What are pros and cons for using summer-break to work in another research group?

Here are the obvious things:

Pro: the work in another group will build contacts, possibly improving your opportunities for future academic positions (PhD, postdoc, assistant professor position).
Pro: funding opportunities, if you're in need of extra money.
Con: the work done in another group will take up time and energy, and if not related to your current work, won't advance your research (experimenting, publishing, etc.). That should probably be your priority (this is related to the comment on the question about it being strange to get 12-week breaks...)
Con: if you don't coordinate it with your supervisor, this could affect the trust in the relationship (depending on the style of the supervisor).

If you wish to pursue an academic career, in some universities respectable journal articles published are worth more than contacts when competing for a job. So don't overestimate the first "pro" I mention above. At the master's level, this is less important.

The best strategy is to coordinate the "outside" work with your supervisor for maximum benefit.


What are the legal ramifications of citing scientific articles for producing commercial software?

The knowledge in the articles is for all to use, what you can't do is to copy text. There is a fine line if the article contains e.g. code listings and you use a fragment, or if you take pseudocode and rewrite it in your favorite programming language, that might be a copyright violation. I very much doubt they'd go after you, in any case.

I'd say that citing the articles is very good practice, somebody (even yourself in a year or so!) trying to understand the code later will thank you.


Can the communicating author remove some of the authors (4 out of 6) when submitting the second revision of a paper describing a database?

This sounds like an unpleasant situation.

If this happened to me, I think my starting point would be to ensure I had copies of anything that might be useful as evidence. Then, I would write (formally) to the person concerned, asking for an explanation of why they thought it appropriate to remove you all from the author list. I think this has to be the first step: it is always possible that there is a rational explanation (although it's difficult to imagine what it might be). You might choose to copy the letter to the head of the relevant university department, and perhaps to the editor of the journal - particularly if the paper has not yet been published, and so can be put 'on hold' pending resolution of the authorship dispute.

Of course, you will have to weigh up the benefits of asserting your rights to authorship against any potential cost arising from 'causing trouble'. You are completely within your rights to create a major fuss here, and your department should be entirely supportive. I think you should do something. However, there is a risk that some of the people involved will seek revenge, if they have any power over you (e.g. if you are still a student at the university). I am absolutely not condoning such behaviour - it is quite clearly bullying, and an abuse of power. However, it would be irresponsible to advocate taking action without encouraging you to also consider whether there are any potential adverse consequences.


Master thesis: should I say that some results are a novelty in the field?

This is a common situation, since it really isn't possible to be absolutely certain that nobody has done this work before. What I find people usually do is:

Do the best literature search you can. As for references in other languages, in many fields it's  common that papers written in, say, French, will have an abstract in English, so you'd have a chance of finding them even if you can't read French. But if you find a French paper whose abstract suggests that it may contain similar results to yours, then it is your duty to find a way to read it (look for a translation, ask a colleague to translate, learn some French yourself if necessary) and make sure.
Once you are satisfied you have done a diligent search, write something like "this result appears to be new" or "as far as we know, this result has not been obtained previously".
If it later turns out that your result was already known, be prepared to acknowledge that the other author had priority, and to be able to show that although you did a reasonably diligent search, you did not find the prior paper, and that your result was truly obtained independently (not plagiarized).


How can a software developer best volunteer to help childhood cancer research?

I work in a biomedical field and most of us are awful programmers. We tend to be more interested in getting the underlying back-end algorithm to work than worrying about the front-end, comments, documentation, version control, unit tests, etc.

My suggestion, would be to look through the web pages at a nearby university and see if you can identify someone doing something you think is interesting, preferably something computational. Then email the PI explaining your skills and experience and that you would like to volunteer to help people with their programming and that you could help people move to the next level of using tools like version control and work with them on documentation and the front end.


How to find exercise problems as a graduate student?

First, let me reassure you that many graduate classes are similar to undergraduate classes, in that often there will be regular homeworks and plenty of exercises in the books, with undergrad style exams, just harder.  Of course, not all of them are like this--some are more like what you might think of as seminars, but this is sometimes true for undergrad classes as well.  It depends on both the level and the focus of the course.

As for how you find exercises, learning how to ask your own questions and find your own (typically terribly naive) understanding of a subject is a large part of becoming a researcher.  In graduate school, you should have an advisor who can help direct you with things and may suggest exercises or warm-up problems for you.

To give more a practical answer:

If a subject is fairly well studied, you should look for other books which may have exercises.
If there are no exercises, you can make your own by trying to come
up with your own proof, or working out things in special cases, such
as computing examples.
If it is a more recent area or specialized topic, where there are no
great texts, sometimes there may be good online notes from a course
or summer school someone has given.
Lastly, I think a great way to learn a topic is to start writing
your own notes on it, and this works well for advanced/specialized topics where exercises are hard to come by.  Trying to explain something to someone (even
yourself or a vague nonexistent reader) forces you to ask yourself
basic questions about the topic, which helps you understand both the
ideas involved and larger context.


Are there any recommendations from professional or academic associations on maximum class size for STEM courses?

To maximize creative learning, classes should be small enough for close communication and effective teamwork. One of the basic tenets of system
development philosophy is that involving fewer participants tends to reduce complexity and foster innovation. In short, teachers should be encouraged to reduce the size of the classes they manage.

Instead of answering the question, I'll just point out why I think a policy or recommendation on this topic is useless at best, and counter-productive if strictly followed.

Direct recommendations regarding class size are likely to be too specific to be useful in general. The "best" choice in most circumstances is likely to be a compromise between what is practical and cost-effective versus what is ideal for student learning. The instructor and/or their supporting administration are in the best position to determine the optimal class size, ideally with input and feedback from the students.

A quick search turns up a US study and some statistics on the effects of class size provided by the Council of State Governments.

In addition, the following studies might be of interest:

Estimating Class-size Effects using Within-school Variation in Subject-specific Classes

On the relationship of number of students to academic level

Class size effects and the educational production function in Austrian schools

What Do We Know about School Size and Class Size?


If it's a job you want, either clear your calendar for the two days they are proposing, or propose two days when you are free all day.  It's not clear from your question if they are proposing the days or asking you to propose them.


I wasted a lot of time during my PhD. As a postdoc, I don't see much progress in my abilities. How can I make progress?

My sense is you're putting a lot of weight in past mistakes, and you got your PhD in the end. The rest about your bad understanding of the material or weak research is hard to evaluate objectively, what does your advisor say? Other mentors in the field? Getting a more realistic picture might help you be productive moving forward.
the concerning thing is no job offers, but your advisor bought you some time. I'd keep trying for a postdoc (maybe apply more widely if research is what you really want) and if you don't get anything again, then start shifting into another career track.


Creating a conference is a very worthwhile activity—however, even organizing a two-day workshop can be a logistical nightmare that requires a dedicated support staff to pull off efficiently. If you don't have it, you can still get it done, but it still requires a lot of planning and a lot of effort.

I was invited to participate in the scientific committee for a workshop to be held here on campus and hosted by my institute. Even though we had the administrative staff taking care of organizing room reservations, hotel blocks, catering, name badges, preparation of the formal program, and so on, there's still a lot of work involved, particularly if you're the chair. You'll need to contact (and sometimes harass) speakers, look for funding, recruit attendees, advertise like crazy, and so much more.

However, if you can make your workshop a part of someone else's existing conference, then you can remedy many of these problems—the existing conference's infrastructure goes a long way in supporting your workshop and its goals. Frankly, if I was going to try to start a new workshop that would take on its own independent existence, that's the route I'd choose. If the workshop inside of another conference received good feedback, only then would I try to make it an independent event in the future. In that time, you'd also have figured out who the other "major players" are who could serve on future scientific committees.

The conference we started was created by our institute, so dividing up the responsibilities was relatively natural: the head of the institute was the head of the conference, and we divided up the work of programming the sessions among the members of the committee.
If you don't have that option available—if, for instance, you're the primary mover and shaker behind the workshop—that puts more work on your plate.

If you're doing a workshop under the aegis of a larger program, then I would think you would be the chair of the program. You could select other people to be on the organizing committee, but as the person doing the recruiting, you're going to be the one the others look to for guidance and decision-making—at least at first.

So I think the "founder" is going to be the general chair or the organizational chair, at least the first time around. Should the conference survive to have a second iteration, then at that point establishing some sort of successorship makes a lot of sense, because nobody really wants to go through the process of organizing all of those details every other year; it's too much work.

