How to visit an institute when looking for job?

Although many academics are not quite happy with the bureaucratic difficulties and delays caused by their HRs, HR departments exist not without a purpose. In the UK, the academic jobs should be advertised publicly and the appointment should be made on the base of merit according to pre-specified person criteria.
If Dr Who uses his personal relations, or secret charms to persuade a PI to hire them, the following chain of event happen:

The post is created and formally advertised
100+ candidates submit their applications explaining how they fit the person specification criteria
Someone (an academic or HR or both) pre-screens applications and compose a short list
Candidates from the short list are invited to travel down to the University for an interview
Everyone is rejected, Dr Who is hired.

Before answering the "howto" question, please consider, if you think the whole process is fair to everyone involved, especially to other candidates?

Regarding your question, if a stranger enters my workplace "spontaneously", and demands my time and attention, I will probably feel uncomfortable. Some people may find this intrusive -- for the record, I am one of them. There are clear instructions on how to submit a job application, and "walk into the lab out of sudden" is rarely on this list.

However, it may be a good idea to introduce yourself politely to the potential PI. Usual rules apply here: it is better to send an email first, explaining your reasons and motivation clearly. If your potential PI is considering hiring new lab members, they will engage in discussion with you, invite you to visit them, and work out further steps to get you on board.


Should I add past full time experience for internship

Yes definitely. There is no doubt in mentioning the past experience. Even company s providing the internship also look for such candidates with some prior experience in their respective field. It will enables you to stand apart from the crowd and you could impress employer with such resumes. You dont need to describe the experience briefly as it is a resume.


Academic job in country B, family in country A. Impact on work/life balance

What a massive decision you have to face and I don't envy the decision you have to make.

I don't think there is any magic formula for this and comparing the situations of other couples is a moot point; it's comparing apples and oranges. If you both believe its the best thing for you to take this job then there's no reason why you can't make this work, in the short term.

Have you discussed what the plan is further down the road? Would there be any suggestion of your family moving to country B when the children get to the end of their primary education and are starting secondary school? At roughly 10 years old, they're still very much young enough to make the move without worrying about them making new friends and learning the language (if that's an issue), kids are very adaptable in these situations.

Beyond just your family, what about you? You'll be alone in a new country with your family over a thousand miles away? Skype and regular messaging may seem like it'll help but at the end of the day, and I don't mean to bum you out, you will be on your own the majority of the time.

I hope it works out for you regardless of your decision!


How to advertise the grad course that you teach?

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.


An increasing number of publishers are making their citations open. When this happens, you can get them from the Crossref REST API.

This query lists all of the DOIs for which you can get the references, currently 20,455,807

http://api.crossref.org/works?filter=reference-visibility:open,has-references:true

Here's an example lookup. Look in the "reference" field:

http://api.crossref.org/works/10.1179/1942787514y.0000000039

You can also look at the Initiative for Open Citations and OpenCitations.net.

(I work for Crossref)


With what style should I write to a Board Of Examiners?

There are a number of comments on here regarding your use of intensifiers in the example sentences. Overall, I would avoid these because, while this is an emotional issue for you, it is unlikely to be for the Board of Examiners. It is important to present a "face" that is perceived as rational and objective, not overly emotional or making excuses. I have personally found that becoming emotional while trying to assert my needs has generally ended up undermining my goal (whether or not this SHOULD be the case is another issue entirely, particularly in the case of physical or mental illness when one has not as many resources to advocate for oneself).

That said, wherever possible, try to replace "empty" sentences with examples. For instance, instead of "this process took very long," quantify how long it took. Instead of "despite my best attempts," describe in detail these attempts. Instead of "I really attempted to avoid," describe the measures that you took to avoid [whatever thing]. Perhaps this is the scientist in me talking, but I always feel factual details are the most convincing.


What is the usual process for a paper after getting accepted? Can you still make edits for readability?

Depending on the journal, one of two things may happen after acceptance:

For many journals, once the paper is accepted, that's the last time you touch it: at that point, the journal staff stick it into the production queue and in a few months it appears in a new issue with page numbers and citation information added.
For some "fancier" journals, the production staff does more extensive reformatting to make the paper look pretty and copyediting the text to correct such minor errors and make sure everything is in conformance with all of the journal's preferences for style.  In this case, you will work with the production staff on the final proofs, approving the copyedits they make, and may be able to insert a few minor changes (but generally just wording, not substantive technical changes).

This is further complicated by the fact that some journals now have an "Articles ASAP" or "Just Accepted" publication, which puts a preprint online before copyediting (flaws and poor formatting and all), and only later replaces it with a final version.

Bottom line: unless you know the journal does copyediting and has no "Just Accepted" stage, you should correct all of the flaws you notice now.


Maybe, maybe not. One can not say for sure. This depends on the particular programs you apply, on your luck and also the rest of your application (publications, recommendation letters and so on).

However, if I understand this correctly, you already received the bad grades. So if you want to study in the USA, just apply - you can (probably) not change anything anymore. You will see if they accept you or not and this matters more than the opinions of the people in this forum.

Welcome, by the way.


Will it affect my academic career if I leave my PhD programme in the middle?

Such things depend more on why you leave rather than just the fact that you do. If you establish a poor record then it is harder to get in to another program.
But it also depends on where you want to study and the nature of the program that you enter. Some programs give you some room and time to catch up with missed knowledge and some programs provide an especially supportive environment for students.
However, at some level, nearly every student is in your situation at some point. Starting research on a narrow but deep problem can leave you a bit lost for a while until you get all of the very specific background needed to go deeper.
But if the alternative for you is to not try, then that alone will negatively affect your career also. And even taking a gap to "catch up" can be good or bad, depending on what you do with the time and how you can verify that you've made necessary progress.
The advice for nearly every student is to just do it and do your best.


Guides for being an independent/freelance researcher?

By being an independent/freelance researcher I will assume you mean being a researcher not affilated to academia or working at a research center.

First thing you shall consider is access to research sources. For example in academia you have acess to the university library, journal subscriptions paid by the university, laboratory facilities etc. Same goes for working as a full-time researcher for a national research center or a large corporation.

Additionaly, getting funding for your research(by the government) is harder if you are an independent researcher and easier if you are at university or a corporation.

In my opinion the best case would be to fund a company which offers products/services related to your type of research (e.g if your research interests are in statistics you would consider consulting, software, visualization tools etc.) and invest a percent of your income to your research.

Of course in that case you would not be an "independent" researcher. You would still be affilated to your company, which is acceptable. Every corporation, multi-national or relatively small invests time and money in research.

You may also consider checking the following questions of SE:

Applying for research funding as an independent researcher

Can I work as a freelance researcher?


If you want to prove that you read a paper, you should read it carefully by analyzing the main results and identify the contribution. You should also understand why a hypothesis is made and whether if it is optimal or not. Sometimes you might find some errors or improve some results. In this way, you can prove that you truly read a research paper.


Should I write IEEE membership in my CV?

Many CVs have a section for professional society memberships.  Mere membership doesn't necessarily convey a significant distinction, but it does say which groups you have chosen to invest in affiliating with and which judge you to qualify.

For the IEEE in particular, it actually does have fairly strict membership qualifications.  Most people cannot qualify for IEEE membership, but pretty much any practitioner of the field can, because that is what it is designed to select for.  Thus, putting an IEEE membership in your professional society memberships section of your CV is entirely appropriate.


NWO Veni grant application: domein-overschrijdend or humanities?

Three years ago, the Veni award report listed the applications and awards per domain

In that year, there is no significant difference between the success chance in the SGW domain and DO-applications.

In the two years since (2016 and 2017), the report does not list comparable figures. (The 2016 report lists awardees by field, but not the corresponding number of applicants per field.) But for 2017, the Vidi awards are represented by the table. Comparing the success rate A Fisher exact test gives a p-value of 0.0675, so this still does not necessarily imply a bias in favour of DO-applications.

The data tentatively suggests that the targeted domain does indeed not make an a-priori difference for the success of an application.


Research on technology enhanced learning?

Yes, of course there is serious research on this and I invite you to search it out. But I will speak only from my long (45 years) of experience.

Flash will catch their interest and might make them cheer, but it won't teach them much of anything. What the instructor does in the classroom is far less important than what the student does on her/his own and in collaboration with other students.

It is practice and feedback that teaches you. There is an interesting book, The Art of Changing the Brain that explains why this is. In order to learn, it is necessary to actually re-wire the brain: changing the synaptic connections between neurons - physical changes. That doesn't happen instantaneously (practice) and learning can go wrong if we reinforce the wrong things (feedback).

I've had the following experience and so have many others. I give a lecture and walk out feeling terrible. I made a mistake. I stumbled over something that should have been simple. I struggled to find my way back to a better place and finally ended with something sensible. A failed lecture.

But then the students I meet in the hallway tell me what a great lecture it was. In fact, I showed them the struggle we must go through to come to something like the truth.

