the professor as we were leaving, and he acknowledged it.

What can the professor do to remedy this situation?

This is an excellent example of when a professor may choose to grade on a curve.  Grading on a curve normalizes the exam against observed performance rather than an absolute standard, and is a good way to re-normalizing when an exam proves unexpectedly challenging.

Your professor, however, might not choose to do so, or might choose to set the curve in a way that doesn't help you as much as you might like.  The key is what's happening in the class relative to the actual educational goals of the professor.

If the exam was harder or longer than intended, and the professor believes that the lower grades reflect that, rather than the knowledge of the students, then they are likely to grade on a curve.
If, on the other hand, the students are showing evidence that they do not understand things as deeply as they are required to, then the professor may not curve or may adjust with a curve less than you hope.

It's really impossible to know which case without knowing the details of the exam and peoples' performance.  A "long but easy" test sometimes is testing for deep facility that allows people to be extremely fast.  For example, think of the arithmetic exercises sometimes done in elementary school, which can only be solved quickly enough if the student has effectively memorized and internalized arithmetic, rather than working out answers from first principles (e.g., counting on fingers).  The same principle can sometimes apply in undergraduate and graduate education as well.

Bottom line: maybe the professor will choose a generous curve, but there are reasons that may argue against it as well, depending on the circumstances.


Same problem solved in a totally different way If I solved a already solved recent problem with a totally different method, can I communicate my solution in a journal? How likely is the acceptance of my paper?

Yes, you can (and you should!).

And you should compare the performance of your method with the existing one.

Even if your method performs worse, this is still a valid result.


What is the significance of the Master thesis (topic and quality) when you apply for a job in the industry/academia? Today this question came to my mind.

Currently I am a Master student enrolled in University. All my previous studies I have passed thinking that I am a fan of Telecommunication/Computer Networks and related topics.

However, recently due to the overload on these topics I feel like I have lost my interest in them. Honestly, I have not lost my interest, but I have come to a point where I feel disgusted. These topics are too technically oriented. There is not much to do with the human factor (in terms of interaction). I am aware that all the studies related to computer science, electrical engineering etc. are closer to the machines rather than the humans.
In daily bases the communication with machines is more often than with humans.

I was contemplating the possibility of switching from such an area, and work my thesis on Human Machine Interaction, where the human factor is considered a little bit more.

What is your opinion on this issue. Does the topic that you work on as a master thesis affect your future job if you apply to a position that is not that much related?

What about the academia?

Does the topic that you work on as a master thesis affect your future job if you apply to a position that is not that much related?

By applying to a position you are not that familiar with, you will compete against people who know more about the job than you do, starting with a disadvantage. However, as AJed said, companies are sometimes looking for potential rather than technical skills and showing other skills during a job interview can prove really useful.

  What about the academia?

To answer this question, I will assume that you mean "looking for a PhD position". I think it will be even more difficult to find a PhD position if you change field (please correct me if I am wrong). Indeed the ultimate goal of a PhD program is to make the student an expert in his domain and the commitee might prefer choosing someone with little experience than no experience at all in the topic.

Finally, there are plenty of applied research fields related to Human-Computer Interactions so before you switch topic I advise you to check some of them in-depth.


How does the government shutdown in the United States affect research projects at universities and national labs? Has federally funded research at universities and work done at the national labs in the United States been halted due to the government shutdown?

If so, what typically happens then?

Do researchers just stay at home and not show up to work? Or do they show up, and do something similar to what you would see at a labor strike, e.g. megaphones, demonstrations, make demands?

Has federally funded research at universities and work done at the national labs in the United States been halted due to the government shutdown?

The current shutdown affects federal employees - and even then, not all government departments or agencies are affected. In particular, the Department of Energy, which funds the DOE National Labs, already had an approved spending bill, so DOE is unaffected for now. The NIH and Department of Defense, which fund their own institutes and labs, are in the same situation. However, many other institutions, including NIST, NASA labs, and the Smithsonian have had to cease a lot of their work. Some activities are considered mission critical, and can continue, but that's getting into the specifics. See e.g. this Washington Post article.

University researchers are not directly affected, since they are not federal employees*. Even public universities in the US tend to be on the state level. However, there can be a large indirect effect since e.g. NSF, a large funding agency, has shut down. If this shutdown is anything like the 2013 one, this will not only delay grant applications, but also grant decisions, causing a lot of uncertainty, hiring delays, and lost research productivity.

*The military academies might be an exception, but since the Department of Defense had its spending bill approved they probably wouldn't be affected anyway.

  Do researchers just stay at home and not show up to work? Or do they show up, and do something similar to what you would see at a labor strike, e.g. megaphones, demonstrations, make demands?

Generally the former - at least at the largest of the affected places security would (rather sensibly) be considered a mission critical operation, and security would be instructed to stop people from going to work. There tends to be some protests, e.g. at the White House during the shutdowns, but I doubt these are dominated by researchers. There are many, many others affected - some 800 000 government employees in total, many who'd be hit harder than your average federally employed researcher.


Just going to start my PhD, found new professor with more exciting project, what to do? I am accepted to a PhD program in engineering in the US with 1st year TA-ship as funding.

I have contacted several professor, and eventually, there is this one assistant professor (Dr. A) who want to accept me in his lab. I provided my research plan to him before he finally wants me in his team. His research is cool and I think I will be okay with that.

(Un)fortunately, the department just recruit a new assistant professor (Dr. B), which research topic is in my top priority. I love his research to the moon and back!

What do you think I should do if I want to work with Dr. B?

Until now, I have several choices that I probably take:

Stay with Dr. A :/ (I hope, there is another better solution)
Tell Dr. A that I want to move to another lab (I don't know what/how
to write to him, though)
Ask Dr. B as my co-advisor (for now, I believe that I can intertwine
both professors research, although I am not sure how to convince Dr.
A with this idea)

Any suggestion/comment will be helpful :)

Thanks!

Have you talked with Dr. B at all yet? You need to know if Dr. B would even be willing to take you on at all, and if so whether in a partial or full advisor situation, before raising the subject with Dr. A. If he wants to take on some or all of the duty of advising you, you can also ask Dr. B to advise you on the path to take with Dr. A.

There is not really a good way to say "Your subject is only second choice for me" and it could cool your relationship with Dr. A for a long time to come, so you should be sure that it is worth it before taking this step. Once you are ready to do it, and depending on the available choices, you could lay out the options to Dr. A and seek his input (would he agree to a shared project or not? and similar questions). His answers will then inform your final choice.


Using well-established abbreviations for new concepts in the same field Should a researcher try her best to avoid using existing abbreviations (such as IEEE, WHO, DNA, ANOVA, BMI, CERN, NASA, UNESCO, OPCW, NHS, CDC ...) that are (well-)known in her fields, when creating abbreviations for new concepts (methods, substances, studies ...) in the same field?

Or is it OK if the abbreviation for the new concept is just defined where it is used (e.g., in a publication)?

Yes, you should avoid using well-established acronyms to mean something else. I would especially avoid those like the ones you present as examples that are likely more recognizable as the acronym than what the acronym stands for: they are effectively words by themselves with a specific meaning.


Can a new paper be published with only slight modifications to a published paper? I have seen that some researchers in my field, that is Computer Science, do this:

They publish a paper, for example titled "The use of the Fourier transform for problem X". The paper gets accepted.
Then after a while they have another paper titled "The use of the Fourier transform for solving the problem X under these constraints". I read the paper and I see this is the same as before with only the title changed a little bit and published in another conference.
Again, the same paper in another language "l'uso della trasformata di Fourier...", which has the same content, but submitted to a local conference

Is this alright? For me it just seems that it should only be put like one publication under their CVs and not "resell" the idea over and over. I have this question because they had asked me to translate one of my papers to a local conference, but I do not consider that to be like a new publication. Should I translate and claim a new publication?