But, if you want to know, the order did go something like this:

Steering committee of institute decided to hold conference
Steering committee appointed emeritus faculty member as program committee leader.
Steering committee appointed junior faculty as committee members.
Program committee came up with several tentative plans.
Steering committee decided on final overall structure.
Program committee scrambled to find speakers to fit new structure decided on by SC.
Program committee puts together advertising, recruits speakers, organizes poster session, organizes conference structure, and performs other duties as needed.
Organizing team handles payments, attendance and registration issues, travel and accommodation issues, operation of conference, and so on.

The other thing to consider is that the planning for something like this typically requires on the order of 12 to 18 months, even if you're just doing an event locally hosted at your university (like ours was). For something more complicated, you may need even more lead time.


Can I use published data by other authors in my study?

Yeah, it is fine.  If anything, it is how the literature and scientific enterprise is supposed to work.  I would just be clear about attribution and that you haven't discovered the relationship (from first paper) but instead used existing info to validate your method.


What are the differences between viXra.org and arXiv.org?

From arXiv's website:

  Started in August 1991, arXiv.org (formerly xxx.lanl.gov) is a highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server for research articles. Covered areas include physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. arXiv is maintained and operated by the Cornell University Library with guidance from the arXiv Scientific Advisory Board and the arXiv Member Advisory Board, and with the help of numerous subject moderators.

arXiv has a form of moderation. Users must be "endorsed" by people who have themselves posted papers on the arXiv. (more info) Moreover, a team of moderators is able to reclassify or remove content from the arXiv, for a number of reasons: unrefereeable content, inappropriate format, inappropriate topic... (more info) It also implements some automatic checks for content overlap between papers.

In some fields (e.g. math) it is the standard way of releasing a new paper into the world. At the moment there are 1,369,674 papers on arXiv.

arXiv has a plan to ensure its sustainability and make sure that papers uploaded to arXiv will not disappear from the internet should anything bad happens. There also exists several mirror websites should it even go down.

From viXra's website (in the footer):

  ViXra.org is an e-print archive set up as an alternative to the popular arXiv.org service owned by Cornell University. It has been founded by scientists who find they are unable to submit their articles to arXiv.org because of Cornell University's policy of endorsements and moderation designed to filter out e-prints that they consider inappropriate.
  ViXra is an open repository for new scientific articles. It does not endorse e-prints accepted on its website, neither does it review them against criteria such as correctness or author's credentials.

It was founded by a disgruntled physicist named Philip Gibbs. It is unclear who funds the website today, and it is not even clear who actually runs it today if you just read the website. Compared to arXiv, there is little moderation (according to the FAQ, a paper can e.g. be removed if it's not science/math, if it's plagiarism, if it's obscene and so on, but not if it is obvious nonsense unless it is computer-generated nonsense) and people can submit papers anonymously or under fake names.

At the moment, there are 22,596 papers on viXra.

viXra has no sustainability plans. If whoever runs it decides to take it down tomorrow or their servers catch fire, I'm not sure what would happen.

Warranted or not, it has a reputation of being an alternative to arXiv for cranks and to host a lot of junk science, fake proofs or even outright nonsense. It is not recommended to submit something to viXra if you wish to be taken seriously, because the reputation of viXra would probably taint your paper's reputation by association. (Which is not the same thing as saying that arXiv "bestows credibility" on papers found there. It's rather viXra which bestows a bad reputation.)


You can't simply compute the salaries yourself, but you'll have to ask the administrative staff at the university you're applying with to calculate the costs for you. This is because the actual numbers can be quite complicated to derive, with pensions, social security and the like being deducted. Plus, there are other rules for the budget that have to be followed, like the proportion of overheads, audit costs and all sorts of stuff you'd rather let someone else deal with, so you can focus on the science in your proposal.

Moreover, your host institution commits to the numbers in the proposal upon submission, they'll want to make sure that they are correct.

Paying salaries to scientists at other institution makes the administrative process a lot more complicated. You'll have to sort out their salaries with their host institutions.

Every decent institution nowadays has support staff specialised for grant programmes like ERC. Usually it is absolutely mandatory that you coordinate your proposal with those people. Normally these people can also support you in the grant writing process, e.g. with a stack of successful proposals for you to take inspiration from, or other helpful information. You should talk your idea through with them as soon as possible.


Bullying at a previous affiliation, but now moved on. What to do?

Regardless of what labels are applied to the situation, it sounds like you left to get away from these people. Continuing to engage with them seems like it will undermine that plan and keep you involved (at least mentally) in a situation that's not doing you any good. I think I'd suggest at least contemplating the idea of cutting the cord.
There's no need to choose between taking revenge or forgiving and forgetting. The better option is to just accept that you no longer work with them, and that they're no longer a part of your life, and get back to living for youself. Trying to decide between revenge and forgiveness is (a) just your brain trying to keep you psychologically involved in a situation that ought to no longer concern you, and (b) a waste of valuable time in your new life.
TL;DR: In the kindest possible way, try not to let your brain get in the way of your new happiness, and move on.
p.s. To be specific, if they ask you to do any further reviews, a polite 'sorry, I don't have time right now' is more than enough.


Research internships at universities and funding

It all depends. You can join a summer REU program, where you can get funding. You can go on various websites of professor who may be advertising positions, and contact them. Keep in mind this, sometimes, the particular opportunity that you are looking for may not exist (in your case, 6 months/1 year research at a university, as a non-student). That means that you will have to contact professors (even if that means contacting tens of them), and ask them if they would be willing to consider bringing you on for that long. Obviously, you will need to offer them something, like strong computing skill (which will really distinguish you). As I looked at your profile, it seems like you do have a strong computing skill, and so I would advertise that. Another great option (which I did in my previous life), was join the IT department of a specific academic department, and slowly find the opportunity to network with faculty and let them know regarding your skills. Slowly, you will have the opportunity to possibly engage in research and strengthen your graduate school application. In life, often times you have to make your own opportunity. I wish you the best in your future endeavours.


How to recruit participants for online experiments?

One approach that has become popular amongst many social and cognitive scientists is the use of Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is an internet piecework marketplace.  Many people have used this for recruiting study participants, and IRBs have been quite receptive to its use.

Designing studies for Mechanical Turk is challenging, and presents different issues than designing for in-person studies.  A number of online resources exist that discuss the advantages and challenges (e.g., this blog, this paper, and this website).  Mechanical Turk also poses sampling issues---as has been noted, however, typical recruitment methods also end up getting almost exclusively WIERD participants, so it's unclear how much of an issue that actually is.


What sections should I include in the Project Description section of my NSF grant proposal?

The NSF doesn't specify any rules on what goes into the project description, but each community has its norms and expectations. If you wish to get a good review, it's probably a good idea to understand the norms and standards of your community.

In general, what you should do is find peers in the area that have written proposals for this program and look at what are standard templates (and isn't your advisor involved in this ? In my corner of the NSF, students can't be lead PIs on proposals).

From the sound of it, you haven't seen too many examples of proposals (successful or otherwise), and I'd strongly recommend that being your first step. If that's not possible, talk to faculty within your department (again, where's your advisor ?) to get help.


Should I cancel an interview if I already have a preferable offer?

I am answering based on a subtle but important point in your question. If I am misinterpreting, please let me know and I'll edit or remove my answer. You said:

  I finally got an offer (let's call it A) that I am happy with

but you also said,

  For example, if the details of the offer from A aren't good (still waiting for those)

To me, it sounds like you don't yet actually have an actual offer in the sense of a binding, written document - maybe it was a verbal offer? At any rate, you're admitting you don't yet have enough details to make a decision about offer A.

If that is true, I would absolutely continue pursuing option B, until such a time as you get the details (preferably written) from A that allow you to decide.

I do agree with the other answers that it would be more rude to waste their time in an interview if you already have an offer you like (versus being rude by declining the interview) but I think it is critically important to be clear with yourself about whether or not you do actually have an actual offer from A or just a verbal discussion that's gotten you excited about a potential offer you may or may not get in the near future. You have a responsibility to B to decline their interview and let them know you have another offer you're taking but you also have a responsibility to yourself to make sure you do have an official offer with terms you can agree to from A. It would be a huge shame to cancel your interview with B only to discover A retracted their offer, changed the details, or gave you additional info you were unhappy with.


Including many pages of serialization code and generated source code in Master's thesis?

Short answer: put your code in public repo, and cite the repo in your paper.

Long answer: Any academic document you produce is supposed to be readable and useful to your readers. Try to put yourself in a reader's shoes and imagine how you feel reading through a 7-page long autogenerated code? Is is a pleasant or useful experience that you would like to repeat one day?