I've also had the opposite experience. In teaching statistics I wanted students to have a clear idea about sampling and how means of samples relate to the overall mean of the population. I created the absolutely perfect lecture. It was logically flawless and exceedingly interesting. It used a special trick so that students weren't likely to confuse the two uses of the word "mean" in sampling. I was damn brilliant.

But, of course, the universal response from the students was "Huh?".

Be aware that as a teacher, your students are unlike you. The exception would be if you are teaching doctoral students. They are likely to be a lot like you, but the others are not. Everyone learns differently, but few - vanishingly few - learn from seeing something once, no matter how brilliant.

The different "learning modalities" are quite distinct and not shared by many. You need different ways to approach the material you are teaching so that different people can relate to it. Some will do with reading, others seeing, others hearing, etc.

But all need reinforcement and feedback. Students need practice and reflection on that practice.

My mantra as a teacher was "It doesn't matter what I, the teacher, do. It only matters what you, the student, do." Maybe not absolutely accurate, of course, but a good philosophy for students to have.

If they don't work as hard at learning as a skilled athlete does at their sport, they aren't going to excel.


Is there a difference between "in review" and "under review"

A wild guess, but since you just submitted it, maybe it means that the editor/staff is checking to see if the paper fits the theme of the journal.


Professor has no interest in the topic of my research proposal

Yes, of course you can ask. And, depending on his personality and yours, you might be successful or not. Be prepared for the "not", I guess. But you would be wise to give some deep thought to his suggestions, since he likely has more experience at this stuff than you do.
And one of the things you can ask about is why the professor doesn't advise you to follow up on your own plan. There might be some unstated reasons - though such things should be made plain. I think he owes you that much, at least.
But the best you can probably hope for is to be allowed to follow up on your own idea but with little help or guidance. If you are really new at this, then that guidance might be invaluable.
And fighting with professors seldom leads to successful outcomes.


Can you do research in same field as your diploma and another field at the same time?

I'm doing my diploma as an electrical engineer and I will start a phd in operations research. So that's possible.

I think it is a lot about what skills you bring. At first, which skills can be useful for the institution where you gonna start. Also the question is, if your skills are enough for your special phd topic...

If you are a pure mathematican with no skills whatsoever in XML that would be hard. But if you attained some skills in XML on your "pure mathematics" path, it may be possible.


If I withdraw my published paper from an SCI journal (Elsevier publisher) due to some conflicting issues; will it appear online after the withdrawal?

I think the most common practice is keeping your article online with a notice that it has been retracted. You can search for retracted articles to see examples for this situation or Retraction watch.


Can contacting a search committee for questions about the position hurt your chances?

It is hard to be definitive here, but I don't think the questions you are suggesting will help and might hurt. They are questions about the "candidate" (i.e. you) not about the position. (See the last paragraph here, however.)

On the other hand, my opinion is that a true question about the position and the department in which it is being offered are appropriate. Questions like "Are there frequent/regular seminars attended by faculty and advanced students?" Or: "Do students have an opportunity for independent study and do they take advantage of it?" Here you are asking about the environment of the job itself.

If you have to ask the questions you list, it would be better (opinion again) if you ask them of some higher level authority than the hiring department or the chair of the committee.

However, if a problem arises in your application in which you have a serious need to know the answer, then, yes, ask it. If you already have a problem then you need a resolution.


Is it okay to share work submitted for undergraduate assessment online?

Although your intent is benign, you ought to consult this with your department, specifically the course instructor and the department head regarding this matter.  With their permission sought out, this would make a pretty good impact on your visibility.


Is there a way I can find out why I didn't get a certain academic position?

You haven't said how many applications you've submitted or whether you've had any interviews.  It's possible that you're just being unrealistic about how many applications it will take to obtain a position.

In the US, employers are reluctant to say anything about why an applicant was rejected because of the possibility that this information will be used against the employer in a lawsuit.  It's likely that the faculty involved in the hiring decision will be under instructions to not say anything about why applicants weren't chosen.

Furthermore, even if you could get one of them to talk off the record, the likely reason would be something like "other applicants were slightly stronger or were better fits for our needs."  The reason for this is that the academic job market in most fields is extremely competitive for job seekers, and thus most positions attract many (dozens or even hundreds) of very well qualified applicants.  You should not expect that your application will have better than a 1 in 20 chance of being selected for an interview.

If you're making to the interview stage but haven't gotten any offers, then it's possible that your performance in the in-person interviews has hurt your chances of getting the job.  However, you shouldn't conclude that until you've had several interviews with no offers.


Is it a good idea to upload rejected papers in arXiv?

Yes, you should upload them.

If you think the works are good and worth reading, but don't see a good opportunity to publish them in a journal or at a conference, then the arXiv is the way to go. Actually, many people have unpublished manuscripts and even some influential work only exists as technical report or preprint. It's not uncommon.

If it would be worth it to pursue "real publication" is a different question...


There are no "tricks", and everybody has a way that works best for them. This often involves revising the text many times. A few tips many people agree on are:

Start with the easier parts (often the methods section if there is one).
Put the paper away for a few days, then read it as if you were a reader instead of the author.
Don't make complex or long sentences, unless you are really skilled at doing so.
Get help from co-workers: let them read your paper and take their comments into account. Iterate until convergence is reached.
People often refer to the text by Vernon Booth about academic writing. It is old but still full of great advice (just ignore the bits about typewriters).

Writing well often takes many years of practice as well as lots of reading. It helps to read both well-written scientific articles (and identify why they are so well-witten), badly written ones (and identify why they are not so nice to read), and also literature (books): the latter are written by the real experts: writers.

Writing is also a talent that is not given to everybody. Don't take this the wrong way, but it is very well possible to be an excellent mathematician or computer scientist without being a good writer. A possible solution could be to focus on your research and ask for help to write or revise your papers before sending them in: you don't have to do everything on your own, and there is no shame in asking for help from your colleagues or supervisor in writing the paper. Some universities even have dedicated "scientific writers" to help researchers write their papers.


How does Google Search know which paper you have cited?

It seems to me that if this was an automated process, then Google would have to keep track of every single new paper which has been published

Yes, this is exactly how Google does it. They crawl the web anyway, and if they find something that looks like an academic paper, they add it to their special Google Scholar index. Extracting citations from PDFs is technically not easy, but not something that is a big barrier if you have the manpower and years of experience in information retrieval like Google does.

As for how they get access to IEEE etc. - this is to the best of my knowledge not disclosed. Maybe they are just paying for institutional access like everybody else, maybe they get free access from the content providers so that they can build up their index.


I've collected years of data using a defective piece of equipment. How to salvage my thesis and graduate?

I'm afraid there's no magic bullet here; all you can do is proceed as transparently and reasonably as possible.
First, present clearly the proof that the machine was broken. After years of debate about whether the machine was broken, your committee has probably stopped following the interminable discussion. So, you should explain very clearly and unambiguously that the debate is over and the machine really was broken.
After establishing that, I think the main question you should be prepared to address is: why did it take you years to notice that the equipment was broken? Naively, it seems like you should have done calibration runs in the first few days and identified/fixed the problem right at the beginning. Clearly that didn't happen here, so you should proactively and clearly explain why not. Hopefully there is a good technical reason (e.g., there is no way to calibrate this equipment) rather than just a mistake on your part.
Third, consider whether there is scientific value in the procedure you eventually followed to diagnose the faulty equipment. If identifying the problem was not trivial, it follows logically that your successful diagnosis is a significant step. You want to find the right balance: don't inflate your achievement or gloss over any mistakes, but at the same time, don't sell yourself short.
Finally, you should definitely discuss this with your committee in advance. If your professor wants you to graduate, you will probably pass your defense. Still, your defense is not good to surprise anyone. Since you have firm time/budget constraints, any potential issues or objections should be identified as early as possible.


Literature searches in publications when you have limited access to journals

You have several options - but they'll all take a bit more time. For one, check if your university can get access to articles "on loan" which usually just means another university sends you the pdf. Alternatively, check the corresponding authors university website. Often, they'll put their publications there, or on researchgate. Finally, if you can't find it via other methods, just email the corresponding author. A quick email letting them know you want to cite their work, but your university doesn't have access to the journal/book, and they'll usually be more than happy to email it to you (we all want to increase our citation counts!).


If this is a published with some legitimate publisher, then contacting the publisher and pointing out that you never consented to being named as an author on that paper should suffice. The publication record should be amended, and the paper probably be withdrawn.

If this is not published with a legitimate publisher, the strategy above might fail. You can try to threaten to sue them, but ultimately the most you can reliably do is to put a disclaimer on your homepage.

This could take a form like "It has come to my attention that the publication XXX lists me as a coauthor. I have not been involved in this project / not consented to the final form (pick as appropriate). The publisher YYY has been informed of this on DATE and is yet to take action. (you should probably give the publisher a few weeks to react before putting this up).