In computer science, papers are published in archival conferences, which makes things a little confusing. (In many other fields, papers are published in journals, and conferences are just for giving talks -- you can only publish a paper once, but you can give a talk about it many times).

a) It is unethical, in violation of the rules of the venue, and an incredibly stupid idea to publish the same paper more than once in an archival conference. This is self plagiarism, and is a serious academic offense.

b) On the other hand, in computer science there are also non-archival workshops to which people are invited to give talks. (These are more like the "conferences" in other fields). It is fine to give a talk at such a venue about a paper that has been previously published elsewhere.

Your question seems to be whether you personally should commit unethical and stupid act a). I would advise against it. (It is unethical for obvious reasons. It is stupid because anyone who seriously considers your publication record will be sure to spot such a move, and you will not be able to get a reasonable academic job).


How to follow an article citations when you are not the author? Thanks to Google Scholar, you can follow citations of an article you are the author.
Is there any way to that for an article you are not the author?

Search for the paper on google scholar in the "Search" field.
In the search results, it will say "Cited by" below each hit, and if you click you can see the citations.
Moreover, once you see the list of citations, there is an option "Create alert" on the left which allows to create an alert alerting you when the paper is cited.


in which language should I write my first draft a paper? This might sound like a silly question, but I am not a native speaker of English, so I find it sometimes difficult to write my first draft in that language. What I usually do is write my first draft in Italian, my mother tongue, and then translate it into English. Once I went to a short course on writing in English, where the lecturer advised us that it is better to write the first draft in English, even though it can be very difficult for some people.

What would be your advice in this case? Should I still stick with writing my first draft in my mother tongue and then translate it into English? I feel more productive in that way, but any advice would be helpful.

Personal opinion from a non-native english speaker:

You should write it as much as possible in english. Start working with bullet points of your ideas and then transfer them to full sentences after you are done. Since most academic papers are in english, it has already been mentioned on this platform a ton of times, that you should get used to the language, i.e. the vocabularies and the way people reason, in your field.


Extension work to a paper which is currently under review process : Is it good to communicate this? I have submitted a paper for a math journal and it is currently under review for the past 4 months. Meanwhile I have come up with an important work, that directly builds on top of that paper, which I thinks increases the importance of current paper, when looked in the light of this new work. I can say that this new piece can be a good extention work to my paper increasing its value.

My question is, can I write to the Editor in chief, who has been communicating with me, about this new development. If so, would it speed up or have positive impact on the review process of the currently sumbmitted paper? Or does it also mean that editor may ask me to take back my current paper, add this new piece of extension and resubmit.

Or Should I submit this new piece of work as a separate paper to same journal, even when the current paper is still under review?

In any case, is it a good idea to communicate this to the editor in chief?

I would suggest putting the new results into a new paper. There is no reason to notify the editor unless you plan to withdraw the current paper.

The current paper will/must stand on its own. If it does, then it will be published and the new results give you a new publication, perhaps.

But if your current paper is rejected for some reason, then is the time to think about integrating the new results with the old, which really would tend to increase the value.

I think the outcome is probably better if you wait and continue work, rather than creating a possibly confusing situation for the editor.


Breaking an axis - is it ever a good idea? I know that using an origin other than 0 for numeric data is considered misleading. But for plots in academic publications, is it ever a good idea to break an axis so that patterns and outliers can be more easily seen?
Or would you always try to find an alternative (e.g., using a logarithmic scale, faceting, using multiple plots with different scales)? I'm looking for a general rule of thumb.

I used to be a "don't break the axis" purist. I like to think that I have learned better. Nowadays, whenever I know that zero does not make sense for the data I am visualizing, I don't hesitate to break the axis.

A little example: I recently started recording my weight (in kg) and reducing my calorie intake. Here is the time series. Does anyone think that the plot on the right is more informative? It isn't. Because zero is not a possible weight for a healthy 39 year old male.


Do universities care about bias experienced in group projects? I am a master's student, and I will complete my master's program soon. During my second year of my MA program, I had to work on a two-semester group project because it was a requirement for the program. My question is the types of critical issues universities care about because universities seem to see issues like academic dishonesty as the most serious offense. Would universities care about the types of incidents that I am about to share below?

Example:

I was in a group project of five people, and four of the members were Caucasians (I am a racial minority female). I was treated terribly by two of the members (one female and one male). We had the final paper that was due just yesterday. The male, who was the editor, tends to procrastinate, and he literally waited until the last minute to make significant changes, and demanded from everyone to make the changes. We did this paper in a shared Google Doc by the way. I had another paper that was due at exactly the same date and time, so by the time that he started to become actively involved, I was much more focused on my other paper. He sent everyone an email on the morning of the day just before the due date, demanding significant changes. I was able to look at emails late that night, and he had sent me another email in the evening, asking if I was still involved in the project. By this time, I was already much more focused on my other paper. My response to his email was that I understand that we all have different schedules, and it is possible that we do things at different times. I had worked on the document and made changes a few days before he became actively involved. His response was basically how dare I challenge him, and called me a passive-aggressive person. He even dropped the F-bomb in his response. Now, the other girl. She also had similar tendencies to procrastinate and got along well with this male. On the document, she purposefully deleted my name, and put a comment, "Let's keep it this way." My relationships with these two individuals had not been positive throughout the year, but I think this incident went very far.

I never had these kinds of incidents during my four years of undergrad at a different university in the US. I am certain that this type of incident is very rare, especially at the graduate school level. I think that I should share my experience with the school because I think that this is a critical issue.

I'm going to come this from the other (probably less popular!) direction.

I see no evidence of racial bias in your description. Of course I wasn't there and can't judge it, but to me it seems like you describe a straightforward disagreement between classmates. I would be very careful about raising the issue of race unless you have compelling evidence.

It is true that the group you describe is dysfunctional. For sure the others shouldn't have waited until the last minute, or should have made an appointment for everyone to work together on the last day. Still, I wonder if you are partly to blame for this. Again, I wasn't there, but:

Looking at this from the light most favorable to you, it seems like you did a good job on your part, submitted it ahead of schedule, and were planning to address the remaining edits later that night.
Looking at it from the light most favorable to them, it seems like you just dumped a bunch of stuff into a word doc, didn't help them edit/integrate/merge/revise/fact-check, didn't respond to requests for changes for an entire day (on the day before it was due!), then became hostile when they asked about it. If there was any misunderstanding about what "your piece" of the project was, so much the worse.

Regardless of whether the second viewpoint is accurate, learning to foresee and avoid such blow-ups before they happen is a valuable skill. (Of course, this is not to make excuses for racism or plagiarism, if those things actually happened).

The university will not intervene in dysfunctional groups. If you can make a serious case for racial discrimination, of course they should investigate that. But the dysfunctional group is really not a university issue; such things fall to the instructor of the course. The instructor probably views learning to navigate such problems as one of the course aims, and will view this as valuable experience for you. The insults, the use of the f-word in this manner, etc., is a very inappropriate way to resolve conflict, but since it is student-to-student, I doubt the university will get involved (unless you are in a culture / campus code-of-conduct that takes such things especially seriously).