The modern technology allows us to use much more than just a text on the paper to present our research outputs. Although a short pieces of code may be extremely useful and appropriate in textbooks or some articles, the long code and auto-generated code really does not belong to the paper. It should be kept in a public repository, where it really belong, and used as a working example, which people can download, modify and execute, not just enjoy it aesthetically in a pdf file.


How to deal with fear of failure as a PhD student?

What you experience is essentially what all grad students feel, though few of them talk about it. I would bet that 3/4 of the full professors on this list felt like that at times when they were grad students, and may still do. I can certainly say that for the first few years of being a professor, I periodically had the thought that I'm just a normal human and that the world would end if my department ever found out -- all while doing, what I believe, good work.

So you're not alone in having these feelings, though you may feel them more severely than others if you find that it occasionally paralyzes your ability to move forward. (Though, even there, I would say that all of us had weeks where we got to work, opened a browser and studied the world wide web for most of the time until it was time to go home.)

The best way to get over it is by talking to others, both your peers and your advisers (including the department's graduate adviser) about these issues. You will find that everyone, even those you think must be sooo much better than you, has these issues. I think it will help you put yourself in perspective. They may also share their own strategies to deal with things.

My strategy if I get stuck on something is to do something else -- work out the part of your thesis for which you already have results, write them up, do the copy editing -- and come back to the open questions when you're in a better place again.


The two most important considerations are publications and teaching: you have to have enough good publications, and you have to be not horrid at teaching. This assumes a typical teaching, research and service obligation -- research won't matter in a teaching-only position, and vice versa. Although teaching is usually considered to officially take up more of your time, research is usually given greater weight in a research institution, and teaching in teaching-oriented schools. Teaching tends to matter less than research in sciences, and teaching tends to be more important in humanities.

Officially, collegiality is in last place and is in some institutions forbidden as a criterion. However, likeability can influence people's subjective evaluations of other criteria. There is a growing trend to require departments to have explicit criteria, for instance stating that a book is required, or that the norm is 3 peer-reviewed publications per year. I understand it to be the normal case that all of your publications are part of the tenure package.

The external evaluations are, in my opinion, more important as a measure of your research productivity than the raw number of publications, so a huge number of crappy papers will do you no good, unless you can get a lot of crappy referees too.


Proper way to declare; "examples are ficticious for data protection"

It is common to use words like "fictitious", "fake data", and even a footnote explicitly saying "these are not actual values" or "values for illustrative purposes only". It is even more common to just pick values intentionally that are obviously fake, so that no reasonable person will think they might be real, such as "John Smith|Gotham|01:11|1999|Jan|Accounting|12345" - etc.

I will however note that there is a way to handle this specific case that is even more high-level, which is just not to do this at all, because most stakeholders couldn't care less, much less even know what a float vector is or how they are suppose to interpret it. Telling people details they don't need makes many people think it must be important so they try to latch on to any random interpretation they can think of - because why are you even telling them if it doesn't matter? So if they are not a very specific type of user, just leave this out entirely.

If they are in the tiny, tiny minority of stakeholders that care about this incredibly low-level amount of detail, then it is reasonable to assume they will recognize obviously fictitious data even if you don't say it, and if you really are worried you can just give an asterisk and say its fictitious - but that's already excessive. If you need to demonstrate for some sort of officious bureaucratic sect, declare in the footnote that the data is fictitious for illustrative purposes, persuant GDPR section blah subsection blah blah blah. Give the lawyers something to smile about, if that's your audience, but you shouldn't let it take over the rest of the presentation of the work.


Should a sessional instructor applicant submit a teaching statement?

I'm giving this answer from the point of view of philosophy, in the USA. I'd say that you should include a teaching statement in the packet, unless you are specifically directed to include only the materials they explicitly ask for. Don't bother with a research statement or some of the other junk that comes in a tenure-track packet. But this is a teaching job, and if I'm reading the above correctly, you don't have any experience as the instructor of record. So, what I would try to do is to write a short (1 page) statement that shows a committee looking at your packet that you are ready to walk into your own classroom and do your thing.

It is really hard to write a good teaching statement. It's going to be even harder without a lot of first-hand experience. Fortunately, there's no end of advice out there on the web. For example, this, and this are both helpful.


If you are seeking an engineering job, do employers care about which university you attended? Do they look at your grades, or bias their decision based on the college's reputation?

If you have a solid foundation in the skills that matter for your engineering discipline/sub-field, and can convey that to recruiters in a phone/on-site/on-campus interview, then I would say that to a first-order where you did your degree does not matter so long as you can get the recruiter's attention.

Getting the recruiter's attention is the trickier part for those coming from lesser-known schools. For example, at the engineering schools I'm familiar with, new grads can find a lot of good fresh-out career opportunities by attending on-campus engineering career fairs and the like. The downside of attending a lesser-known engineering school is that they may not have a decent attendance of engineering companies that come to the campus for recruiting purposes in the first place. This puts the burden on the student in getting a recruiter's attention.

Engineering students (and students in other fields, I'm sure) from any institution can greatly benefit from networking with peers at other institutions and those already in industry. For those from lesser-known institutions, networking can be an invaluable tool for opening doors to career opportunities. Also, while obtaining an internship may be equally as difficult as obtaining a full-time position for those from lesser-known schools, participating in several internships along the way to obtaining your degree if at all possible (and performing the duties of the position well) would really go a long way to improving your chances of success.


In the United States, this is governed by Title 45, Part 46.

Paragraph 101 states that this applies to all research funded by or "subject to regulation" by the US Government
The same paragraph also states that an Agency Head may determine that a foreign IRB system is equivalent and may be substituted

The key requirements for US IRBs are:

Subpart A, Paragraph 107: IRBs must have at least 5 members with varying backgrounds (as enumerated)
Subpart A, Paragraph 108: IRBs must have sufficient meeting space, staff, written procedures for its deliberations, decisions, and adverse incidents
Subpart A, Paragraph 115: IRBs must keep detailed records for three years (as described)
Subpart E: IRBs must be registered with HHS (Office for Human Research Protections and/or Federal Drug Agency).

Most of the other subsections detail the basic rules that IRBs must enforce (e.g., involving fetuses, prisoners).

From what I can tell (and I am no expert), the only barrier to people using Uncle Bill's Cigar Shop IRB is that if a subject is harmed by an IRB-approved protocol, Uncle Bill is going to get sued. Uncle Bill may also have legal problems with the Government if they fail to follow the federal regulations governing IRBs (i.e., if they approve something that is clearly not permitted under CFR).


Is it ethical to give a final exam after the professor has quit before teaching the remaining chapters of the course?

Remember Hanlon’s Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I doubt that any of the staff at the university are deliberately trying to make you fail so that they can make more money by forcing you to redo the course; it’s much more likely that someone just put things off, failed to read their emails, or something similar because they were busy with other things.

Complain to the student ombudsman at your university if you feel like a failure by the staff to properly follow procedures has disadvantaged you.


How can I do solid, publishable research without having a postdoc position?

This is a good question but there may not be a good answer. Students who graduate from strong programs with multiple publications and strong letters of recommendation still have almost no choice about where they have to go to pursue a postdoc, and the same problem arises 2-3 years later for tenure-track positions (if they manage to get one). It does not sound like your family is OK with the amount of uncertainty that pursuing this path would require.

For example, even if you were the strongest student graduating from Harvard, to pursue the postdoc-then-tenure-track course you and your wife would need to be OK with (1) moving next year (2) to a location you don't get to choose, then (3) moving three years later (4) to a permanent location you don't get to choose. (If you're lucky, you might get to decide between a couple options, but none might be where you'd want to live.) Hopefully you get tenure there, otherwise you'd (5) have to move again after six or seven years.

My experience is with research positions, and the situation does become somewhat different as you move towards teaching-focused positions like small liberal arts colleges, or community colleges. But it still sounds like staying in your current position may be orders of magnitude better for you and your family than any other option.

One thing that stands out about your post is that although it's clearly and cogently written, it is vague about the key point of what you are looking for. Do you want a job where you teach stronger students? or more advanced classes? A job that affords you time for research? or which evaluates you on it? Or do you just want to do research and publish? I would suggest taking the time to think about what exactly your goals are; hopefully some of them can be achieved without changing positions.

As for publishing: the academic publishing industry in mathematics is not so hard to deal with. The difficult part is finding a problem to work on and proving a theorem! Once you do that, given that you have a PhD in math you should be able to look at papers on the arXiv to see the style in which math papers are written.