Do professors like answering questions from non-students/private citizens?

As in general, people are typically happy to be asked to exercise/express their expertise on the things they've worked their whole lives to understand.

But/and the most expert people are very busy, working on moving forward in that.

So their time is very valuable.

So an email response is much preferred, typically. The email back-and-forth, to arrange a physical meeting, is not preferred...

And if I, for one, found out that my opinion as a professional whatever was just supposed to be one vote out of some larger number... for the potentially misguided project of an amateur... I'd most likely not agree to spend the time. It's disrespectful, whatever you feel about that, for non-experts to think that the time of experts is at their disposal in this way, for free, etc. Be serious.

Many academics are kind and generous, but like to have just a token of respect and appreciation (rather than big bucks).


How often are poster presentations rejected from conferences?

In my field (Electrical Engineering), poster and oral presentations are usually accompanied by a full paper submission (or atleast an extended abstract) which is what is peer-reviewed, so the acceptance ratio of posters would be the same as that of the oral presentations.


Is Scientometrics a scientific discipline?

Scientometrics is a science to the extent that it applies the scientific method to a field of inquiry. Researchers in this area formulate questions and conceptualize existing problems (e.g., “in these times of scarcity, the public wants research to be efficient: how can we measure this?”), they make hypotheses, make predictions, gather data to test them, analyze the data and prove or disprove their hypotheses.

Regarding “what do we scientifically learn from scientometrics?”, well, there are plenty of established results (you can find some on wikipedia), but I'll use one recent paper from Scientometrics which highlights what this field can bring us:

  Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries
  D. Fanelli, Scientometrics 2012, 90, 891–904

This one was really an eye-opener for me, on a phenomenon which I always supposed existed, but it was nice to see it backed by hard data. Other examples include:

  Physical and economic bias in climate change research: a scientometric study of IPCC Third Assessment Report
  A. Bjurström and M. Polk, Climatic Change 2011, 108, 1–22

  Language biases in the coverage of the Science Citation Index and its consequences for international comparisons of national research performance
  T. N. van Leeuwen, H. F. Moed, R. J. W. Tijssen, M. S. Visser, A. F. J. van Raan, Scientometrics 2001, 51, 335–346

I'll finish with a personal opinion: while I am annoyed, as most people, with the emphasis currently given on bibliometrics in the evaluation of research and research projects, I think scientometrics in general has an important role to play, just like related fields such as studies on ethics of research: better understanding the positive and negative implications of the way we currently do science is healthy (the meta-level of research).


Awesome papers that were initially rejected?

I'm not sure if this counts, but Edward Jenner's original paper on smallpox vaccination was rejected by the Royal Society.

  In 1797, Jenner sent a short communication to the Royal Society describing his experiment and observations. However, the paper was rejected. Then in 1798, having added a few more cases to his initial experiment, Jenner privately published a small booklet entitled An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire and Known by the Name of Cow Pox (18, 10). The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia; Jenner decided to call this new procedure vaccination. The 1798 publication had three parts. In the first part Jenner presented his view regarding the origin of cowpox as a disease of horses transmitted to cows. The theory was discredited during Jenner's lifetime.

Reference: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/


Prof disagrees with assigned textbook regarding an exam question

Do professors have an obligation to recognize the assigned textbook as an authority in the context of the course?

No, there is no such obligation.  It's a bad educational practice to choose a textbook that's seriously unreliable, but even good textbooks slowly go out of date, and they sometimes have a lack of detail or even outright errors as well.  It's important for professors to try to be clear about any deficiencies the textbook has, for example by highlighting them in class.  I provide a written list of any typos or other issues I am aware of (although I note that of course there may be others as well).  However, there is no obligation to accept the textbook's version as a correct answer, and there are no specific rules about how things must be brought to the students' attention.  It's entirely up to the lecturer's discretion.

I would expect that many professors would be more flexible or accommodating than what happened in this instance, but not all of them.  At least in the sort of universities I'm familiar with (in the U.S.), there's no way an administrator will change the grade under these circumstances if the faculty member who assigned it is unwilling to do so.

On the other hand, it's not clear to me from what you say whether this person is a regular faculty member (due to the lack of a Ph.D.).  If you are dealing with a teaching assistant, it could be worth asking the professor in charge of the whole course.  This will probably upset the TA, but it might work (since the professor will want to maintain common policies among all the TAs assigning grades).  Other than that, I don't see any recourse.

Added in light of Pete Clark's answer: I'm assuming your answer is definitely wrong.  I.e., either the textbook had an error in it or it's out of date regarding a clear scholarly consensus.  On the other hand, if you can make a case that your answer is actually correct or accepted by serious researchers (not just that the textbook says it, but that authoritative and up to date scholarly sources agree), then you've got more of a basis for disputing the grade.


Should I notify competing researchers that I am working on the same problem?

Norms on this probably vary between fields (not to mention between individuals in a given field). In my corner of theoretical physics it's not uncommon for people who know that another group is working on a similar problem to check in with each other on the status of the project and, if they are at similar stages, to coordinate posting papers on arXiv simultaneously so that no one scoops the other. This also has the advantage of helping to publicize the result--if someone skimming new articles notices that two or even three groups have put out papers on the same topic at the same time, it can attract more attention than the papers may have if they were spread out.

It has also been my experience that even when two groups are doing roughly the same thing at the same time, and even when the results have some overlap, they typically end up with different perspectives and some amount of complementarity. Sometimes the results even have no direct overlap but, taken together, build a stronger case. So I would generally not stop working on something just because someone else is, even if I know or suspect that they're farther along.


Status of submitted paper changed - why?

What could be the reason for that step back in terms of statuses?

Without knowing the journal in detail, there is no way to know. Based on the names of the statuses, it seems possible that the editor has previously asked a few reviewers, but too many declined and the editor is now again on the hunt for more reviewers. This is not at all uncommon, and says nothing about the quality of your paper. Based on personal experience, at least 50% of all review requests are declined, and that is for reviewers that I know personally. When I have to ask reviewers that I as an editor do not personally know, the acceptance rate for reviews is closer to 20%.

That being said, for many submission systems the various author-visible statuses are just not very useful. I suggest you stop checking the status of your paper in the system and instead wait for mail from the editor.

  (I always thought that if somebody declines to review the paper for some reason, then it will be rejected?)

No, why would this be? Reviewers have not actually read the paper when they decline the review. And, as I said above, many or most review requests are declined, usually because the prospective reviewer simply does not have the time.


Is it appropriate to attend a friends' dissertation defense/FPO (USA)?

Traditionally (i.e. several hundred years of tradition) these things are public. Intentionally so. I urge you to go, or at least ask your friend whether they would object - which they should not.

In fact other students in the department should probably also attend, just to get a sense of the sorts of things that get asked.

My own final act as a student was called a Dissertation Defense, not an oral exam, but anyone on the committee could ask any question, even quite off the wall questions. But no one did that. I remember the room as being quite full with lots of professors and even more students. I don't recall whether the rules permitted the public to ask questions, but that is sometimes allowed as well.

The candidate is expected to say sensible things, but not necessarily to provide an answer to every question posed. But think of it more as a sharing of new ideas with the community than a grilling. If grilling was needed it probably already took place in private oral exams covering some aspect of the field of study.

There are a few horror stories about people not getting their degree because of their (lack of) performance at such things. Some of them involve questions by out-of-field committee members that are a feature in some places. But the sorts of questions they are likely to ask are necessarily elementary and it is a real failure to not be able to respond sensibly.


It might be somewhat controversial for some here, but I don't think there is any one course that you should take in order to get in a particular graduate program. The reason behind my statement is that I believe the logic presented in the OP is rather backwards; one usually pursues graduate studies in a particular field that s/he is knowledgeable and interested in. In other words, you get your undergrad and Masters, and based on what you know and like, you apply to PhD programs in fields where you are competent. The other way around (deciding on a PhD program without have the undergrad and masters done, and choosing courses based on the desired PhD program) does not make much sense, in my humble opinion.

Also consider that "a PhD in pure/applied maths" is really ill-defined. I can think of a hundred different projects that would have different requirements, with regards to previous courses. I would recommend deciding on a specific subject that you find interesting e.g. "elliptic curve cryptography" or "convex optimization" etc (not just pure/applied math).. then look for announced PhD programs based on projects focused on these subjects of interest.

All that being said; I would think  advanced level courses in matrix theory (decompositions etc), functional and complex analysis, as well as  optimization theory would be useful in many different graduate programs at most maths departments.


Can we stop looking at recommendation letters and rely purely on "objective" measurements during the admission process?

The problem, in my experience in mathematics in the U.S., is that neither GPA nor GRE test/reflect what is of interest for graduate work in mathematics. So, for example, making the GRE more difficult wouldn't help anything. The point is that the modes of thought, the methodologies, the world views, that are successful for undergrads or course-based Master's students are really quite different from what is needed to do a PhD.