Deleting your name from the assignment is probably the most actionable piece of this. Since you can prove that you contributed to this (assuming any of your pieces survived), and if they submitted it without your name, you could bring a plagiarism charge. I imagine the professor would just smooth it over (giving you the same grade as the rest of the group) -- this is likely to be his/her choice (depending on your university's rules).


Asking questions of examiners in PhD thesis defense? I have my PhD defense coming up and understand that I'll be asked if I have any questions for the examination committee, like asking for advice on turning chapters into publications.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm completely stumped!
FYI the defense includes just myself and a small examination committee (three people) so no audience, peers etc.

Perhaps you can ask for advice on post-PhD life? Assuming you're pretty confident that you'll pass your exam (and your advisor shouldn't have allowed you to defend if they didn't think you were 100% going to pass!), your next step will be getting a job or postdoc somewhere. Perhaps you can ask the committee what they found most important during their first few years post-defense?


How to have confidence in my research? I'm a PhD student at a reputed institution and in my 4th year now. I'm researching in the domain of information security & privacy.
I've got a number of good conference publications (4 conferences) but not in top conferences.
I attempted for the top conference (S&P or ACM CCS - their workshops as well) but my papers got rejected.
I'm writing my dissertation now, however, I still have this unsatisfied feeling that my work is not really good, it may have been the imposter syndrome. I feel that my work doesn't look as good as other people's (PhD students) work who are working in the same domain. I've got a few questions maybe some experienced researchers who have gone through can answer.

How do you know your PhD work is strong work?
How to gain confidence in your PhD work?
How to know if the main idea of PhD work is a good one? (How to
get rid of this feeling?)

Thank you for your help! :)

How do you know your PhD work is strong work?
How to know if the main idea of PhD work is a good one?

It is strong work if it makes an impact. This could be in terms of highlighting new techniques that get widely adopted, by winning awards, by getting published or by setting up a startup and making millions. A lot of people define success in many different ways. How do you define it? If your metric is publishing in good venues - then I suppose that you can answer your own question.
Your ideas are as good as what you make of them, and as good as how others perceive them.

How to gain confidence in your PhD work?

You need to ask yourself why you're doing the PhD and have a realistic outlook. It is likely that without a good publication record you won't be able to land a strong academic position, but that's hardly the end of the world. There is massive demand out there for CS researchers in all sorts of positions.
What does your advisor say? Do they think your work is good and deserves publication in top venues, and it was just bad luck that plagued you? What do other figures of authority in the field think of your work?
As a general comment - you are getting the highest possible academic university qualification from a top school, in a highly competitive and popular field. And you feel inadequate? Say that last sentence out loud to yourself. You're anything but!
Good luck!


What's the net income of a W1/W2 german professor? I've seen a job announcement where the salary was said to be comparable to the assistant/associate professor level W1/W2 in the German system, and I was wondering how much it would exactly make in terms of net income (i.e. after ALL taxes).
I found this link that states that for Western provinces, it was in 2007 between 3400 and 3900 euros gross per month. This other link states that in Hessen (which is where the position is based), the gross monthly salary is
5386 for W2 and 3901 for W1. Then, according to this calculator, a 3900 gross salary means 2167 euros net, after all taxes. So my questions are:

Do these numbers make sense?
Are there intermediary ranks between W1 and W2?
How negotiable is the starting rank in general?
Are there bonuses to take into account when you're single with no child?
Is the tax system identical for german and non-german?

The rules for a German professor are quite different than for a typical German employee. The first thing to note is that you will be a Beamter, which is a very special class of government employees. In particular, you are automatically exempted from the public healthcare system, as well as having to make direct payments into the social security system out of your paycheck. Instead, the pension payments are covered by your employer (the government of the Land in which you work), while the Beihilfe system helps to defray part of your insurance costs (the rest of which you pay for through a private insurance contract). In other words: you get billed for your health care; your private insurance reimburses you for 50 percent of your costs, and 30 percent of the costs for other family members. You submit the remainder of the bill to the university, which reimburses the remaining 50 percent (70 percent).

The net result of this is that you get a much higher percentage of your income as take-home pay relative to a traditional government employee. Your tax status depends on your marital status, so as a W1, you can expect to take home somewhere between 2800 and 3200 euros per month, as reported by the Öffentlicher Dienst website. There are some differences due to cost of living in different states. However, expect to pay about 200 € per month for health care, or more if you have a family.

However, I should also note that just this week came down a new ruling from the German Federal Constitutional Court stating that the salaries for professors hired since 2005 are too low, and need to be adjusted. This has the potential to adjust salaries upwards somewhat—although it is not yet clear by how much. (The state of Hesse, against whom the ruling was made, has until January to adjust its salaries upwards.)

To answer your other questions:

There are no ranks between W1 and W2.
The base salary is nonnegotiable, as it's set by the state government for which you will work; however, you can negotiate some terms of your "package" (support for students and other workers), and you may be able to get some "performance bonuses" negotiated into the contract.
Teaching duties are set by federal law, and are similarly nonnegotiable (although you can negotiate the ability, for instance, to teach in English rather than German)
Bonuses are not available for single people with no children; instead, according to German law, they're actually taxed at a higher rate.
There is no difference in salary based on nationality.


Regarding "discussion sections" for undergraduate science courses I will be undertaking my first teaching position as a graduate student in the fall - I will be leading two of the discussion sections for an undergraduate biology course.

What sorts of things should I expect to teach in a discussion section for a science course and how should I teach them?

When I was an undergraduate and took the same course (same material, different university), the graduate students had to re-teach the lectures in our equivalent of discussion sections, as if it was brand new material because the professor was not a very good lecturer.  I know the professors for whom I will be teaching these sections are rather good lecturers, so I do not expect to have to re-teach everything to the same extent.  I have several concerns, though:

These sections are about twice the size of those at my undergraduate university, and I would like to encourage regular class participation of some sort, to make sure students stay engaged.
The material is undoubtedly challenging so I am wary of bringing in too much new material, such as discussion of scientific papers, which is the first kind of discussion that springs to mind.  (Also, someone will inevitably ask "is that going to be on the exam?")

Because the material is challenging, I could probably do with some review. But how to I keep a large number of students engaged (and participating) through repetition of lecture material? Ostensibly, the reason for having discussion sections is so that there is actual discussion.

I can say with 100% confidence that it will depend on the professor(s).  That being said, you should expect to:

Reteach all content.  You won't actually have to, but you should of course be able to.  Students often use discussion sections to ask questions they don't want to ask the prof for fear of "looking dumb."
Give meaningful practice problems and explanations the students should familiarize themselves with for an exam.
For some classes, actually lead a discussion of topics.
Just use it for office hours.


What is the typical time between application and contact for a postdoc on Norway? I recently applied to a postdoc position in Norway, this was an advertised role in an engineering department rather than a fellowship application. I had a brief email exchange with the hiring professor in advance and they thought I would be a suitable candidate and encouraged me to apply.
The application was through the jobbnorge website which appears to be standard in Norway.
After 6 weeks since application deadline I have not had any contact and it still shows as submitted in the jobbnorge portal. I do not know of the portal would give an update if I wasn't successful.
My questions are

What is the typical time frame for hearing back on any decision in Norway for postdoc applications?

Is it typical to hear back if I am not invited for interview or can I assume no news is neither good nor bad?

There is a similar question here: Hiring Process in Norway for Postdocs
Although it is not clear what time scales are involved in that question or if they were between application or interview, though it does imply the process is slow.
Thank you.