Phrasing for one current fellowship and one previous fellowship

You don't need to wax about how grateful you are if you're just providing information---note that that can also come across as bragging.

Just keep it simple and to the facts:

  I am currently supported by X (20XX-present), and was also previously supported by Y (20YY-20ZZ).


Is it common / advisable to add my personal web site to my curriculum vitae?

If it is a research oriented website, or even the website of your research group (where you are PI), it could be useful and won't do any harm. If it is your anime review website (see comment by @Azor-Ahai) the CV is probably the wrong place for it. That is, unless you apply for an anime related position.


Why are small fonts the norm in research papers?

This is a historical anachronism. The fonts are chosen for the print version of the journal.  For a print version, if you use a smaller font, you can squeeze more text onto the same page and print the same paper on fewer pages -- which saves money.  So, for print publications, the small font size arguably makes sense.  However, today print is less important and the digital format is more important, but journal requirements haven't caught up to this fact.

For instance, in computer science, the ACM is a notorious offender: they require papers to use 9pt fonts, which are very small.


How to increase the productivity of undergraduate research assistants?

Accept that what you are doing when working with undergraduate researchers is teaching and developing young scientists. Make that mental shift, and your view of productivity changes enormously.

Even the very best undergraduates I've had -- students who now have R1 faculty positions or equivalent -- were time-sinks at first and break-even after a year or two as undergraduates. But increasing productivity is not why I invited them into the lab.  What was so cool was to see them turning into independent scientists while in my lab.

I suppose if you really care about productivity rather than developing scientists, assign them very simple tasks: scraping data or building interfaces or whatever. But if you can manage to see productivity as students building skill and confidence in independent research? The sky is the limit.


In most scientific disciplines, there are different journal tracks for "short papers" and "full papers."  Some of this may be leaking into computer science at this point, but at present the main mode of publication for shorter results in computer science is still typically a conference paper.

If you have not yet published your work in a conference, I would suggest looking for an appropriate conference to publish it in.  Depending on the size, some conferences even have "short paper" and "full paper" tracks---for example, one of the ones I regularly publish in has 10-page IEEE format full papers and 4-page IEEE format short papers.

If you have already published in a conference, then perhaps you should ask yourself whether this work really needs to become a journal paper. It is perfectly acceptable to have a piece of work published in a good conference and then not to extend it to a journal paper.


Why would recommender not submit letter to some schools?

You're right that there isn't any particular reason for a professor to intentionally and voluntarily refuse to send letters to certain institutions, especially not without telling you.

So I would consider unintentional and involuntary explanations.

The notification emails may not be reaching her (IT failures, spam filters, etc).  Try to contact her personally (email, phone, in person) and let her know that the letters are due.
Oversight is a possibility.  She might have forgotten about the letters and then gone on vacation where she doesn't see the emails.
She may be unable to work because of some sort of emergency (personal, family, medical, etc). Recommenders are people too, and sometimes things happen in their lives that take priority over your letter.  If you cannot contact her yourself, contact her institution or department and explain the situation.  It is possible that they will have access to a letter she's already written and can send it out, or that someone else there can write a letter.


Finishing a PhD or quitting and taking a job in industry

Well, firstly, congratulations on the job offer - you must have seriously impressed them to be offered a position before the completion of the PhD.

So, we come to the crux of the issue, the main thing is (and you have no doubt heard this before), but the decision is up to you, and by that, I mean totally up to you.  But, to be a bit more helpful let's look at the information you provided.

You are young and in later years, should you choose to pursue the PhD, it could be likely that you will be able to have some credits towards a future PhD (this would depend on the college).  If I understand you correctly, you'll be able to get a MPhil?  that will help with the first point (credits towards a PhD) and certainly is recognition of the study you have done so far.

So a couple of key questions you have to ask yourself are:

Which of the job or the PhD will lead you to your goals quicker and in a more enriching way?
How much would working at this company mean to you?
and related to the question above, will that opportunity resurface upon completion of your PhD?

Another option, once again depending on the policies of your university is to defer the final year of your PhD or complete it part time, while you work (which is what I am doing).

-


Why is 3.0 GPA used as cut-off for job offers, etc.?

“why do companies base so much on GPA? — And why is the 3.0 cut-off so strictly enforced?” — Because it is practical! As any numerical indicator, it allows one to make decisions very fast. Thus, it is not used the main decision factor, but simply to weed out a large fraction of applications, thus reducing the amount of work required by individual examination of the remaining applicants' files.

Does it mean that some exceptional applicants, with poor GPA grades, are left out? Yes. Is it understandable from the company's point of view? Yes, also: you have to compare the amount of work it would require to give each and every application a thorough review (huge) to the risk of loosing a potential top-notch-collaborator-who-had-a-poor-GPA.

Why 3.0? — I'm not sure there's any good reason for that, and it would probably depend on the company/program. But 3.0 is a nice round number, easy to remember, and it falls in a convenient place in the statistical distribution: if you set the limit to 2.5, your threshold does not filter out enough applications; if you set it to 3.5, you're at risk of loosing to many good applicants (making you rely too much on this simple numerical indicator).

How to combat it, if your GPA is lower than 3.0? — Rounding is one trick you might try (2.97 is 3.0, if two significant digits). More promising, though, are getting very strong recommandations, if possible from inside the company. Whatever the announced requirements are, there usually are ways to get your application file into the right pile, if you can get someone to speak for you.


Resusing my own poster abstract for another conference

Assuming you're talking about a one or two paragraph abstract, the question here is not really about the abstract per se but the contents of the poster.  In my opinion, you don't need to worry about self-plagiarism per se from a brief poster abstract because it's not a real publication in the first place (if it were a 1+ page extended abstract, that would be a different matter).

Instead, the important question is whether your research community will find it acceptable to have you presenting essentially the same material in two different conferences.  In many communities, this is OK, taking the view that it is essentially raising visibility of a result with different groups of people; in others communities, however, it may not be viewed as acceptable.  Consult with your supervisor to see what the standard is for your community.


The date the PhD is awarded is almost always the date of the defense in France (and it is usually the date of the defense that counts for France-specific deadlines, such as qualification, post-doctoral scholarships or PhD awards). The only exception I am aware of is
if the PhD is not awarded on the day of the defense (very rare, but it can of course happen!).

Note that the diploma is not typically issued on that day (and, indeed, may take months to be issued), but that it is possible to get a certificate the day itself or in the next few days. Graduate schools are aware of typical deadlines and typically help the student obtain this certificate by these deadlines.


My professor has left the university and his official email ID is no longer active

If he is still prepared to write you a reference then he will.
He can state that you were a student when he was teaching at X institution and that will be accepted.
If the admission committee feels it is necessary to contact him then they will do so.
I have sent reference letters to the Academic secretary and she printed them on letter headed paper - this was while I was on holiday in a different country and the student needed the reference quickly (comes down to planning ie 5 p's: proper planning prevents poor performance...)


Good place to publish funded grant proposals

AFAIK, publishing grant proposals (successful or not) is highly uncommon in the sciences (I've not come across that and don't know of a suitable platform). There is an obvious reason for that: proposals contain new ideas which the applicants plan to pursue in the future, so publishing them invites others to do the same and potentially scoop them.

Ideas are the scientist's capital (in particular for theoretical research) and unless they have a substantial overabundance of good ideas, they must be careful to not give them away too cheaply. Of course, in experimental/applied research an idea must be accompanied by the necessary resources and equipment (i.e. an advantage over any competitor) before it can be successfully pursued.

In your CV, you should list the grants with title, period, and value. However, the proposals themselves are not listed in a CV, they are definitely not publications.


How to communicate with the advisor if someone wants to downgrade his PhD to Master in university A and then apply for PhD in university B?

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

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

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


Can I get into a top 50 school with a bachelors degree from an unknown state college?

The answers to these questions are very dependent on the field of study. My perspective is mostly from economics and some statistics, so things might be different in other fields.

From an unknown school, it will be very difficult, but not impossible, to get into a really top program. Top programs tend to be risk-adverse, and you're facing pretty stiff competition in the applicant pool.

The biggest issue is that they are going to have a difficult time evaluating the difficulty of your coursework. Assuming you get that far, you're often going to be compared to a second-tier candidate from a top university. They know exactly how to evaluate the latter's grades and can even compare him/her to past students from that school. You will be much more of an unknown, which is not a good thing.

To make up for this, you're going to need exemplary letters. But that's the second issue, your access to great recommenders is more limited than someone at a top program. Letters of recommendation are often put in context by comparing them to previous letters from the same person, and here you might run into the same issue as evaluating your grades. Personal and professional relationships can also come into play, and your recommenders are less likely to be well-known in the field. Letters from people who aren't active researchers are much less valuable as well, and depending on the college you might not even have good access to active researchers.