Of course, human beings seem to have an impulse to automate things, or make them formulaic, so that GPA and GRE have a tremendous appeal. The fact (in my observation over a few decades) that these are not good predictors of success in math grad school in the U.S. (after the first year or so) does not deter many people, who'd like things to be that simple.

That is, I think it is inconveniently the case that it is impossible to make "exams" that gauge what astute grad-program admissions committees want to know.

For postdocs and further faculty positions: to my perception, it is significantly more oppressive to have to impress journal editors and referees (who have other interests) than to impress relatively senior people in one's field. That is, the assumption that making a positive impression on senior people is a burden is missing the point. Sure, yes, it is a natural feeling, much like the reaction of teenagers to the "oppression" of their parents, but I think that senior professional academics are more competent in their roles than parents may be, statistically. No, that does not guarantee lack of bias.

As far as I understand it, in the U.S., the game is that one needs to make a good impression for a while, but, then, at a certain point, one has tenure, and, in mathematics, if one has not planned finances to depend on huge external income from grants, one can exercise one's own judgement.

The abstract-economic conflict is that there are far more people who'd like such situations than there are situations. How to decide? ...

EDIT: in light of the original questioner's comments below: the premise that grades reflect the seriousness of a student I think more reflects the assumption about what "serious" means. E.g., it is possible to very scrupulously follow instructions, and to pay careful attention to what will optimize one's grade, without caring at all about the subject of a course. And, in many math courses, the "assigned problems" (from traditional textbooks) are substantially a caricature of what the subject truly is. Often, artificial makework, to fulfill the mythical need for "lots of problems". So I am not particularly interested in performance in regard to such.

There is also the implicit premise that "mathematics is obviously objective". In a certain sense, this is relatively true, but the question really should be about good mathematics. That is, (logical) correctness is not the highest virtue, by any means. And not all details are of equal significance, by far.

So, to my mind, capacity to see a larger picture and infer wise actions from it is a very important thing to cultivate, for professional mathematicians. The basic stuff, in undergrad and beginning grad courses (in the U.S.) is so standard that there are many sources, and anyone who's interested can learn it from those sources. In particular, I tell my students to not over-invest in drilling themselves on things that in real life are easy look-ups. Rather, the general "physical" sensibility and context of questions is what one needs to reflect upon... not standard stuff. Knowing what is standard and what is not, not the power to reproduce it on command, is the desired skill.

And, so, again, performance in usual coursework or GRE and such really tells nothing about the future sensibilities of a student. Letters from astute mentors/advisors have a chance to do so.


Writing CV's for a "summer school" course

Of course I don't know anything about this particular course, but often, admission to summer school courses is not at all competitive, and there are seats (and sometimes funding) for more or less every serious student who shows interest.  (If it were competitive, I'd expect them to at least want a letter of recommendation.)

So basically your CV has to convince them of the following:

You are an actual grad student, and not some goofball trying to use them to get a visa.  So be sure to include your academic history (degrees and dates, honors if any) and the details of the program in which you are currently enrolled.  Definitely give your supervisor's name.
The course will be interesting and relevant to you.  Mention your areas of scientific interest (they should be at least tangentially related to the topic of the course).  List any relevant research projects, past or present, even if they are fairly minor.  Definitely include any published papers or conference presentations.
You have sufficient background to learn something from the course, and not get completely lost (getting a little bit lost is normal).  Briefly mention your GPAs and scholarships.  If it seems appropriate, list classes you have taken or books you have read that would prepare you for this course.


How to complete laboratory courses after building fire?

As an experimentalist myself, I feel strongly that that hands-on part of laboratory is an important part of the course, but ...

The students have presumably already done some of the planned hands on work, so option #3 would not be a total loss on this front.
Analysis of data is not generally the same as classroom problems, and is also an important part of the laboratory experience.

Toward that end I would suggest

Investigating option #2 vigorously in hopes of recreating or substituting for some part of the hands-on work that would otherwise be lost. Try to get all the students one more hands-on experience if at all possible.
Use option #3 to address the analysis skill you were hoping to teach. Give them not only the data, but the equipment, methods and technique parts of lab reports from previous students (be sure to get permission where this might be needed).
Use a library assignment to get them thinking about the skills they are not practicing. Perhaps assign them each to report (either a oral presentation or a paper) on the methods used to perform [some common analysis in your field] when that technique was new and the equipment was not as forgiving as today.

And declare it the best you can do under the circumstances.


I can't really address your individual program, but I can address online/part-time degrees in general, especially in the computer science field.
Specifically, when you receive a degree from these places, it does not read:
Online Master's in Computer Science
It reads the same as a normal Master's degree, whether or not you take it online. So if you're after the Master's Degree, there is no stigma just because you got it online, or part-time (which online-degrees are a subset of).
The degree you receive as a full-time graduate student versus as a part-time professional are equivalent, in that you have achieved Mastery in Computer Science.
That being said, what you do to achieve mastery are very different if you go through a full-time or part-time/online program. I don't believe any part-time degree has a requirement for a thesis or research (it may be optional, but I don't believe it is a popular avenue due to the situation of being a full-time professional taking up normal working hours).
For a Future in Industry: Yes
The classes provided at my Master's program covered software life cycles, enterprise development, and database management, which are practical skills used in the industry. Classes that would be more geared towards academia, such as those covering machine learning and quantum computing, were not normally taught. Most of the skills you develop will be industry-standard practices. In fact, about 90% of the technology I used in the Master's program, I am actively using at my current employment.
In most cases, our classes involved us building fully functional applications as if we were a start-up entity. Off the top of my head, I built a game of Clue, a database-driven MVA, and an e-commerce website.
As always, learning new things is a major component of advancing in the CS industry. From my personal experience, my Master's majorly accelerated my job growth.
For a Future in Academia: It Depends
If you're planning a career in academia, a part-time or online degree may not provide you the background in research that I would normally associate with academic work.
That being said, the avenue still allows you to teach as an adjunct professor at the very same institutions, if you so choose. Most of my professors were in industry and worked day jobs, and just taught for fun during nights.
One major caveat of an online degree compared to an in-person degree is that it may be more difficult for you to get a decent letter of recommendation for PhD work, in my opinion, if you take all your courses online, due to the lack of actual interaction with your professor. For this reason, I tried to take all of my courses in-person when possible. It's also been mentioned repeatedly that in-class work provides more focus to students, and students typically learn better in those environments.


Does taking an academic job in Asia or Africa make it difficult to get a job in the US or Europe later?

It's not a career killer, but it can make things more difficult.  If you are looking for research-oriented jobs, and are doing high-quality research, it should not make a difference (except in cases where your area is only popular in other countries).  What the other answers fail to mention, is that it can be a significant disadvantage applying to smaller/more teaching-oriented schools (e.g., most liberal arts colleges) from overseas.  Here are a few reasons:

Flying you in for interviews is more expensive.
Being able to teach well in the US system is important, and overseas applications tend to provide less evidence for this.
Many schools want to find candidates who specifically want to be at that institution, or at least are not likely to leave.  International applicants need to convince committees not just they want to move to the US, but would be happy at that specific school.
At least in my field, we are over-saturated with good domestic candidates, so search committees can afford to throw out applications for small concerns, like ones I mentioned above.

This is not to say it's impossible, it's just a somewhat harder.  In my field, where postdocs are common, my general advice to people who want permanent jobs in the US is to try to do their last postdoc in the US (or at least apply to US postdocs as a backup when applying for tenure-track positions).


Is there a preferred citation style for computer science papers?

Regarding your Q1: Both ACM and IEEE use citation style #1 -- "[1]", so it's safe to say that most readers of academic articles in CS are most familiar with that style.  Therefore, if you use style #1, your paper will look similar to most conference and journal articles in CS.

Regarding your Q2: it is my experience that citation style #3 -- "Smith (2015)" -- is most effective for the reader.  This opinion is shaped by my department -- Computational Social Science -- so I read a mix of papers from CS, Statistics, Social Science, Economics, and others.

My reason for favoring #3 is that it makes it easier to read the paper in line.  Having read many papers in a given field, I am familiar with the most cited and most seminal work.  If I see "Padgett and Powell (2012)", I immediately know what that reference is, or I can guess.  But if I see "[5]", it tells me nothing.  I have to go look at the reference list, then memorize that "[5]" stands for "Padgett and Powell (2012)" every time I see it.

But the nature of the discipline and the nature of the paper lead to some differences in the role citations serve in the text.  In Social Sciences in general, citations have a structural in the discourse in a field.  Citations often mark schools of thought, lines of argument, or research lenses.  In contrast, in Computer Science citations have a much more utilitarian function -- they point to papers that provide theoretical foundations, that attempted other approaches to the problem, that solved sub-problems, and so on.  In a way, these are the intellectual "bill of materials" for the research behind the CS paper.  The numbered references are sufficient for this, giving anyone pointers to the "bill of materials" should they need them.