More than anything, the amount of time is determined by the number of applications. But in general, the hiring process in academia in Norway is much slower than what you're likely to experience elsewhere (at least outside of Scandinavia). To give you an example, I once applied for a postdoc in Norway. Only two people applied, but it still took six weeks before I heard back, and the interview was scheduled fifteen weeks after the application deadline. If you haven't heard anything by the end of June, your application was either unsuccessful, or they didn't manage to sift through the applications before the summer. By that time, I would e-mail the professor you've already been in touch with and ask.
For a postdoc position, I don't think you can count on being informed if your application was unsuccessful, but this might vary by university/department.


May I mention in my CV that I am a reviewer for a journal if I co-refereed? Recently, a collaborator of mine received a paper to referee from a journal, and he proposed me that we review the paper together. When he submitted the report, he indicated to the journal that he reviewed the manuscript with me. Am I allowed to write in my CV that I am a reviewer for this journal?

You can list reviewer activities on your CV, especially in an early stage of your career, see e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3543/68222.

The situation you describe is different. You weren't one of the official reviewers of the paper. As stated by @Dirk, this situation is uncommon and might not be compliant to the journal policies. Because of that, I suggest to not mention this specific "review" on your CV.


Are there "uninteresting" publications in high profile journals? I always want to read a high profile publication papers. It is true that they are in general hard to understand but they have very important results (in general).

It happens to me sometimes. Sometimes when I read a high profile paper, I found that the contribution is not very interesting, not worth to publish the work in this kind of high profile journal. Maybe I am the one who do not understand the paper but it is only me?

Do high profile publication contain "uninteresting" (i.e., not very important or novel) publications? If it is the case, why they accept it?

If a paper is published in a very good journal (one that is sufficiently good that it doesn't need to accept boring papers to fill issues), that means somebody (reviewer, editor) thought its contributions would be interesting, novel, and/or useful to a nontrivial subset of the journal's audience.

But, this doesn't mean that the paper is interesting to everyone. (Very few papers are!)

For example, I usually find papers that say "We applied a known technique to optimize problem X for some metric Y" very boring, but others in my field appreciate these contributions.

In some cases, you may find the paper uninteresting because you either understood less than the reviewer or more than the reviewer.

It often takes some knowledge of the field to really appreciate the contribution a paper is making.  In most journals, the authors are allowed to assume that the reader already has some field-specific knowledge. If you read the paper without understanding this context, it will probably seem boring or not useful to you.
It works the other way as well. Sometimes, a reviewer reads a paper and thinks, "This is an important contribution," but those with more knowledge understand that it isn't. For really good journals, the editor can usually find a reviewer who understands the field well, so this (ideally) doesn't happen as often.

I am sure somebody can think of a paper that was accepted only for e.g., political reasons, and is genuinely, objectively unimportant. These are rare enough that I don't think these are the papers you are asking about.


What happened to the Piled Higher and Deeper comics? Without dating myself too badly, I have enjoyed PhD comics since the beginning. For the past few years, there have been about 2 or 3 new comics a week, but there has not been a new comic in months. I don't really follow all their social media contacts, but it does not look like there has been a tweet or a facebook update in a while.

Was there any announcement about a break (or the end)?

According to the latest comic, the series is on hiatus until November 2019. The unsubtle message behind the comic is that the author doesn't owe an explanation to anyone.


UK MSc vs MEng when applying for PhD and Chartered Engineer I did my BEng electrical and electronic undergraduate degree in UK university. It was 3 year degree. So I want clear idea of MSc and MEng and also about Chartered Engineer qualification. Please kindly clear my doubts.

MSc is postgraduate degree in UK, USA, Canada and so on. Is it right?
UK MEng is undergraduate degree in USA, Canada and so on. But UK MEng is  postgraduate degree. Is it right?
Therefor If I did MEng electrical and electronic in UK, Is it equal to BSc in USA, Canada and so on? Because MEng is undergraduate degree and BEng + MEng is 4 year undergraduate degree.
I can get Chartered Engineer qualification in UK but I can't get engineering courses membership in other counties because BEng is 3 year degree. If I did MEng, can I get USA engineering courses membership? Because then I have  4 year undergraduate degree.
If I did MEng undergraduate degree, can I did directly PhD in USA or Canada?  or Do I want to do MSc  postgraduate degree to do PhD in USA?

From my experience of the systems in the UK and Canada:

Yes, MSc is usually a 2-year research based postgraduate degree in North America.
No, MEng is also a 2-year postgraduate degree in North America. It is usually a taught masters degree - which means it is mainly based on coursework. In my experience a UK MEng is not usually considered a postgraduate degree as it is common for engineering programs to 'include' the MEng as part of the course (University of Cambridge Undergraduate Engineering)
Not exactly, while a UK MEng is often one additional year after the BEng making the time roughly equivalent to a Canada/US Bachelors degree. It is difficult to compare them as the systems are quite different (the difference becomes irrelevant after a few years of working in industry). A UK MEng would certainly not be equivalent to a 2-year research based MSc in North America (which doesn't really exist in the UK).
Are you sure you can be Chartered with a BEng? I believe you usually need a masters level qualification (What do I need to do for Chartered Engineer (CEng) professional registration?). Although there are routes that don't require a Masters level qualification, that is the typical route. I assume by 'USA engineering courses membership' you mean in order to apply for an engineering license in the USA? In which case, this varies for each state. You would need to check the requirements for the state your are interested in (varies for each Provence in Canada also). In Canada I believe you would meet the academic requirements with the BEng (PEng Academic Requirements - Ontario)
Usually you need a 2-year research based masters degree (MSc) to apply for a PhD in North America. Although this could vary depending on the school.


Who should I ask for recommendation letter after graduation? After graduating for two years, I decided to apply for the Master program. I have prepared essays and scores but now I am stuck with recommendation letters. I have got 2 - one from the current manager and another one from my undergraduate institute. However, I am struggling with one last letter.

I came from a big public school (UC system) and for some reason, a lot of my upper-division classes were taught by instructors, not professors. And unfortunately, at least three of the instructors either left the department or left academia (got into the industry) and I am not exactly sure if I can contact them (even if I could, they are no longer in the department and that might be an issue..).

I have previously contacted one faculty that I have TA(undergraduate IA) for months ago. But that doesn't work due to some complicated issues (the faculty's schedules). My latest research volunteer experiences(short) were 4~5 years ago and it was extremely hard to contact supervisors as well.

Is anyone can give me any suggestions? I am living in another country right now, so visiting the campus is not really feasible. Understanding that Master's program does not care about LORs as much as Ph.D. programs, I am worrying that I couldn't have all the required documents.

Attempt to contact your previous instructors, wherever they have moved to. At least they know you. Professors and academics move around a lot and their recommendation letters are still valid and respectable. If moving around is a barrier to recommendations and support letters, I think academia will cease to function...
Whatever you are doing now (post-graduation) is likely to be relevant and may be helpful. Any jobs or roles that you have held will support your work especially if they are in the research/writing vein.


How do we know if something relevant is already published? I keep reading European Conference on Computer Vision, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, and others, and I find so much in common in those papers.

For example, half the papers seem like: X Algorithm combined with Y algorithm tested on Z database and was better than A in this category but worse than A in that category.

There are many top journals and top conferences with > 1000 papers, in a year, in this field. In addition to this we would have to go through all the tier 2, tier 3 conferences for lack of a similar piece of work.

While working on organic solar cells I found the same problem. I saw 20 different papers on extracting parameters from a single-diode/double-diode/XYZ model.

So how do we know if something relevant is already published?