At minimum, you'll need near-perfect grades in the most difficult courses offered. This probably means being one of the "superstar" students at your school, easily the best in your class. You'll also need fantastic letters from the top researchers that you have access to, and, for econ at least, significant research experience.

For your second question, general work experience is worth almost nothing in economics. All that matters is research experience. If the work you're doing isn't contributing to something that will eventually be published in a peer-reviewed journal, then it's extremely unlikely that it will be helpful.

I should also mention an option that is often available in economics, though I don't know if other fields have analogues. And that is to take a job as a research assistant for a professor or research group. These are often 2-3 year jobs that offer a chance to do real research with just a BA. Ideally, you could apply to graduate schools in two years with a coauthored paper on the way and a fantastic letter of rec from an active researcher.

Classic examples in econ are working for the Federal Reserve or for a professor's research group (example).


Does submitting a paper in Latex format enhance the chances of acceptance?

If both are allowed then both will be fine. I would choose the one I am most comfortable with. Using a program you are less familiar with increases the chance of making a silly error. Such errors are much more likely to work against you than the choice between Word or LaTeX.


Independence as a postdoc working with former PhD supervisor

The former supervisor frequently refers to me as their 'postdoctoral fellow'. Question 1: Is this appropriate, given that I am the PI on the new project?

I have never encountered a "postdoctoral fellow" that does not have a supervisor.  But my experience is far from global.  As this article on postdoctoral research says, "Depending on the type of appointment, postdoctoral researchers may work independently or under the supervision of a principal investigator."  Later it says "In the US, a postdoctoral scholar is an individual holding a doctoral degree who is engaged in mentored research and/or scholarly training for the purpose of acquiring the professional skills needed to pursue a career path of his or her choosing."

If you are the PI on your project then yes, I suppose that must mean that you do not have a formal supervisor.  However you can still have a mentor...and you should.  Your former PhD advisor's description of you as "theirs" need not imply that they view themselves as your boss; it may only mean that they are affiliated with you and are taking a role of mentoring you, as seems to be the case here.

Let me also say that in that this person who is formally associated with the grant is your former PhD advisor and in that he owns (you say) the equipment that you are using both give him more oversight than some other independent researcher would expect.  If I borrow my friend's car that does not make her my boss, but it does give her some supervisory role over my use of the car.  A senior academic who owns equipment you are using should have some supervisory role in your work.

  Question 2: How can I best make clear (respectfully) that they are now a colleague?

I don't see what behavior of the supervisor indicates that he does not view you as a colleague.  I have a postdoc, and I view her as a colleague: a junior one, in which I have some supervisory role, but still a colleague: I have some projects she is not involved in, she has some projects I am not involved in except to hear her talk about them, and there are some projects we do together.  If she decided tomorrow that she only wanted to work on her own projects alone, that would in my view be suboptimal for both of us, but it would be her right.

In some fields postdocs are treated rather differently: they are the highest level of workers for the PI professor.  But since you are a PI, that is not your situation.

Having a senior colleague who can mentor you is extremely valuable.  I continue to mentor my PhD students after they get the PhD -- well, so far I have one, but soon two more -- but this mentorship is limited by my time and energy.  Any mentor should be guiding his/her mentees towards greater mastery, independence and autonomy.  Gradually the influence of mentors wanes: when I was an untenured assistant professor I had a research mentor and a teaching mentor; as a tenured associate professor I have no formal mentors anymore....which is a shame, since to paraphrase Yoda, much to learn, I still have.  But my work is still evaluated by more senior people -- that is a ubiquitous phenomenon in academia -- so it is still important for me to maintain good relationships with senior colleagues.  Unless people are literally telling me what to do, I tend to let it slide when people treat me with less "seniority" than I think I have.

I am a little worried that you may have your eye on the wrong problem.  You have a one year position: what happens next year?  That's the key question, and your future relationship with your advisor is a key part of the answer.  You don't need to kowtow or be subservient to him: on the contrary, you're the PI, so when it comes to the work itself you get to call the shots (and you should).  But you are still looking for a lot of help from your supervisor -- help landing the best possible future job, if nothing else.  So trying to insist "You're not my mentor; I am fully independent from you" in a one-year position seems really to be a strategic mistake to me.  Instead you should apply yourself and show your former PhD supervisor how much stronger and more capable you have become, and then they can write you an excellent recommendation because all of your post-PhD growth and maturation took place before his eyes.


Is it possible to submit a conference paper without results?

(as you are talking about a system that needs to be evaluated on a number of users, I have the impression that you may be in a field related to software engineering, so that's what I am working with in the rest of the answer - but other fields will likely not be much different, just the examples I provide below may be of less relevance)

The answer to this question largely depends on what conference you plan to submit to, and how preliminary your results are. Different conferences value different things, and differently ranked conferences need results on different levels of maturity.

Some examples from the wider field of systems and software engineering:

ICSE is the major conference in software engineering. You will need a solid idea and a strong, convincing evaluation. Testing on a significant number of real users will be required (what this means exactly depends a bit on the type of system, of course). Generally, reviewers at ICSE are not so interested in the concrete software you built, more in the processes, concepts and methodologies underlying your system.
USENIX Middleware is another major conference, but with a completely separate focus. Here, the actual system implementation is what counts. Few Middleware papers have user studies etc., but all of them provide detailed performance analysis and comparisons with existing tools and systems. Providing your system in a useable (!) way for download is almost mandatory.
The World Wide Web Conference is the premier conference for Web engineering. What really counts here is the data you have. Access to real-life data (e.g., usage data, search logs, social network data sets, etc.) is really important, more so than testing with real users. Papers that provide a new publicly available set of real-life data with some interesting characteristics are often valued highly. Implementation generally counts less than algorithms.
ICSOC is an example of a smaller, more subfield-oriented conference. Here, you need a good idea and some preliminary or intermediary results, but most papers are not evaluated very strictly. Most papers submitted here are still, at least to some extend, work-in-progress.

Basically all sub-fields have their own smaller conferences similar to ICSOC (last example). While they are usually at least one tier below the more general conferences, they are usually a good first outlet for publication, as they are often less competitive and do not require a fully evaluated and finished research project. However, do not think that smaller conferences accept everything. ICSOC still sports an acceptance rate between 15% and 20%.

What I am trying to say is that different conferences work completely differently, and submitting the same paper to two (even equally good) conferences can easily end in a Strong Reject followed by Strong Accept. It is important to know how papers in a given conference typically look like, how they are presented, and how they are evaluated. Going against the mainstream in a conference is usually not the best idea, especially not in the beginning. This is were you need the advise of a senior person, who should have experience in writing papers for the relevant conferences in your field. If that is not available, you can also try to carefully survey previous proceedings, and see if you can find patterns and overall styles yourself. However, be prepared that you may miss nuances if you do this yourself. For instance, if your target conference typically does not have many applied papers, it is difficult to tell without knowing an experienced insider whether this is because applied papers are not often submitted there, or because the TPC always rejects almost all applied papers.

Edit:

I noticed that I rambled on without ever really answering your questions ...

  I'm not sure though if I can submit the paper without results or will it be rejected because of that?

Without any results may be difficult, although you can still try to submit to a workshop or work-in-progress track. However, if you already have some preliminary results, it sounds like a smaller, more specialized conference may be a good choice for you. Of course the validity of this depends a bit on how small your evaluation was...


Is it appropiate to put a funny funny slide in a Bachelor thesis presentation?

I'd consider this a classic example of ‘if you have to ask, the answer's no’.

To expand a little on this: I don't think that humour is always forbidden in academic contexts. I've seen it used in both publications and presentations -- only very rarely, but usually successfully. The problem is that ‘appropriateness’ is massively context-dependent. It depends on exactly what kind of humorous content you have planned, exactly how you present it, the culture at your institution and department, who's in the room, what mood they're in, how your audience regard you, what preceded your presentation, what you have to lose if your attempted humour fails, and a hundred other factors. You are far better placed to assess all these factors than anyone else in the world -- especially strangers on the Internet who know absolutely nothing about the details of your situation. So, if you yourself are unsure whether it's appropriate, there's probably nobody here who can give you a more reliable answer -- which means that you should play it safe and leave the humour out.

One thing you might consider is addressing your question to colleagues in your own department, who will be far more familiar with the particular context of your presentation.