Another justification for citation style #1 is to shorten the page count for papers.  In my opinion, this is less and less justified in an era where most people read papers electronically, not in print.


Do you necessarily need to wait one year before attending a PhD in the US?

In all phases of a US student's career, it is understood that many people will be applying based on their anticipated graduation date, rather than having already graduated.  Thus:

High school students apply for colleges in the fall, even though they won't graduate until the end of spring.
Undergraduates apply for graduate schools in the fall, even though they won't graduate until the end of spring.
Ph.D. candidates apply for postdoctoral positions the fall or early spring, even though they won't graduate until the end of spring.
Postdocs apply for faculty positions in the fall, even though they typically have contract commitments through the spring or summer.

This does leave a problem of what can happen if one fails to actually graduate as anticipated.  It is, however, generally the case that technically offers are made contingent on the current phase of one's career completing as anticipated.  Usually this is a fairly safe bet, since it is unlikely that a strong candidate will suddenly plunge in performance so badly that they cannot graduate.  In some cases, however, it will happen and in that case either:

The offering institution may with withdraw their offer, or
The offering institution may allow the candidate to defer for a year, or
The offering institution may allow the candidate to start anyway.

The second is much more likely to happen in cases where the unexpected failure to progress is due to external circumstances, such as serious illness or having a child, which would not cause an institution to reassess one's potential, and the third where everything is done except some final formalities (e.g., a graduate student has defended their thesis but starts a postdoc before depositing).
The chances also depend on the stage of one's career: there is often a great deal of flexibility for faculty start dates, for example, while postdocs are often tied to specific funding with a specific non-deferrable timeframe.


In the sciences, it is almost expected if you want to go into academia that you will do at least one postdoc.  (In some disciplines like astrophysics, you might even do more than one!)  There are a lot of different job boards out there for finding a postdoc, but your best source (assuming you are still on speaking terms) is your thesis advisor.  He/she will likely have friends and colleagues looking for a postdoc.  Those folks will then know the background you are coming from and likely put you on their short list.  Good luck!


How to impress a teacher so you can get a PH D despite bad qualifications?

Science isn't about groundbreaking discovery, those are sci-fi movies.

Real science is about boring consistency. You don't need to solve the Riemann hypothesis, you need to demonstrate you can churn out a few good enough papers a year with minimal supervision. Include some funding proposals in there, bam MVP :)

Unfortunately for you, grades are a reasonable proxy measure for boring consistency.  The reasoning being: good grades imply that you can understand new content and have the discipline to put the hours to get a decent grade doing boring work unrelated to your interests. So you would need to demonstrate with papers, which is significantly harder (and takes a while), and this idea will backfire if the papers aren't good enough...


How do I reference a conference paper that is due to be published later this year

Either "Accepted for Intl. Conf. on Whatever, 2018", or
"To appear in Proc. Intl. Conf. on Whatever, 2018", or
"Intl. Conf. on Whatever, 2018, to appear".


I want to transition from Mathematics to Computer Science for a PhD. Will post-baccalaureate studies in Computer Science help me?

What you can do is first complete a masters degree in CS and then transition to a PhD program. Some masters programs do not require a bachelor degree in CS, and you can get your degree in 1~2 years after completing all the necessary courses.

While doing your masters degree, you get to know the professors, learn about their projects and gauge your ability to launch a career in computer science. That's also a great opportunity for you to find out if there could be an advisor-student match that will materialize into a PhD thesis.

If you then manage to get into the PhD program in the same institution, you may be able to transfer the credits and take the preliminary exams right away. Speak to the Graduate Advisor to find out more.

Good luck!


Including reference writer titles in CV for jobs in academia

What's typical for CVs I've seen (in math, mostly in the US) is:

Not listing references
Listing names and affiliations, and possibly some basic professional information (contact info, job title/rank)

Honestly I don't remember much about what people exactly listed in 2 because 1 is much more common nowadays and I don't really pay attention to that section anyway.

Even if someone is not in my exact sub-field, if they're a big shot in a nearby area I've probably heard of them.  Or if I see they're at a top university or have some sort of distinguished professor demarcation on their letter, I'll guess that they are a top researcher.  Conversely, if no one reading your letters has heard of your letter writers, it's not going to make a difference if one of your references is a Fellow of Hoity-Toity Toithoiters.

So my suggestion is don't include such titles as (1) it's not standard (at least in my experience), and (2) it will start to look silly listing loads of titles for references.


As an undergrad student, what should I do after taking 2nd-year grad-level math courses?

From my personal experience it is unusual for undergrad students to have taken 16 math graduate courses while he/she is still in the junior year. What you have taken clearly exceeds the expectations of most graduate programs. If the professors who taught the classes think highly of you, that could be a strong selling point for your graduate school application. As for research experience, you may not want to take it too seriously as a budding mathematician. As Krantz explained in the book A Mathematician's Survival Guide (which, btw, is a book you may want to read):

  Mathematics is a bit different [than other natural sciences]. We don't use test tubes. The hard fact of life is that mathematics is a subject that builds vertically. You are not really qualified to do serious research - the sort of research that mathematicians actually do - until after you pass the qualifying exams.

So research experience is great in exposing you to the world of math research, but your coursework performance may be sufficient to get you to the graduate school you want to be. I think most graduate programs won't mind that you are graduating in three years as long as you complete the same workload as those who graduate in four years.

I should say that I'm not in a math PhD program; so take my advice with a grain of salt.


Is a cover letter required when enquiring about the potential to do a post doc in a lab when no position is advertised?

In my first post-doc currently - I sent a couple of solicitations out to some labs while applying to posted positions (one of which I got). Remember this - professors receive a dizzying amount of email in a given day; including a cover letter with your career goals, research interests, and a description of how those fit with the work of the lab you are seeking to join would likely go a long way in getting his/her attention. You don't want to end up in the numerous emails that go straight to the trash - show this potential employer how serious you are!


Can I ask my supervisor to let me graduate early?

Early graduation is often (usually?) possible, but only if you were quicker than other students with the necessary work, not as a way out if you don't like the program.

  Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.

I expect that this line of argumentation to have a very small chance of success. If your main argument to early graduation is that you hate the program and want to get out, they will likely suggest you to drop out. If you want to have any chance at early graduation, find out where the bar is (in terms of required research output and coursework) and work hard to fulfill it as soon as possible. Then discuss with your advisor that you wish to graduate as you have done the required work (not because you dislike the work).

Stay far away from any argument that you hope they will lower the bar for you because you do not enjoy working with them. This will not have the anticipated effect: instead it has a good chance of antagonizing your advisor, in that way lowering your chance of early graduation. And you will need their goodwill to graduate early and (realistically also to  graduate at all).


Can publishing good peer reviewed scientific articles be seen as a part of good academic record?

If you apply for a PhD position, and you already have articles that are published (or accepted for publication) in "high impact" journals or conferences, that is certainly a plus.

If you apply for a job, in many cases, the people who evaluate you have no appreciation of what academic research and publishing involves and what it means to have published. (Of course, there are many exceptions to this; such as highly technical engineering and science-related jobs.) However, they still might be impressed, so I would include it in my CV.


Does any publication venue make rejected papers available for download?

I do not know of any, and I can't imagine any that would. Typically, the journal would not have the copyright assignment until after they accepted, though I hear that some venues ask for this upfront. Additionally, this isn't really how academic publication is supposed to work. A rejection isn't the end of the road for a work of scientific authorship. Many works are published elsewhere after being rejected. This would kill that process.

(Preprints notwithstanding, for works in fields where preprints don't count as publication.)


How to make good use of a small startup fund?

For those not familiar, Theoretical Computer Science is mostly formal mathematics. Thus the success patterns for research professors are nearly the same as those in Mathematics. In particular, research collaborations are critical.

  How can I use the (limited) funds that I have to benefit my career?

There are ideas in two categories that can benefit your career: 1) build fruitful, productive research collaboration relationships; and 2) professional service in areas of critical need. (Nearly all tenure committees and funding agencies consider "service" or "broader impacts" as one of the major criteria for tenure or funding.)

EDIT: These ideas are unconventional and represent a particular set of values.  They value long-term benefits over short-term.  They value making a difference in the academic community over immediate personal benefit.  If you have different values, then you'd make different choices.

For the first category, you could use the funds to sponsor or host activities that will expand your research opportunities, especially build new collaborations.

For example, you could host a series of workshops that bring together researchers that don't normally work together.  These researchers could come from your department (if large), from other departments at your university, or from other universities.  Because you host the workshops, you can organize them to meet your objectives.  Maybe they are oriented toward a "challenge" (a la "hackathon"), or maybe oriented toward writing interdisciplinary research grant proposals,  or maybe you give each other tutorials on your specialties, hoping to find fruitful intersections.  For a good source of topic ideas, read the "Dear Colleague" letters from Program Mangers at NSF, and also the NSF program solicitations.