That title summarises a large fraction of all research ;-)

You need to spend a significant amount of time browsing through scientific literature. This illustration from PhD comics illustrates the problem:

My strategy is as follows:

I start with an arbitrary paper with a title that seems relevant. Let's call this paper A.
Using an online service such as Scopus (payment or subscription required), I look for:

All references, e.g. papers cited by A.
All citations, e.g. papers that cite A.

Both the references and citations can be sorted by the number of citatons, so you get the most highly cited papers first. Select the papers that seem relevant (at this stage, reading the abstract is usually good enough).
For all relevant papers left in step 3, repeat step 2. You should find considerable overlap already. By now, you should have already found the important papers as well as one or more review articles.
Iterate steps 2–4 until your hard disk is full ;-)

Of course, if you iterate this process indefinitely, you will soon have downloaded all scientific research ever published. But by being selective but not too selective, this process should lead you to any relevant publications. Even if nobody has cited the relevant publications, the relevant publications themselves should cite other publications, so via step 2.1 you will still find it.

The only caveat here is that databases like Scopus are incomplete, probably in particular when it comes to conference proceedings (in my field, those are rarely relevant). Maybe other databases work better in your field. Hopefully, there is a scientific database that is reasonably complete for relevant publications in your area of research!


Placement of period in sentence that ends with "et al." followed by reference number? I have a citation that is at the end of a sentence with dual punctuation. What I mean is that I have a sentence of the following form:

  Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.

What is the proper way to include the citation in this case?

  Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al[##].

  Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.[##]

  Blah blah blah is mentioned by Author et al.[##].

Other

Since "et al." is an abbreviation of the latin et alii meaning "and others" the period in "et al." should be treated as periods in any other abbreviation such as "cf.", "Op. Cit.", "conf.", "c.". In most cases of which I am aware periods are shown after abbreviations but I am not a stranger to styles where the period after abbreviations are ignored. So my bet is that "et al. [##]." or "et al. [##]", depending on where the preferred location of the numbered references are, in a majority of cases. If you are uncertain you need to consult the journal style sheet (if any exists) or simply check other recent papers published by the journal in order to see how they prefer to have things set.


What are the recommended approaches in selecting students to work on research projects? I have seen several approaches in selecting students to work on research projects like:

Select from the list of admitted students
Announce the job for all the students in the department and interview the top candidate
Select after teaching a course and knowing the best students

Are there any other approaches and are there any recommended ones?

Our department has a policy of matching students and faculty. The faculty write up a brief description of the project they want to pursue. The PhD coordinator meets with students to assess their skill sets and top choices for projects and a match is made. We also have a policy of switching advisers after the first year. Good collaborations usually go on past this year, others have a way of dying out. However, our department is rather small--usually between 10-15 grad students at a time.


Is it okay to ask your professor about the final exam that I took 3 years ago? So in my first year of university, I failed one class. I was really good at that subject and had great grades but because of my final exam, I have failed it. I felt discourages and thought that maybe I deserved it because I did not prepare for it as much as I could. I thought that I did okay on the exam but there was a thought that maybe I am just thinking that I did well but actually I didn't? Not sure how to describe it.
Next year I am going to graduate and this thought still bothers me, like did I actually do that badly on the exam? I keep thinking about asking the prof for my final paper but I don't know if that's okay. I checked and he is still teaching at my university.
Do you think it is okay to ask about the exam even if it's been so long?

It is completely fine for students to request to see their final exam scripts. As a lecturer, I am actually surprised and slightly frustrated that many students seem to be only interested in their mark, not the feedback.
However, asking for an exam dating back 3 years may be a bit more difficult. Exam papers are only kept for a particular amount of time, often ~3 years. So if you want to ask, do it as soon as possible before your exam paper is discarded.


Is it acceptable to add results to an arXiv publication? I have a paper (in computer science) which I have sent to a conference and I am planning to make a journal version which will contain some extra results. Is it acceptable to put the conference version to arXiv and later, when the journal version is done, add the new results to arXiv?

If the change from the conference version to the journal version is relatively minor (so the new results are unimportant), it's fine to add the new results to the arXiv.

If the change from the conference version to the journal version is substantial, post the conference version on the arXiv paper unchanged, and later post the journal version to the arXiv when you finish it. If you don't change the title from the conference paper to the journal paper, it might be a good idea to indicate in the arXiv paper titles that one is the conference version and the other is the journal version, so that people don't get confused.

This way, the papers on the arXiv reflect the published papers, so people who are trying to track things down in the literature won't get confused. You're shouldn't feel guilty about wasting resources, because you're not—the cost of hosting one more paper on the arXiv is tiny.

And you should consider whether the results you're adding to the conference paper are significant enough to deserve their own paper. Each paper should tell one "story". If the new results don't fit in the "story" of the paper, in my experience nobody will notice them, so you're better off writing a new paper containing them.


Handling Multiple Interviews Recently, I applied for two positions at one university. I received a quick reply for a video interview and immediately thereafter the campus visit. Right after my campus visit, I got a call back on the second application. After much deliberation, I recinded the application for the second position interview. Is this appropriate? Is there etiquette for applying to one or two positions at the same institution?

Nobody would fault you for pursuing any promising job offer, even if two are at the same place. (If they're petty enough to be upset with you for this then you wouldn't want to work there anyway.) If you've already rescinded the application they're not going to be upset with you for that either. These are regular problems faced by departments doing job searches.

Some institutions might have an internal arbitration process that would have to happen if both departments want to make an offer. This is to avoid a situation where you try to use offers from both departments as leverage for better compensation or a startup package.


Do hiring committees strategize? This question is for those of you who have been on the hiring committee.

I am wondering if the following scenario could happen.

Applicant X applies to University Y; University Y looks at applicant X's profile, and says "applicant X has very strong records. There is no way University Y is the best applicant X can do; hence we will not offer Applicant X a position (postdoctoral, or TT)"

This seems worrying, because:

perhaps applicant X is just so mediocre, that he falls through the crack; University Y turns him down, but universities slightly better than University Y might think that applicant X is not up to their standards.
what if applicant X actually really wanted to go to University Y for personal reasons? Of course, maybe applicant X was hoping for something slightly better than University Y, so maybe he did not contact the department (in case he decides not to go to University Y).
even from the university's perspective, this is fairly complicated: University Y could take a chance and hope that applicant X will accept their offer, but perhaps it is more advantageous to extend the offer to the applicant next on the list instead of applicant X. There is no way of knowing which is the better choice, though.

In particular, if such scenario happens, and if I want to prevent the first point, what do I need to do? I am wary of contacting the departments, because should the department be excited about me, and should someone push for my being hired in the hiring committee meeting, then I would feel obligated (to some degree) to accept that offer (even if a better offer comes along), since that someone has advocated on my behalf, on my request.

This happens all the time and everywhere.  Strategic decisions about who to interview or make offers to are based not just on perceived quality or market value, but also broader considerations of fit.  It's an unavoidable part of the job market, and I'm not convinced it's even a bad thing overall, since it makes the job market work much more smoothly and efficiently.