Change of rules & regulations after accepting faculty contract offer

This is an unfortunate situation were nobody really is to blame. You can't expect the university to warn you about a law that wasn't even in place yet, and the university cannot objectively be mad at you for reneging when your contractual situation significantly changed, even if it is due to outside factors. Of course the important word in the above statement is "objectively" - nobody can ensure you that the people that wanted to hire you will also see it like that, and that you won't burn any bridges.

  Is it too late to turn down the academic offer? I have accepted it on e-mail but I haven't signed anything yet and haven't even seen the contract. If yes, what is the best way to do this?

As long as you have not signed anything you are always in the right to back out. The best way to do it would be to warn them that this new development significantly changes your view on their offer, even if they are of course not to blame. I would stay clear of any accusations that they failed to inform you in advance. Note that this also gives them the option to up their offer, which would presumably change your mind back again.

You should do it in the same form as you tentatively accepted the offer before - if you communicated that you would take the offer via email, send them a brief follow-up that you changed your mind, and why.

  Is anything similar happening to any other country and how do academics people deal with it?

I am not aware of any concrete cases, but presumably when Brexit broke there had to be cases of academics changing their mind about moving to the UK.


Which topics to include in a teaching presentation?

My content area is biology, and our major biology education research journal recently published a nice overview on this (open-source reference at end). Hopefully the results are relevant for your field as well.

Make sure content is correct
Follow instructions (keep to time limit and topic)
Make the topic relevant (bring in a hot topic from research or news)
Involve the audience (have an activity or "clicker question")
Have teaching slides or use the board

I'd recommend trying to find a course (at the interviewing school or at a similar institution) that has an online syllabus so you can see how much is normally covered in a lecture. Then your first slide can be one that shows how you would cover the day's content, but places your 10 min talk in context. This is helpful if the "fun" part you want to do is in the middle of the imaginary lecture.

Then, pick something from the course that you think you can create an activity about. Can the audience develop something? Vote on an aspect of the code? Work in groups to find three common errors in a short piece of code? (I'm flailing around here, as game design is a mystery).

Build your lecture around that activity. Have the activity near the beginning. Plan on everything taking at least twice as long as you think.

Be enthusiastic.

Congratulations on the invite, and good luck!

Smith, M. K., Wenderoth, M. P., & Tyler, M. (2013). The Teaching Demonstration: What Faculty Expect and How to Prepare for This Aspect of the Job Interview. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(1), 12-18.


Since I have been that student at the beginning of my PhD, I think I can give you some perspective. I was very motivated when I started, but I didn't know anything about research, so I lost my motivation when I had to be on my own.

I tried the same approach as your student with my PhD adviser, and he told me he's not going to do my work or homework because I have to be able to do everything myself. Obviously, everything I did as a PhD student, I can still do now, so it worked.

But, you have to establish your boundaries. You have to set some discipline, and the first thing is to reduce the interaction with your student. Set a meeting, once a week. One day before the meeting, your student should put in writing, briefly, what progress he made, and what problems he encountered -- that should be discussed in the first half of the meeting. The rest of the meeting will be you telling him what needs to be done next. You should not talk with or help your student outside these meetings, and you should ignore those abusive "help now!!!" emails he's writing you.

If your student just wants to do his job quick, as you describe, you have to realize his output won't be something you can rely on. You need to give him two types of assignments. Some imply things he already does well, so he doesn't lose completely his courage, and the others imply him learning new stuff. The latter have to be easier. You do not help him with them beyond suggesting papers or books to look things up. In case of programming, suggest SE for him to look for help, and give him some examples to get him started and nothing else. Under no conditions you should do his work.

There are things you should demand from your student. If he has to present data to you, the data should be in the format your group is already using, if there is code that he needs to write, it should be documented, and he has to present tests that it's working. If you assigned him to read a certain paper, you have to make sure he read it. If you told him to search for literature, he needs to be able to discuss what he found and how is that relevant for the project and so on.

Since you are a postdoc, you probably can't enforce things properly. If you were his adviser, you could tell him to follow your discipline, or find another adviser. As a postdoc, you could go to the boss, tell them about what's going on and that the student consumes too much of your time. Tell them you are thinking of setting a discipline and ask them to back you up, especially since you are doing their job. Anyway, whatever you do, once you set your new set of rules, don't let him cross them, or break them yourself.

Edit - in response to @CaffeineAddiction comment claiming that, as an adviser you need to introduce the student to the basics.

The job of the adviser is not to introduce you to the foundations of whatever field. Part of that job is to teach the student how to introduce themselves to the basics. In other words, you don't teach the man to fish, you teach the man to teach himself how to fish. The basics should have been covered in classes. If they were not, you do have to make a compromise, and intervene when the student seems to have a block and doesn't make progress. But, you do that simply because you don't want to lose the student.

That's what I do. If my student has no background, I give him an easy test case, I suggest them a class to take, I recommend a book, or two, and give them one of the not so complex code that works. The code is a model, and might contain a few layers of complexity. My job is to make the student aware of this, and guide them to search for the knowledge they need to improve the code, or write their own.

I took the code as an example, since that was the original question. But, when you start research in my field, you don't get a code. You get a paper with a bunch of formulas. To understand those formulas, you need a few years of reading textbooks and other research papers. It's very easy to get lost in the process, in other words, spending 6 months on trying to understand something completely irrelevant. The adviser's job is to offer limited guidance to understanding that paper, help you recognize your blocks and address them. The heavy lifting is still yours.

As far as I understand, there are only two valuable skills that an adviser is responsible to teach a PhD student. The first is to teach the student how to learn on their own a completely new subject. The second skill an adviser must teach is how to do research. Many advisers skip the first skill because of many reasons, but mostly because of the lack of time. Then they complain about students with technician mentality. But, learning that first skill, also teaches you the right attitude towards the unknown, which is essential in research.


Contacting a Professor about a possible Ph.D.

I formulated my mail as a "letter of motivation" - Just in the same way you would write an application in Germany. You could start with something like

  "Thank you for the nice discussion about the open PhD position in your
  research group at the XYZ conference in October 2017..."

Then, you should mention that you had a very close look to his/her research and that this perfectly fits your interests because of "this" and "that".

In any case I would already attach the CV with all certificates and required documents.


How do search committees use feedback from one-on-one faculty meetings during an academic interview?

I am in a US R1 institution in a department of computer science.

All departments have their own style. Ours is something like this:

Each candidate is "governed" by a search committee (we often have multiple searches in different areas) consisting of 4-5 faculty.
Each candidate is "hosted" by one specific person on the committee: the host's job is to be the candidate liaison to the process, as well as managing the interview schedule, and making everything run smoothly from the department's point of view
Immediately after the interview, the host sends out mail to the faculty requesting formal feedback via email. The host will also typically buttonhole people in the hallway to get informal "vibes" as well.
after the formal feedback is collected (and anonymized depending on how things go), and after all candidates have been interviewed, the search committee sits down to assess the pool.

At this stage, faculty feedback plays the following role (the committee has already discussed the technical merits and strengths/weaknesses of the candidates):

  Is there a clear consensus in favor of a candidate ?
  Are there candidates that are drawing strong (and well-founded) opposition from the faculty ?
  If the committee decides to choose one particular candidate to put forward to the faculty at large, will there be significant opposition,
  and why ?
  what is the overall sense that the faculty appears to have about the candidates in general ?

After this is done, the committee might choose to:

present a candidate as a consensus choice
present two candidates as co-consensus choices that the faculty at large can vote on
decide that no candidate has crossed the bar for a faculty-wide vote.

To answer your specific questions that aren't covered above:

no one person (not even the chair!) has a veto over hiring someone, but obviously people closer technically to the candidate will have a "weightier" opinion. The way our structure works, it's possible (though unlikely to happen) that the committee will nix someone that the faculty all like, which is a sort of collective veto
faculty are assembled to meet the candidate based primarily on possible match of interest, and occasionally also for tactical reasons :). The host will make sure that people who are stakeholders in the hire meet as many candidates as possible. But there's of course an element of "who's available that day".


Is a general GRE test required if I have already passed a GRE Subject Test?

If I have already appeared for GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to take the general GRE test?

Short answer: Likely, yes. If your school asks for the general GRE, then you need to take it. Without the general GRE scores, your application would not be considered complete, and, thus, may never get forwarded to the department's admissions committee. If in doubt, call or email the department(s) you are applying to and ask.

  Which test should I take first(general GRE/GRE Subject Test) and why?

It does not matter. Usually the general GRE is offered more frequently than the subject GREs, so many people take it first. There is no reason you have to do it this way. Take them in an order that is convenient for you, but do not wait until just before your application deadlines. Your scores will not get to your schools in time.