It may be there is already some workshop or conference that is close to your interests.  You could use your funds to host an add-on event.

For the category of professional service, you might consider these two ideas:

Host a series of workshops for CS majors at your university who are in under-represented groups (women, minorities). The goal of the workshop would be  help them with the personal, professional, and practical challenges they might face at your university.  If you don't know much about this topic, then you should recruit experts as presenters and facilitators.
Find your nearest Historically Black College (HBC) and co-host a Theoretical Computer Science workshop with someone in their CS department, aimed at students from both institutions.  You'd have to spend time to learn about the HBC, what their students are like, and how to usefully engage them in this topic.  In addition to benefits for the students, this could lead to an unexpected research collaboration for you.


Most of the universities I've worked for have been quite explicit that they consider such material as "work for hire" meaning that they own the rights. In that case you need to find out what the university policy is.

Often you are allowed to open-source the code, but you have to find out.

I'm in the United States.


Citation Style Language (CSL) style for resume / CV

Adam Altmejd's GitHub repository has a CSL file that seems to be what you are looking for. Adam also compiles his CV from markdown with BibTeX via Pandoc and Pandoc-citeproc.


Writing a paper on user interface without empirical evaluation

I'm afraid that a "user interface" without users is an oxymoron. Users don't conform to axioms and certainly not to theoretical assumptions.

While you may have made an important contribution, without testing on someone other than yourself you have no basis for validity.

Even quite popular websites, which use sophisticated design elements, require tweaking as the designers learn about users. I'm afraid you will need to find some way to do at least a modest test. They may even call your "axioms" and "assumptions" into question. Who can know, until you look?

But let me add a more positive suggestion. It might be possible to get a test done at no cost to you. Some universities (I'll single out University of Maryland, but they aren't alone) have CS programs strongly focused on UI. It isn't impossible that you propose to some faculty member that he/she take your design on as a student project in which they would do the implementation and analysis and give you feedback on it. You would also get theoretical feedback, of course. I can't guarantee that anyone would be interested in this, but it might be possible if you make the attempt. I suspect it would be possible as an undergraduate project, but have no way to actually predict.


It is the responsibility of the editor to not select him, and they are negligent in that respect. You are perfectly entitled to go ahead with requesting a more fair and even-minded referee (which is your right), as you "do not see how this referee's requests possibly can be satisfied, no matter how much work you invest".

Asking for him not to referee you and not selecting him as a referee is, of course, perfectly in your right.

Beyond that, there's not much more you can do from your side, and it is not your job to ostracise that person, even if you think they should be. Unless they threaten to take over a community (e.g. by being elected in a position of responsibility or similar), or you are responsible for hiring them into your department, my view is that you should let them be. Others may find reasons to appreciate their service, as hard as it may be to believe.


Advisor suggesting my marriage may cause problems in Postdoc position search

By suggesting that you prepare for questions about how your wife will like living in a new place, it seems to me that this advisor is actually trying to help you in your job search, not sabotage you. Even if you only interview in countries where this question is illegal, people who interview you may ask the question anyway (perhaps out of ignorance of the law), in which case it's usually best to answer. And even if they don't ask that particular question, the issue may come up as a result of other questions. I could be wrong (you know him better than I do), but if your advisor wanted to sabotage you, he wouldn't be going to the trouble of arranging mock interviews and confronting this issue head-on.

The letter of recommendation seems to me to be the more critical issue here. I think it depends on how your advisor became aware of your family issues. If these family issues have affected your work, then your advisor may feel he should mention it in the LOR.


Since the web isn't a permanent repository, either reference something that is, or give the date on which you access the web article as part of the reference. And in your example, give the URL at which you found the article, not just the title of the website. So, more like this:

  Hutchinson, L, 2016. 'The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia, USA, ARS Technicia: https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/, accessed April 1, 2020.

The Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine is permanent, but the date will be required for resources that change.


what is the best starting point to prepare for graduate school if you are not well equipped?

You might want to take a few courses (at first)
as a special student, a non-degree seeking student.

However, the standards for admission are not less than regular admission invariably.

This is especially true at Ivy League universities

See my comments regarding being admitted as a
graduate special student at Harvard University I posted on this forum:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/61120/123306


What to do when a professor is too busy to guide my research?

If this kind of thing happened once, then I might chalk it up to chance (not everyone is friendly or professional).  But if it happens twice, then I think it is more likely that you are either not reading the situation correctly or are behaving in an unprofessional or at least strange way (and probably don't even realize it).  But it is basically impossible for strangers on the internet to figure out what precisely is going on.  After all, we've never met you, seen how you interact with people, etc.

The only real solution is to speak with people you trust (friends, mentors, etc) who actually are eyewitnesses to what is happening and ask them for their take on it.  Even more importantly, trust them if they tell you ways that you need to change.


My supervisor is making me work on something that is not my PhD project. What should I do?

And during all our meetings so far, we haven’t really discussed my topic, the chapters of my thesis, my research questions, the literature I should be looking at, or the instruments I need for answering my research questions

So, that seems to suggest a natural course of action.  Let her know that at your next meeting, you want to focus on making concrete plans about your thesis.  Then do it.  Come with a list of questions and make notes.  Be sure to bring up the topic of how the big study will tie in to your thesis work, and how she expects you to balance the time spent on both of them.

It sounds like maybe you've been pretty passive so far in your interactions with her.  Clearly it's not working, so time to try being more assertive.

If she won't have that discussion, or won't stay on topic, then you probably ought to start looking for a new supervisor.


How to approach supervisor about running a start-up along side PhD?

First, make sure this is allowed at your institution.  Then develop a solid plan for how you will handle both projects before taking it to your supervisor.  To the first point, it seems that you already have, but make sure that you understand your institution's rules.  For instance, is it allowed to use school resources?  What does that mean in your institution?  It could mean something as obvious as using a school computer to run a simulation for the business, or something as subtle as taking a phone call in your school office.  You need to be 100% sure that you are not violating any institutional policies.

Some institutions are hands-off when it comes to external projects as long as they aren't done on campus, others aren't.  For instance, where I did my masters, we were not permitted to make income outside of the school without losing an equivalent amount of funding.   Where I did my PhD this was not the case.

Next, make a clear plan for your advisor to understand.  As was pointed out in the comments, both projects are going to take a LOT of time to do well.  Your PhD should be the priority.  You need to make sure that your advisor understands precisely what working on the business and working on the PhD mean.  Be realistic.  It's very likely that you will check your business email while working at school, so don't pretend that you won't.

Your advisor has already stated that you should keep your side projects to your free time.  You need to be very clear what that means.  PhDs aren't necessarily like jobs.  You might not be able to get much research done one morning because the ideas aren't there, then work well into the night to make huge progress.  Does that unproductive morning count as free time?

Have a strong plan for what you want from your advisor. "I want you in on this" is not helpful.  "I need a support person in the role of algorithm development.  Here are the specific responsibilities I was thinking.  What do you think?"  is much better.

Finally, make it clear how much freedom the advisor has in this business.  Is he a co-founder, making equal decisions?  Is he an employee?  A contractor? A board member? Will you pay him?  What happens if he decides to hire a few co-op students and bring his long-time collaborator on board?  Who retains control of the business?  Who has ownership?  These aren't unique questions to student-advisor businesses, but they are important to get straight up front.  The worst thing that can happen is you both have different ideas for your responsibility and the business gets away from you.


Answering "How many months of work experience do you have?" on grad school applications

As you are aware, this is hard to answer. Hours worked don't translate well to months, since you often think about things and are engaged when you aren't officially "on the clock".

Of course the answer also depends on how complete you are allowed to be in reporting. If it is an open ended question, I'd suggest that you just list each activity with both (a) how many months you were engaged and (b) and estimate of how many hours per week (or whatever) you spent over that time.

But if you can create that list you can probably also reduce it to a range of months, something like "8-12 covering different activities at different times". You could use that if you need to give a short description.

If you need to give a single numeric answer without caveats and some precision is required, just give your best guess based on the above, but be prepared to discuss it in any interview you might have.


According to Google Scholar, the author's first name is Samuel.

To find this, I did the following:

Do a Google Scholar search for one of S. F. Buck's papers; I chose the following paper which was linked in a comment above: A Method of Estimation of Missing Values in Multivariate Data Suitable for use with an Electronic Computer
Click on the "cite" link (quote symbol) at the Google Scholar result for the above paper
The MLA and Chicago citation style formats both list the author's first name as Samuel


About to write my PhD thesis and I don't know the basics and fundamentals. I am feeling unworthy of the PhD title. What should I do?