This is a tough issue to resolve as an applicant.  There are several reasons why it can be ineffective just to tell the department that you really want to go there:

They may not believe you.  They may suspect you of deliberately exaggerating your likelihood of accepting just in order to get an offer, perhaps so you can use it to help negotiate a better offer elsewhere.  (The academic job market is exactly the sort of high stress, high stakes environment that brings out some people's worst sides.)  Even if they're convinced you're completely honest, they may feel you'll change your mind once you learn more about your other options, or that if you come you'll end up feeling like you made a mistake and they'll have a bitter, resentful colleague who wants to leave.  An applicant who suffers from imposter syndrome may say "Wow, I'd be thrilled to get an offer from University X, which is the best job I can imagine getting" but might not remain as thrilled after getting offers from A, B, and C as well.
Many reasons you could give may be viewed as kind of insulting.  If you explain that you really like the city or want to live near relatives, then it can come across like you are saying "Sure, your department would otherwise be beneath me, but I'm willing to put up with you for non-academic reasons."  The department might be willing to hire you even if they think you feel superior, but they won't be happy about it.  In order for this to work, you have to be very careful about tone.  Two-body problems are widely accepted as an understandable reason, and of course academic reasons can be highly effective, but anything else has the potential for giving a bad impression if you aren't careful.

So announcing your preferences may not always work.  Still, it's really your only option, so it's not worth worrying too much about how it might fail.  To put things more positively:

Try to emphasize aspects of the department that excite you, and not just side benefits such as location.
It's often more effective if you or a mentor convey this information through personal contacts, rather than just talking with the search committee chair.  In particular, hearing from someone senior can add credibility: there have been a number of times I've reassured a department that a student genuinely wanted to work there (and wasn't just confused or suffering from imposter syndrome).
If you already have an ostensibly more impressive offer and can say "I would very likely turn down my offer from University A in favor of a compelling offer from you," it carries a lot of weight.  At the very least, it eliminates the fear that you don't understand your options.  (But say this only if you are quite sure!  If there's even a small chance you would choose A after all, then you should make it clear that you have not made a final decision and might change your mind.  It's unethical to try to manipulate anyone.)


Largest PhD programs in mathematics I'll be applying to graduate schools in the fall but so far don't have any real clue what area I want to focus on. As such, I hope to attend a very large math graduate program with a lot of varied research going on so that there are many avenues I can explore. I also worry that if I attend a small or midsize graduate school, I may come to find out that my true passion is in an topic for which there are no suitable advisers. I also think I'd fit in much better in a larger department.

I'm interested in a list of PhD math programs by number of students. So I've done some googling, but I can't find any relavant results. What are the largest math graduate programs in the US?

The AMS has this help for those searching graduate schools.
For "size" you can use the statistic "Number of PhDs awarded in the last 3 years" which is included.  For example, I found that the champion was U.C.Berkeley, with 83 PhDs


After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science? I currently work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Department of Defense for nearly 6 years now, and I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from a top-10 university in the United States. I am seriously thinking of doing a 2nd PhD in Computer Science, because I want to eventually own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm and need to become an expert in Machine Learning algorithms.

As of now, I am working on a few journal papers to publish and I am not going to have any problems getting strong letters of recommendation from my employer and professors on campus.  I ought to be able to get a letter from the Dean of my college as well.  So, I am thinking of a second PhD in Computer Science because I really want to immerse myself in Machine Learning and figured a PhD was the way to go.

Question for everyone:  Would it be a challenge for me to acquire entrance into a top 5 school in Computer Science for a PhD?

I ought to mention that my PhD research was in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Turbulent Flow and I had to develop my numerical solver and turbulence models in Object-Oriented C++.

A major part of doing a PhD is learning how to do research and handle working on problems which sit on the edge of what is known. You've done that already. Doing it a second time is unnecessary, expensive and time consuming.

If you've been doing aerospace engineering then you almost certainly have the necessary calculus under your belt already. And if you have a PhD you can teach yourself stuff. Buy a few good textbooks - I recommend "Pattern recognition and Machine Learning" by C.M. Bishop; "Information Theory, Inference and learning Algorithms" by D.J.C. Mackay (this one is free to download on the author's website because he's nice like that). Look up material universities and other insitutions put online - e.g. https://www.coursera.org/course/ml is a free course, whose description sounds like it covers a lot of the necessary basics.  A lot of machine learning conferences make their proceedings available for free - ICML and NIPS I think both do this, and the work is good quality.

Start getting up to speed on all this stuff. If it still interests you and you want to go the academic route, go looking for postdoc positions and then try to find a couple of talented people you can form a startup company with.


Should papers presented at local conferences be put in list of publications? I have two papers presented at state and national level conferences. These conference proceedings were not published in any journal. Now, should I list these papers in my list of publications or not?

These conference proceedings were not published in any journal.

Were they published at all?  If there were no proceedings, then they don't count as publications, because nothing was actually published.  (You could still list them as talks rather than publications.)  If there were official proceedings in which other people can read and cite the paper (not just an abstract) even after the conference is over, then it's a form of publication, regardless of whether the proceedings appeared in a journal or as a stand-alone volume.

There may be other considerations you should take into account when including this material in your CV.  For example, were the papers peer reviewed?  Does your field consider them to be archival publications?  However, these are more of an issue of how meaningful the publications are, rather than whether they count as publications in the first place.


How to identify top researchers and landmark papers in a field? I am currently a student doing research in Neuroscience, and as you can imagine it is a pretty big field. I am trying to better familiarize myself with my own subfield and other fields such stem cell research and genetics.

What is a good way to find some landmark papers and authors who are highly regarded in a certain field?

To identify landmark papers, you can also consult the bibliography of your textbook if you have already taken classes that cover (even briefly) your subfield of interest. If your textbook is one that is used by a lot of university professors, then it probably covers landmark papers well. You can often identify the most important papers in a textbook because they'll possibly:

  be referred to multiple times and in multiple chapters
  appear near the beginning of a chapter when a topic is first introduced
  explicitly be acknowledged in the text by the author of the textbook as a seminal paper

A disadvantage to this approach is that, depending on when your version of the textbook was last updated, it may miss important developments in recent yeras.

Identifying highly-regarded authors can be harder, but you can try looking up authors (especially last-named ones, who are often supervisors/professors) of important papers on, for example, Google Scholar, to see what else they have produced and whether they have a lot of highly cited papers.


For STEM fields, is there self-segregation in United States academia? I notice that often a lot of Chinese mathematicians collaborate with other Chinese, and Americans collaborate with other Americans.  Many of the journal papers that I look up seem to indicate this sort of self-segregation too.

Is this real or perceived?

If it's real, is it due to racism, familiarity with people of one's own background, or perhaps a combination of various factors?

There probably is some self-segregation, but nothing above what people normally do in everyday society.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that much of the dialogue regarding segregation deals with the actions of government, an extremely powerful 3rd party. Self-segregation is at best an ethical issue, not legal. Moreover, everyone has a right to free association and can decide who they want to deal with.

Arguably, I would say that academia self-segregates less than society at large, due to more liberal attitudes of academics and students.


New author, independent research, scope of publishing I have done my masters in Computer Science, but did not receive much support in the masters program to get the final project published. I am presently working as a software developer in the industry while also trying to perform independent research on a few topics which I have in mind when out of the office.

I have recently completed some research ad derived new method for data clustering based on a heuristic which is novel idea as far as I can tell. I have shown it to work better with respect to only one metric with a few other algorithms which is of the closest type.

I have been allowed to use my employer's organization address and email for correspondence, but my organization has told that there should be a disclaimer that my organization has nothing to do with this research. If I do not use this address, I need to give my current address. I am not sure if I can give my university address at this point, as the entire research was done after I graduated. At the university I had access to journal subscriptions for which appropriate acknowledgments are given.