I conceptually understand a result, but not its mathematical implementation – how can I defend using it?

When it comes to applying mathematical results, it is the norm that you do not understand all the nuts and bolts of what you are applying. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Instead, it’s the only way that modern science can work – it is too vast and intertwined to be understood in its entirety by one person. The crucial part is that there is a clear interface between theory and application where everything is communicated clearly.

To give an illustrative example: I recently wrote a paper where I derive some rules for building ecological models from basic principles. I did my best to describe said principles as well as the rules and their consequences so that those applying my work can use them. However, I expect that the vast majority of my readership cannot understand the mathematical proofs that go in between. I must expect that they treat this as a black box. On the other hand, in order to perform my proofs, I in turn relied on theorems whose proofs I did not understand.
Mathematical theorems are great interfaces. They give you some statement of the form: “If X, then Y.” You only need to understand the statements X and Y, but you do not understand why one implies the other. That’s what mathematicians are for. On the other hand, the mathematicians who proved the theorems I use have no particular expertise in ecology as far as I know.

Now, there may not always be a clear interface. In that case, I suggest to create one yourself (and not only for yourself but also for your readers): Write a passage for your thesis that describes what you understand and need the tool to do. Then back up everything with references from the relevant publications and documentation. If necessary, ask the authors again.


How to respond to the teacher who puts the feet up while talking to student?

I've done my PhD in Japan, and have had much contact with professors in America and Japan.

The academic relationship and work culture in both countries are very different. In America it is generally not regarded as bad when someone puts their feet on the table while talking to you.

I had bosses and advisors in the US who did this. However, in Japan, the advisor-student relationship is more respectful and professional.

I would like to tell you that you should ask the professor to refrain from putting their feet on the table, but if they do it in their office, it is pretty much up to them. Since the office is the professor's space, I do not think it is your friend's business to ask them not to do it.


Should you list undergraduate work on your CV?

Your publications are your publications, and unless they have been retracted, you should list them all on your CV. It is up to the reader how to interpret your undergraduate work, and you have minimal control of that in the rather raw format of a CV, whether or not you list them. But consider: if you do list them, then your degree history makes it clear they are from undergrad and to be judged accordingly. If you do not list them, however, then the reader may easily come across them anyway online and be left to wonder what awful shame you are attempting to hide.


Can one's primary motivation be learning, instead of research, if he is applying for a masters program (instead of a PhD program)?

Whatever excites you about the coursework you'll be taking, write about that.  There are many masters programs that don't involve doing original research.


What should I consider when deciding whether to delay an exam?

Exam dates announced at the beginning of the semester should only be changed with a highly compelling reason. The syllabus of a course is a contract with the students. Even if 90% of your students prefer the delay, if one of your students has to cancel an airplane ticket for a conference visit or miss a wedding, a balance has not been struck.

If I were a student in which an instructor tried to change an exam date as late as "the day before", I would certainly lodge formal complaints with the department and the institution. Please do not do this.

In your initial post, you'd not given any reason to believe that you couldn't simply move a bit of material to the next exam. That is by far the better option.

If for some reason delaying the exam is truly unavoidable, you should feel obligated to offer make-up exam times for students who may be unable to attend.


Advice on choosing a CS undergraduate thesis advisor (picking between 2 profs)?

There is hardly any basis here for a distinction. Both are good. Both are willing to work with you. Both will provide a valuable experience.
You could just "flip a coin", actually, and reach a good outcome.
But once you decide, make a firm commitment and stick with it. Don't break contact with the other prof, however. Both can be valuable as letter writers.
Having worked, closely with more than one prof is probably more advantageous than working with only one, but it is, I think, a marginal effect.


Taken at face-value, these guides are useless or even harmful, as they would promote an organized loss of memory and lead to multiple reinventions of the wheel.
It is also important, however, to show that your research is moving at the cutting edge of the field. This is probably where the advice you mention is coming from. You should demonstrate the topicality of your project by discussing the most recent literature to the extent that it is adequate for your research problem. Strategically, it may be useful to highlight your project's contribution to the latest research, including new trends, especially in the introductory section. But take care not to exaggerate this tactic, as it cannot compensate for substantive shortcomings and might even come across as superficial.
To explicitly answer the question in your title: References remain valid until superseded by later research with respect to the aspect they are cited for. To make that judgement, you have to know the field; to know the field, you have to read. Looking at the age of the reference cannot replace making that judgement, it can only give you a rough indication as to whether the reference is likely to have been superseded. The fact that different (sub-)fields move at different speeds makes it even less reasonable to put a number on a reference's shelf-life.


What are the benefits of an MBA to someone with a Computer Science degree?

I remember asking this question 5 months ago. Fast forward 5 months later and I've accepted a position as an entry level developer! The sweet thing: I got a salary increase because of my MBA! I start in June, which is a month after I'm supposed to graduate. The other nice thing is that the MBA program only cost me about 16k in total, which isn't too bad if you ask me.
In terms of the education itself, I don't regret it one bit because it steered me in the direction of finding financial literacy, which is huge in these times. I was taught all sorts of CS topics, but never the importance of financial literacy. I believe my CS degree taught me how to make money, but my MBA taught me how to manage and KEEP money.
I thank everyone who shared their responses because I remember back then how stressed I was. Everything is pretty smooth sailing now


Where to find details on Bachelor degrees majoring in IT?

I don't think you'll find this in one centralized place.  You'll need to:

Identify some specific colleges whose programs interest you.  As a way to get started, there are various publications that create rankings of programs in different subjects.  One prominent source is US News and World Report.  But keep in mind that rankings are inherently subjective and that other people may disagree about which schools should be emulated.
Go to each institution's website and look for their catalog.  This is a large document that lists all the degrees and majors offered by the school, and the specific courses that one has to take for each one.  It will also explain general graduation requirements that may not be specific to a particular major.  (US schools typically have general education requirements, that every student must take a substantial number of courses in a variety of different subjects, which may be unrelated to their major.)

Be warned that the requirements can be rather complex, with many different options, elective courses, etc, and may take you some work to sort through.  There is a standard joke that the most difficult requirement for graduation is to figure out the requirements for graduation.

The catalog will also contain a short course description of the topics studied in each course.
Find syllabi manually; they are not usually available in one centralized place for a given institution.  Usually the instructor of a given course in a given term has the authority to write the syllabus, explaining what assignments and exams will be given, what books or readings will be required, how grades will be determined, etc.  They can also vary the topics from the official course description, within reason.  The syllabus is usually posted on a website for the course, to which students are given the URL, but you may have trouble finding this for a number of reasons:

Course websites may not be organized or centrally indexed in any particular way.
You may not know when the course was last taught, or the name of the instructor who taught it.  In some cases, it can happen that a course appears in the catalog, but is not actually taught anymore, or taught very infrequently.
Course websites may not be accessible by the public.  This is becoming more common as institutions migrate course websites into learning management systems, which are often set by default to require a student login to access.

You could also email the department chair or secretary and ask if they have a collection of recent syllabi that they could send you.  Keep in mind that responding to such a request would be a very low priority task for them.


What is the difference between CV and Resume?

Resume is shorter.

Resume provides a summary of your education, previous employment, skills, and accomplishments.

CV  includes all the above in more details plus publications, presentations, detailed teaching experience, etc.


To what extent is Linux prevalent in University maths departments?

In Germany, Linux is pretty common as end user operating system in maths departments. I worked at three different universities in Germany and they all used it.

On the other hand, many people use their private laptops for work (when they are at home or travel), and I guess (but don't know) that Linux is not so dominant there.