Nobody knows everything. In many fields it is impossible to know everything about that field. In mathematics it was possible for an individual to know everything up through the end of the 19th century, and a few people did. Henri Poincaré was a likely candidate. But after that it soon became impossible as there was just too much. Computer Science has probably passed out of the era where it was possible to know it all, but it was (possibly) somewhere around the end of the 20th century.

There is a psychological effect called Imposter Syndrome in which you don't believe that you are as good as others know you to be. It affects many people, including many academics.

Learning is a life-long activity. I suggest that in the short term you just get on with it and write the thesis, working as you normally do, which I'm sure includes study. In the longer term you can, as you would likely do anyway, work to fill in those bits that you think you are missing.

But don't delay your work now until you think you are ripe. That point may never come, even though you are perfectly capable at each point at which it matters.

The feeling may never go away. But if you know it for what it is, it needn't inhibit you or become debilitating.


How to finish my PhD dissertation before funding runs out?

Here are a few ideas, hoping to help you get unstuck.

My spouse had a big-name, brilliant advisor who was impatient and rarely had time to meet with his students.  Fortunately my spouse found a person in the department who was able to be the mentor on the ground, the person to go to when a question came up.  He had a positive, supportive attitude, and was very knowledgeable, but was not able to be the advisor of record because he didn't have the right sort of title.  Perhaps you could find someone like this?  It might even be an advanced grad student or a postdoc.
Suppose your advisor is out of town for a month, but you and he still want to have some collaboration.  A good way of doing that is by writing a weekly email to your advisor, where you make an itemized list of what you've been working on and what questions you have.  I would suggest that you try writing this type of memo even when he is not out of town, and sending it to him the day before your meeting.  That can provide a helpful structure for your in-person meetings.
It sounds like you would benefit from having a study buddy.  This is someone who will listen to your troubles supportively from time to time, and help you stay on track with your goals.  It doesn't need to be someone you enjoy going to see a movie with -- this is similar to a study partner for a particular class, that you compare homework answers with.  Ideally this would be a mutually supportive relationship.

I would also suggest that you bite the bullet and resolve to spend some time learning the background material necessary for a productive collaboration with your advisor.  You don't have to continue working in that particular area your entire life -- you just need to get this PhD done, and it sounds like that's going to be the easiest way to do it.

Reassurance: it will probably not take as long as you fear it will to learn that background stuff.  Although you might not realize it, you are a more efficient learner now than you were a few years ago.  Also, I think you are motivated now to figure out how to do things methodically.

I can see that both you and your advisor have had your frustrations with each other.  I predict that as he sees you taking steps to meet him halfway, you will start to see more patience and a more positive, supportive attitude from him.


Do I need to focus my writing to specific paper?

I think the best answer to this question has already been given as a comment:

  You should ask your advisor. The fact that you are asking this question suggests that you and your advisor haven't discussed in detail what your thesis should consist of. It's important to have this conversation, even aside from the particular question you are asking here. (You don't want to risk discovering much later that you and your advisor had different visions for what the thesis should be like.)

This is a good answer to so many questions on this site (I have started to think that there should be an "Ask your advisor!" closure option), but it seems especially true here.  From the OP's comment I can see that the master's thesis is being done in mathematics.  The expectations and requirements for a master's thesis in mathematics are so highly variable across institutions and countries that I can think of almost nothing (other than "Ask your advisor!") which would be guaranteed to be universally applicable.

In mathematics programs in the US, it is especially unclear what work constitutes a master's thesis, especially in pure mathematics.  Unlike the situation in many other countries, there are relatively few full-time master's students in American universities, even compared to the number of master's degrees awarded: in my experience, more master's degrees go to talented, ambitious undergraduates who get them alongside their bachelor's degrees, or to PhD students who have decided to drop out of the program and get a consolation degree.  In my case I got a master's degree along with my bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago, and for such a top university you might be surprised to hear how minimal the requirements were: I had to complete all nine trimester courses that first year graduate (i.e., PhD) students take (I did so over two years) and pass a pro forma foreign language exam.  [In particular I did not write a master's thesis.]  When I went on to my PhD studies (at Harvard) I found that I was about as well prepared as most of the other students.  I don't recall that my having a master's degree came up once during my five years in a PhD program...with the possible exception that some students would, a year or two into their program, fill out paperwork and pay a small fee to get a master's degree, whereas I already had one of those so chose to keep my money.

Having been heavily involved with the graduate (mostly PhD) program at the University of Georgia in recent years, I can say that here a master's thesis is whatever the advisor and student agree that it is, subject to the approval of two other committee members.  Writing a thesis is one route; there is another route involving more coursework and some exams.  Among master's thesis advisors I've talked to, the sense is that the student should take the thesis as an opportunity to engage with some piece of mathematics at a deeper level than they have done before, to the extent that they have mastered it and can show this mastery with an original (or at least, independent) exposition.  This description seems rather at odds with the one given in another answer to this question:

  NO. Undergrads may get away with using one (or a few) papers to synthesize the essence into their own viewpoint, but at the post-grad level you should be reading for width and depth, which means using every seminal work in your field as well as exploring the newer papers on the topic.

This is probably a correct description of some academic fields, but not for mathematics.  Very few mathematics undergraduates are reading "real" math papers at all.  The task of reading, understanding and writing about even one "real" math paper may in fact be sufficient for a master's thesis.  There are even certain papers out there for which rewriting them so as to contain the level of detail and completeness that would satisfy a master's thesis committee would be a real service to the mathematical community.  I think that most PhD students in mathematics do not use every seminal work in [their] field: I didn't, for instance.

I am not saying that just any old thing will suffice for a master's thesis in mathematics: I am saying that the global requirements are very few, so it becomes more important to talk to your advisor.

I have so far supervised one master's thesis.  My student carefully read and wrote about two papers concerning geometry of numbers and Legendre's Equation ax^2+by^2+cz^2 = 0.  She then tried to extend the techniques of the second paper to diagonal quadratic equations in n \geq 4 variables.  Much of this was easy, but the key was the existence of a "magic sublattice" defined in the three-dimensional case by the necessary congruence conditions for Legendre's Equation to have a solution.  After much trouble (and some help from me), she was eventually able to prove that for more than three variables such a magic sublattice did not exist.  She wrote up a thesis which contained expositions of the two papers she read plus a proof of this result (plus a few more small things, totalling a few pages).  I remember that she was concerned that her thesis was rather short: 45 pages double-spaced.  I thought her thesis was an unusually strong one and told her so.  (If people are wondering, I think her result is not yet publishable -- it's along the lines of showing that a certain proof strategy cannot work, and such things are hard to publish in mathematics -- but that the work could be continued and made publishable.  I honestly think that makes it an above average American master's thesis in mathematics.)


How necessary is buying a domain when I'm just a graduated student?

If your department/school won't give you support...

The domain should cost you between $0.50 to $0.99 USD for the first year. Hosting costs range a lot, but many offer deals for the first year that cost about $12 USD.

After you have your own server and domain, it is trivial to setup WordPress on your own server.

Thus you get the best of both worlds, extremely affordable and easy! Besides, I recommend most people have their own personal website for their portfolio and such anyway.


Submitting conference paper to Google Scholar when proceedings not available

This is not to your question, but:

You are too impatient. In the publishing industry, 6 months is not an incredibly slow turn-around time.


Journal vs conference publications when looking for a job in in computer science

CS people know that CS conferences count for more than conferences do in other fields, and although they count a little less than journals in CS, this should not be a problem. Of course there are still rankings between the various forums.

The fact that CS rank conferences higher than other disciplines only becomes a problem if you are compared against non-CS people, which often happens when competing for funding and promotions, in my experience.


Can I compare my research work with another work published many years ago?

Yes, certainly you can do this comparison. The time difference makes no difference whatever.

However, since it has been a while in a fast changing field, you need to be sure that there haven't been advances since 2002 that you haven't considered and might make your work less valuable - even already obsolete.

In mathematics, you can extend Euclid, if you have something new and interesting. But it has to be new by today's standards, not by his.


Which undergraduate major leads to a research career in development of new medical drugs?

There isn't a single "correct" undergraduate major for people interested in research careers in this field. Any of biology, biochemistry, biomedical science, chemistry, pharmacology, and several others would be fine.

Much more important than finding an undergraduate degree with the right "name" would be finding a program where students have the opportunity to carry out undergraduate research with faculty doing the kind of research you want to do.

For example, the profile of the Einstein 2016 incoming PhD class in biomedical science includes the following range of undergraduate majors:

  Undergraduate majors: Biology, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences, Microbiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Chemistry, Genetics, and Learning Sciences

But all had a lot of prior research experience:

  100% have had a sustained research experience in a scientific laboratory

  57% have published a scientific paper in a peer reviewed journal

  65% have presented their work at a scientific meeting

  31% have also spent a summer in a research program

  Mean Months of Prior, Full‐Time Research Experience: 32


Research Funding distribution across discliplines

In the UK, the EPSRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council) has a handy visualisation on their website to see the current funding distribution within their remit.