Previously I have not published any peer-reviewed work anywhere and I am the only author of this manuscript. I am not sure how shall I proceed. Submitting to journal such as Elsevier will be single blind, and as I am trying to publish as a new independent author, will my submission be subject to biases based on my lack of previous publications? Or shall I go for a conference with double blind review process? Also the 7 ~ 10 page mark for conference is difficult to maintain without removing vital components.

Some information about the work. The work was not complex, but is unique and it is shown to work on several well known data-sets. The main topic is data clustering.

How should I proceed with publication?

Edit:

Adding information in reply to @Nahkk's comment.

I have no previous academic experience. I have shown this to one professor from a different research interest domain because none of the professors from the paper's domain were interested in this topic, surprisingly. I have also asked for suggestion from a person working in this field. One of them suggests to try for a journal and another suggests a conference first, then work and improve the algorithm do exhaustive tests and then go for a journal later.

I think there are many questions here;

Independent Publishing? It is possible to publish your work as an independent researcher.  see this question "Does one need to be affiliated with a university to publish papers?". For further confirmation, I would suggest to directly contact the responsible personnel of the conference or journal.

Forums(Journal vs Conference)?  Journals are usually assumed to be of high standard. However, this might not be true always.Some conferences have equal or higher standard than journals; they only accept high quality works. However, you should be able to find many conferences with a track record of accepting publications with varying qualities.

How to find the quality of a forum? If you want to find out the quality of a forum, check their previous publications and try judging their quality. You can also look for people who have published there, if they are expert in your field then it could be a high quality journal or conference.

What forum suits my work? You know the quality of your work therefore aiming for forums inline with the quality of your work will save you a lot of time.
Otherwise, you can discuss with an expert (a professor or researcher in academia) who knows the forums and their qualities. If they can read your work that would make it easy to find the matching forum.

These are just my suggestions, rest you know what is best for you. Good luck!


should I go for a Ph.D.in electronic/electromagnetism engineering? Hello Academicians and everyone,

As you noticed from my question. I am willing to do a Ph.D. in electronic/electromagnetism engineering. I am very interested in the topic of electromagnetism and its application. I love everything that has to do with Maxwell equations.

Nevertheless, I have a big concern, My Health(burn out, gastritis, stress, migraine). as I am at the beginning of my thirties and had a lot of health issues during my master degree. I had to take many short breaks to get back to the track in the meantime.

I had some professors (who think I am healthy as Batman and don't know what I am facing) who suggested me to do a Ph.D. with them but I am scared to death because of my situation and I don't want to end up in Hospital because I  usually push until I get sick.

I need your advice and suggestion from your sides. How do you manage your stress? how did you manage to successfully finish your Ph.D. without ending in Hospital? or it would be better not going for this Ph.D. in my case?

Thanks

There is no question that stress can kill you. But there are ways to reduce it. One of the big stress factors among students - especially high achieving students - is pushing too hard and never taking a break.

One advantage you have over many others is that you now recognize the issue and can learn to take action before the level becomes unbearable.

One problem with learning is that you are trying to change your brain - physically. To learn requires rewiring the synapses that connect the neurons. But the brain doesn't work as well as it might if you force it to work too hard all the time. You need to give it periods of rest. If you try to force it to learn it will work less efficiently. But that may just induce some people to try harder, increasing the problem and adding stress, but not learning.

To give your brain a break you just need to do something different. It may include physical rest or not. In fact it may include intense physical activity. In grad school I used bicycling as an outlet. 50-100 mile rides. Maybe 35 if time was tight. I rode in a group, fairly fast, but not so fast that we couldn't chat as we rode. As an undergraduate I practiced judo on a college team. I was terrible at it, but it provided a break from studies. Nowadays, I use Tai Chi which is a mind-body fusion exercise. An hour several times a week will make a change in your outlook. Some academic departments actually have groups that regularly do some activity. Tennis. Racketball. Swimming. A computer scientist I know (very high level person) once joined a theatre group.

Moreover, when you are trying to solve a difficult problem, pushing the brain harder may be counterproductive, but giving it a rest lets it work differently. Many researchers have gone to bed with a nasty problem unsolved, only to awake with the solution. It might even come in the middle of a bike ride. Your brain doesn't turn off in these situations, but the overall body structure (including the brain) will work differently.

My advice, then, is to find a way to deal with stress. If you are at a university or similar institution, there may be some "counseling" office that has short courses on such things or people skilled in teaching stress reduction. If you can find ways to manage and reduce stress (you probably can't avoid it altogether) you can function at a higher level whatever you do.


Is it OK to let somebody know I refereed their paper? It is not uncommon, especially for narrow fields, that you review papers authored by people that you might, at some point, come to interact with more or less closely. This can range from meeting them at a conference to even start a collaboration together.

Some times, when discussing with these people a point directly related to one of their papers it could be relevant to make a comment based on a discussion that came up as part of the reviewing process.

I have recently felt tempted to tell someone "hey, I refereed you paper, by the way, so I am particularly familiar with this and that..." but refrained myself because peer review is supposed to be anonymous.

Is it appropriate to bring up that I refereed somebody's paper when having a discussion with this person, in particular if it adds constructively to the discussion? Would it become "more appropriate" as time goes by and the review becomes "a thing of the past"?

but refrained myself because peer review is supposed to be anonymous.

Continue to refrain yourself. You can certainly say that you are familiar with the work of somebody else -- published articles can be read by anyone, after all -- but openly declaring that you were one of the reviewers would not add anything to the discussion and could put you in an awkward situation, if the authors haven't actually liked your review.

I work in a narrow field where almost all of the authors know each other and where it is not so difficult to guess who the reviewers are, also because journals ask the authors to suggest possible reviewers. These authors collaborate quite frequently, but I've never heard of anyone disclosing their role.


Should I quit a PhD with little supervision at a prestigious university and start a new PhD? I am a second year PhD student studying at a prestigious university in the UK. My main supervisor recruited me 2 years ago just because he is interested in my field and hopes to develop a new direction for his research center. I have 3 supervisors but none of them has expertise in my current field. In fact, their fields are quite different from mine (in totally different disciplines) and consequently they cannot give effective supervision on my PhD research. For example, when I present my research they usually just say my research is good without any useful technical suggestions. In addition, my main supervisor and third supervisor meet me for supervision meeting every 3-6 months, and my second supervisor meets with me every 2 weeks.
I don't think I get enough supervision during my PhD studies (my fellow students seem to meet with their advisors once a week), and so I am thinking about starting a new PhD at another university which is strong in my field but not as reputable as my current university.
However, my parents (who are funding me) do not agree on this. They mainly care about the reputation of my current university and the diploma I get rather than the little supervision. I am quite confused about this. Considering my future plan is to work in academia, should I quit my current PhD and start a new PhD in this case?

For PhD supervisors, an ideal outcome of a PhD trajectory is that the student learns to independently generate good research ideas, and perform solid investigation of those ideas following the tenets of the scientific method. Ideally, this results in several top-level publications, co-written by the student and the supervisors.
You describe (including information from the comments) how you independently generated a good research idea, and managed to get its investigation published as a journal paper. If I were your supervisor, I would be happy with your progress. In fact, if I were your supervisor, I would be very reluctant to start rocking the boat: why would I interfere in something that is progressing nicely? You are achieving what you are supposed to achieve. It would be very silly of me to attempt to change the current situation: if I start micromanaging a productive PhD student, this may demotivate the student and harm productivity, which is the opposite of what I want.
Your post clearly indicates that you expect more from your supervisors. It is important to explore that; you owe it to yourself to make the most of your PhD trajectory. But I cannot see from your post exactly what is missing. You write that you expect "useful technical suggestions on the research", but if your research gets published, what technical suggestions are there to be made? I think it would be prudent if you ask yourself precisely what it is that you are missing, because if you can formulate this precisely, you might also be able to communicate to your supervisors clearly what you expect them to additionally contribute.


Is there Visiting Administrator in academia? I am event manager in our university. I see that academics are very mobile through visiting scholar plans. I wonder if you have every seen mobility of university administrators?

I am very interested to go and voluntarily work in the event office of another university to earn new experiences.

Before contacting some universities to see if they have such possibility, I wanted to hear from people here, if it is a feasible and common idea or ridiculous one.

The term you might be looking for is secondment.

To quote one example university (Macquarie University policy):

  Secondment: an arrangement made with the mutual consent of the
  supervisor and staff member, where a staff member is released under
  specific agreed arrangements to work in another area within the
  University or with another organisation for a specific period of time.

  A secondment arrangement may be made in the following circumstances:

  within the University (internal secondment)
  to an external organisation (external secondment)
  from an external organisation (external secondment)

Thus, you may want to search your university for a similar policy.


Did my professor properly accommodate my disability? In August, I had surgery and shortly thereafter started chemotherapy. Despite being sick, I was only enrolled in 8 credit hours and felt I would be able to handle it. (I did very well in my other classes.)

There was a period shortly after the start of the semester where I got sick from the medication and had a really rough time with homework. I filed for accommodations with the disability coordinator at the school.

I turned in a take-home exam a day late and two homework assignments late. There was no penalty on the exam, but one assignment was reduced by 75% (it was not graded, I just received a flat 25%) and the other was reduced by 50%. I was also yelled at by the professor and had to beg him to take the exam (I was actually in tears saying, "I'm begging you" even though university policy mandated he accept the exam.)

I withdrew from the chemotherapy as a result and my coursework grades significantly improved. However, due to some assignments and an exam being cut from the syllabus, I was unable to recover my grade from the early bit of the semester.

He argues that he felt I was apathetic to the assignments, I did not alert him of my disability, and that he accommodated me by grading the assignments. However, I contacted him early on several times regarding this, but I didn't learn until later that he doesn't read emails (per university policy.)

The disability coordinator made the professor aware and made several attempts to contact him when he was unresponsive to her emails and phone calls. He eventually responded to a letter he received via campus mail. In addition, I attempted to contact him via email. He eventually approached me and expressed that he felt I was apathetic about the assignments.

If my assignments had been graded, I highly doubt I would have received 100% on them. I do feel I performed on par with the others I turned in.

As a side note, he accepted late work with no penalty from other students, but their work was less late than mine.

I contacted the Dean of Students, but unfortunately, the best option is to appeal the grade. The chair contacted the professor multiple times, but the professor maintains he was fair.

My question: Did my professor properly accommodate me? I don't feel as such, but he feels he did. How do I know if he did?

What do I do going forward? It's a really small school and he’s telling everyone how frustrated he his about my complaint, so I feel like even with having submitted a complaint that I've burned a lot of bridges there. I'm a senior and my last course would be with this same professor.

I'm sorry you were ill.  "Extra time" usually means that one has additional time to complete an exam.  For example a student with accommodation might have to take a final exam on the same day as her colleagues, but might have three hours instead of two to complete the exam.

At the two institutions where I've taught, there's a very formal process for notifying professors of accommodations, in which the professor actually signs for having received a copy of the accommodation letter.  I can't tell whether that was at work in your case.

The disability coordinator at your school is the one person who should know exactly what accommodations you were offered.  Your next step should be to see the disability coordinator, explain what happened, and ask whether you were treated according to the agreed accommodation.  If you were not, then either the disability coordinator will work through this or you can use the disability coordinator's statement in your grade appeal.

If you were granted the accommodations the school prescribed, probably you should file that grade appeal anyway, but do not be too hopeful.

I wish you the best of luck in your academic career and in your health.  I haven't read "How to pass organic chemistry" yet, but I will.


What does one do if one receives a less prestigious offer while waiting for a decision on a more prestigious one? Alice (for argument's sake) is a postdoc in maths in an Australian University, but did her PhD in Europe. She is making two applications for funding. The first is to funding scheme A in her home country, the second is to funding scheme B in Australia. Scheme A is less prestigious and is worth less money than Scheme B. Alice's preferences are obvious: she prefers B to A, and A to whatever her next best option is.

Applications for Scheme A are due in November, the outcome is declared in April, the position begins in October. Applications for Scheme B are due in March, and the outcome is declared in November, the position begins in January. The application to Scheme A must be declared in the application to Scheme B. And, should Alice be accepted by Scheme A, she would have to notify Scheme B before they have made a decision on her application.

Question: Suppose Alice is offered Scheme A, how does she indicate this to Scheme B without prejudicing the outcome? Assume that Alice is willing to resign from Scheme A, say after six months or a year. Assume further that Alice stands a reasonable chance in both schemes. There is no guidance online about how this situation is resolved by the funding body for Scheme B.

TL;DR: What does one do if one receives a less prestigious offer while waiting for a decision on a more prestigious one?

Alice should tell scheme B something like "I have won competition A, which shows that I am very well qualified for B."

I do not see how winning A can be all that bad for Alice unless A requires her to commit to stay for some period.  In any case, I think she should remember how fortunate she is to have A.


My co-authors want to remove my name from manuscript because I am "not in science anymore," how to correct this? Two years back, was working as an research associate then have to leave the lab due to some family issues. My work was significant enough to be included in the manuscript and I was told that my experimental results will be a part of the manuscript and I will be coauthor in the paper.

Time has passed, the paper was rejected, revised and submitted. Now, the paper is again in communication, and I am being told, that as I am not in science anymore, my name is being dropped from the paper. I am trying to contact them but they are not responding. I am very much in science, but have taken a break. What should I do, if my name is removed from the paper?

Authorship wars are common and they suck. I suggest you discuss your plans to reach out to the journal editor with the primary PI, maybe they can change their mind. I don't know what being in science or not has anything to do with your contribution being ignored but I would understand an argument that suggests a ton of work has been done since you left to bring the paper to publication.


Is it ethical to ask colleagues to write a review of my book? I have published a monograph and now would like to see it reviewed by a/some journal(s) in the field. Given that there are many other books they could publish a review on, they might not find a reviewer who is interested (I have already contacted them).

So I was thinking of asking a colleague to review the book (I have collaborated with him in the past, but we're not at the same institution). Is this ethical? Presumably he would be somewhat less likely to voice criticism than someone who doesn't know me personally. (Although this criterion would exclude a whole lot of people)

In the book fields I am familiar with there are two types of reviews. The first is the traditional peer review which is used to help decide if something is publishable. The second type of review, which I think you are asking about here, is a summarizing review.

Finding peer reviewers to judge the if a book should be published should be left up to the editor. If the editor asks for suggested reviewers, you should provide suggestions. In this case, having previously collaborated with the colleague, the editor may see this as a conflict of interest. If you suggest your colleague, you should be upfront about the prior collaboration

For reviews that summarize the work, if you know a publisher that takes unsolicited reviews, and you want a review there, then it is fine to ask people you know if they would be willing to write a review. Knowing, and even being friendly with, someone is not generally considered a conflict of interest. The issue is that the person you want to ask is a former collaborator. This might be seen as a conflict of interest. You can still ask the colleague and mention that you do not see the prior collaboration as a conflict of interest. You might want to suggest the collaboration check with the publisher prior to writing the review.