A similar visualisation has been created for the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) - also UK. Although this only appears to be for projects active in 2012.

UberResearch compiles data on research funding, however, their service is not freely available. They do have some samples, which my be interesting. They appear to have data from the UK, US and EU. I've never used this service so cannot comment on its usefulness.

Most of the public funding bodies provide data on funded projects on their websites. However, it would require a lot of processing to make visualisations of it.


If you're asking about a (presumably, preferably, open) data set, this question might be a better fit for the Open Data SE site. However, since you express some interest in references and I was quite curious about what information on the topic is available, I will try to answer your question here.

I would start searching for the relevant data sets, at least, on U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and European Patent Office (EPO). Doing so reveals some data sets that certainly could be useful for the task at hand. In particular, the following data sets & services might be of interest:

Data sets and databases

USPTO Patent Assignment Dataset
USPTO Historical Patent Data Files
USPTO's PatentsView Datasets (query tool and APIs seem to be unavailable at present)
Electronic Document Information System (EDIS) by U.S. International Trade Commission
EPO Datasets
Databases by Darts-ip (commercial; see "Patent focused" quadrant)
LITALERT (LITigation ALERTs) Database (commercial)

Services (search + analytics, etc.)

Lex Machina
Docket Navigator
Patexia Litigation Search

Papers / Books (bonus)

The effects of patent litigation on university licensing efforts
Innovation and litigation: Tensions between universities and patents and how to fix them
The trials of academe: The new era of campus litigation

P.S. Obviously, for most data sets and databases, you would have to perform data pre-processing to select/associate data relevant to academic institutions and, perhaps, some additional steps. Considering your background, it should not be a big problem. I hope that my answer is helpful.


Citing sources of problems in assignments

I'm a textbook author. I agree that it's hard to formulate a cut-and-dried answer to your question. One criterion to consider: If a colleague would compliment you on a copied problem or question because it was particularly clever or insightful, you should probably consider a citation. Stated differently, if you're getting academic credit (even if informal) for the contribution, cite the source.


Is it rude to sign off mails with a shorthand

(Am also currently working in Scandinavia, have previously been in universities in the UK, US, and Canada.)  Abbreviations are almost certainly fine; but look at what others in your department do.

In most departments, you should be able to see a wide range of colleagues’ emails (thanks to admin lists/announcements, etc).  Look at what they do, and the range of ways they write.  Additionally, note that emails between close colleagues (e.g. within a research group) may tend to be slightly less formal than emails to wider audiences.

You will probably see a fair range of styles.  So long as you are within that range, you are probably fine; you don’t have to exactly match every individual correspondent.  In case everyone at your department writes particularly formally, then it may be worth doing so yourself — but even then, I would be pretty surprised to hear of anyone in Sweden taking offence at use of “Mvh” as a signoff. I’ve received it in emails from students, professors, and administrators, so at least in my department, it’s considered fine for a wide range of professional relationships (though definitely towards the more informal end of the spectrum).


PhD from low-rank school (post-Soviet country), a couple of years in industry. What are my chances?

I haven't been able to publish any papers in international journals yet, though I'm determined to do so. Will it increase my chances?

Certainly. A post-doc is supposed to play an active role in the publication output of the department. Demonstrating that you have experience with academic publishing is certainly valuable. Without it, it will be difficult to land a academic post-doc position.

So how do you successfully find a post-doc position?

First you need to find open positions that fit really well with your experience. Then, you will need to convince them that you are a fit candidate. It certainly helps if you can show tangible results. Think of e.g. working programs that you wrote.

You might also consider doing a short post-graduate program at an institute where you would like to do a post-doc (e.g. in the Netherlands there are 2 year PDEng programs). In this way you can demonstrate your abilities, and also get settled in the country of your designation.


Appropriate way to thank a professor towards the end of the semester

In the U.S., probably best to not express thanks publicly, unless you are thinking to get others to join in. If you can put a thank-you note in the professor's paper-mail mailbox in their department, that might be optimal. It does demonstrate a bit more effort (and, thus, more non-trivial expression of thanks) than just an email, for example.

But an email thank-you is good, too.

And, yes, probably better to wait until after grades are settled, if there's any potential volatility there. Don't want to create even a hint of conflict-of-interest on any side.


Can someone with poor coursework record but decent research profile fit in academia?

There might be some effect but I'd expect it to be small and easily overcome. If you want a largely research position grades will be mostly irrelevant and you will be judged on the quality (and maybe quantity) of your research.
But even if you want a teaching position, you may have some insight into the troubles and travails of students that might serve you well. If you know what it is to work hard to overcome difficulties, I think you would be an asset.
Don't overthink it, and write the best applications you can, with good letters from the faculty.


What to do during the first stages of your PhD program?

I'm a third year, and I have found it immensely helpful to get started with research as quickly as possible.

The thing is, a lot of times you get stuck in mathematical research, especially when you're first starting out. Also, you will have a harder time finding a concrete problem then you'd think. Additionally, you could use your research to guide which classes you take (at least after quals). Lastly, making progress is hard and takes time. This means that the best way to do research is to always have a research problem.

It may not be your main focus, your main focus may be your exams, but if over your first two years you've spent random times thinking about a specific problem (and have geared your studies towards a problem), you can begin to make a lot of headway. So I highly suggest you start the research process. Talk to some advisers. Find something that interests you. Read some papers in your free time. Use this to find an interesting problem. Talk about this with someone who researches the area and now you have an adviser. And just start thinking about it. This is all pretty leisurely and can be done in your "free time" between classes, after classes, etc. Don't worry about the time consuming parts (actually writing down solid proofs), just get your mind churning.

When exams are done, you'll be surprised how ready you are to write what you've come up with. Even if you haven't solved much, you have likely narrowed down a clear path of where you want to go and what you want to prove (and have an intuition as to why you think it's correct). Write down that path as a "homework problem" to yourself, and now you're full-time research.

(Some people will tell you to wait until you can understand your project. Honestly, I didn't understand what I was doing (stochastic dynamics) for about half a year. After finally taking the classes on subjects related to the field, I can say that classes wouldn't've helped much. The only way to get into a research project is to just start doing it, and keep trying different books/resources until you understand all the background. Classes help, but less than you'd think.)


How much does topic and supervisor matter for honours in computer science when the aim is ultimately to do a PhD?

All things being equal, a well-known and respected individual in your field who can write an excellent letter of recommendation for you is better than a person who is not nearly so well known who can write a similar letter.

However, you should not choose a famous name just to have that person write you a letter of recommendation if you are not actively interested in that person's research. The obvious reason for this is that hunting for a letter of a recommendation is likely not to work as well as doing a project you're truly interested in, because the motivation to work on it won't be nearly as strong.

As for topic, if possible, I would recommend picking a topic in the general area you wish to pursue as a PhD student. Note that it doesn't need to be the same topic—but if you want to do, for instance, theoretical CS, it's probably better to do a theoretical CS project than something more applied.


Remove author identifying information and resubmit. Is it too much time 2 weeks later?

Is there something wrong resumitting the manuscript 2 weeks later just to remove author identifying information?

No, I don't see anything wrong with that.  It's not an unusual amount of time for any academic to take to do anything, and it's not like anybody would have been inconvenienced by the time taken.  They just wouldn't do anything with the manuscript in the meantime.  And it would be really stupid of a journal to reject a potentially valuable paper just because the author took some time to complete an administrative chore.

  Is [six days] too much time for "submitted to journal" status?

See above: it's not unusual for any academic to take more than six days to respond to anything.  It's possible that they just haven't gotten to it yet, or that they are working on the paper but haven't updated the status in the system.  (See also What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?)

I would say that if you have not seen any updates after another 1-2 weeks, it would be reasonable to contact the editor and ask if they successfully received your revised manuscript.


How are PhD students assigned to supervisors/professors?

(2) A department offers PhD studentships. After admission, students
  can choose their supervisors or the department will assign them to
  available professors.

  In this case, how the capacity of each faculty member is determined to
  accept PhD students from available students of the department?

This is generally the norm in US universities. How the capacity is set depends on various funding-related factors:

Does the department support all incoming Ph.D students via fellowships ? Then there's a budget associated with this.
Does the department support all incoming students via fellowship or teaching assistant positions ? Then based on estimated enrollment of students in courses there's a rough formula estimating number of TAs needed each year, and this factors in how many students are leaving.
Does faculty funding support students (either from Day 1 or eventually) ? Then the department will solicit information from faculty on how many students they expect to support that year, and make calculations accordingly.

All of these are estimates, and can go wrong. So departments usually need some kind of cushion  when doing calculations to adjust for that.

While departments might "assign" students to faculty when they enter, this is probably for administrative purposes so students don't slip through the cracks and have someone they can approach early on. Typically students and advisors choose each other once the students arrive.