A stunted PhD: PhD in the time of a pandemic

Disclaimer: This is not specifically from a mathematics study or USA perspective, but I think some perspectives may be helpful. Take them with a pinch of salt, depending on local factors.
I started a research career in an applied lab before enrolling for a PhD. Presently I am, like you, in my third year of PhD, and generally struggle to juggle office work with my academic work. While the pandemic created a bunch of problems (especially for experimentalists), it has had a few positive effects. In my experience, all positive effects were linked with peer exchanges, communications, and virtual interactions. (Everything below only addresses your first question.)
(1) Shrinking distances: It is easier to attend webinars, talks and enroll in peer groups when you don't need to physically be present. I found myself attending talks from different departments, which I wouldn't have in person, just because they were a mile's walk away. I understand your field is niche, but this may be the ideal time to explore some peripheral topics and see how your research could connect to those. If you find it difficult to get your question answered on Zoom, don't shy away from mailing the speaker (use an appropriate subject line, of course). That could help set up a private chat or discussion soon after.
(2) Reduced conference costs : Other than the travel costs saved, most conferences have significantly reduced the registration fee. This means that one could attend a lot more conferences than would be possible in person. In my personal case, several conferences and workshops were affordable enough for me to pay for, rather than having to apply for departmental/other grants. As you attend more, you will have more interactions (despite missing the in-person interactions), and it is inevitable that some will be helpful to you.
(3) Newer conference formats: The most recent conference I attended followed a hybrid format, where video presentations of all talks were made available about a week in advance, and during the actual conference dates there were virtual discussion rooms for each session. This is amazing, because you can effectively watch and absorb content in advance, reach out to other speakers beforehand, expressing interest and mentioning any topics that you would like to discuss. This made the discussion sessions extremely fruitful and targetted (arguably more than an in-person conference where social demands could reduce the extent of discussions). Of course, it demands that you do your homework beforehand.
Finally, for the virtual conferences, a few precautions are worth keeping in mind. Its good to keep your camera on as much as possible (facial contact is still very important), a good internet connection is worth the investment (if applicable), and its better to be formally dressed, even if you're attending from home.


Accepted behaviour while working in international collaborations

There is no international standard of etiquette. Cultures differ so much between countries (and within countries) that I think it would be impossible to agree on the details of such a thing. What you are discovering is part of the fun of collaborating with other people from different countries: you get to indirectly learn about the cultures and working practices of those countries.
In situations like this, my advice is to take it on a case-by-case basis. Ask your collaborators early on whether they prefer you to take the lead on suggesting meeting times and related goals, or whether they would prefer to communicate with you as and when they make progress. That way you can ensure that everyone is happy as the collaboration goes on, and you can always check in with them later on to see that the arrangement is still working for everyone.


How should I list presentations given at workshops on my CV?

Any position that builds your career or profession has a rightful place on your CV. It sounds like your workshop leading experience has done that, so I would vote to put it on. To be clear, I'm assuming that by "presentations in workshops" you mean that you led a workshop where participants worked through something (since "workshops" are typically not lectures my field--I could be mistaken about your field), which I'll refer to as "workshops facilitated"

The question of where to categorize it is more complex I think, and it depends on the nature of the workshops. I think there are three main options:

1. "Workshops facilitated" sub-heading under a "Conferences" or "Presentations" Category

If you think the skills you developed and displayed in facilitating the workshops is similar to the skills developed and displayed in participating in conferences, and your workshops were about research of a caliber you would present at a conference.

2. "Workshops facilitated" sub-heading under a "Teaching Experience" category

If the workshops you facilitated were more focused on general topics than your own independent research.

3. "Workshops facilitated" as its own category

If the workshops you've facilitated do not fall neatly into one of the two categories above. If the workshops you've facilitated are very distinct from either of these options, or if you've facilitated a mixture of workshops, I think it's reasonable to put them in their own category. You could even have sub-headings of "Research-focused workshops", "Introductory workshops" or "pedagogical workshops", etc.


There are two types of data repositories: generic and subject specific. Check what repository may be used by your discipline, and see if it meets your requirements. re3data.org allows you to find an appropriate repository to access and deposit research data (https://www.re3data.org/). There is also a number of generic repositories: Dryad (as mentioned in a previous comment), Figshare, etc. Often they will assign DOIs for your content and will allow you to pick an appropriate license. I would advocate for CC-BY, CC0, or CC-BY-SA. Those are least restrictive and allow others to build on your work.


Parent's education levels in US graduate applications

Many institutions have an interest or incentive in serving first-generation college students, i.e. students whose parents do not have college degrees.  This can be seen as a way to reduce educational or economic inequality.

It's possible that in some cases there may be some sort of preference given to such students.  More likely, it's for statistical purposes only, to see how well they are doing at reaching first-generation students.


Tenure Track application: Time for committee to respond after interviewing references

Yes, it's certainly fine to email them and ask.

However, I'm afraid you probably won't get good news.  A common workflow for tenure-track searches is that after one round of review, they only contact the candidates who were selected to move on to the next round.  It's likely that this has happened by now, so if you haven't heard from them, it probably means you're not one of the candidates they're actively considering.

You technically haven't been rejected yet, because in principle, if the selected candidates don't work out, they could go back and reconsider the rest.  Indeed, official rejection letters often are not sent until after the search is complete and someone has been hired (or they've given up).  But this isn't a good sign.


Simultaneous submission short version to conference and full version to journal

Your milage will vary on this, but I would advise against it. The spirit of the practice of extending conference submissions to journals is that one can use the conference to discuss a first version of the research with colleagues, go back to the lab, improve the work based on the feedback, and then submit a vetted version to a journal. In your scheme, if you submit both manuscripts at the same time, and they get published about the same time, what's the point of your conference paper? You won't be able to take any feedback into account, and the community also does not really gain by there being a published version of the research that is basically superseded from day 1.

I understand, and sympathize, that for you personally the advantage may well be two additional lines in your CV rather than one, but you should be aware that the academic community gets increasingly more stingy about the topic of "salami-slicing" papers, that is, the practice of trying to squeeze out as many papers as possible from the same research - and your plan, even if not strictly unethical, can easily be seen as salami-slicing, or at least be perceived similar in spirit.

  I also want to know what does it mean when journal say that they accept the conference paper if it is 30% extended? It means 70% of text and results can be duplicated in both conference and journal article?

It means that there should be about 1/3 more intellectual contribution in the journal version than in the conference paper. Clearly, this is only a rough guideline, as there is no metric for "contribution". However, you should not understand this as 70% of the text can be verbatim the same. Some amount of text duplication is often tolerated for journal extensions, but 70% seems way, way above what I would tolerate as a reviewer or editor.


I may leave a postdoc for industry after 6 months for health/family reasons...is it ok?

This will get closed...

But You need to do what is best for you, your health, your wife and your family.

You seem to have thought it through and your PI will understand - may not be happy to loose you but will understand...


Conducting a literature review, what period should the papers be taken from?

The year that a paper was published is entirely irrelevant to the question of if it is worthy of inclusion. I’ve read good review papers citing work that is almost three thousand years old and I’ve read good review papers not citing anything older than 2001. Using age as a proxy for relevance is an incredibly poor decision. You should include what is important for someone in the field to know, regardless of when it was published.


Is there anything a student could or should do about a professor who gives lectures so dry that less than 10% of the class turn up?

That you asked the question shows that you feel that there is something that you can do, and that you somehow should do something. However, the question lacks motivation. The lecture is boring - OK. Many things in life are boring. Here are some different motivations you may have (certainly not an exhaustive list):

You would like to have better lecture for yourself to facilitate your learning. That's a good motivation. Especially, you can bring this point across without judging the lecturer or the lecture. Focus on what you experience and what you perceive. Note the difference of "I can not focus for the whole lecture." and "The lecture is boring."
You feel with the students not coming, think they skip the lecture because they find it boring, and wish they would have better opportunities for learning. Note that students skip lectures for all kinds of reasons. I myself skipped lectures because I did not like the lecturer (although the lectures were anything else but boring), because the lecture were indeed boring, because I did not like the lecture style (e.g. it being to fast and reading from a book suited me better), because I was just "not in the mood" (although anything else was OK with the lecture). But it seem that you checked the premise. Then here be sure to stick to the facts when formulating your suggestions/feedback. Note the difference between "The students find your lecture boring." and "Other students I talked to agreed with me."
You want to help the poor lecturer. Also a valid motivation, but quite tough to deduce some action here. First, it's hard to be sure if the lecturer really wants help or could do something.

So, there is no general advice in this situation. Some points to consider: Do not judge persons, do not blame anybody. Describe your experiences, suggest changes that would help you. Be prepared that nothing will happen and do not insist. Think twice before involving a third person.


When mentioning a website, parenthesis or reference?

The IEEE reference guide includes websites among the references (see section R). I've also always seen websites listed in the reference section, and I've also cited them as such.
I'm not familiar with ACM journals, but the ACM citation style and reference formats webpage gives similar indications.
Therefore, cite e.g. Stack Overflow as

Stack Overflow [1]


At United States PhD programs, is the research / TA stipend taxed as income tax?

This is really a question you should pose to an accountant since there are a fair number of conditions here that affect whether you owe any taxes.

Stipends are, generally, not considered wages, in which case you wouldn't pay Social Security or Medicare taxes.

However, they are usually considered taxable income, so you would need to pay federal income tax.

Then there are state taxes to consider; with 50 states plus DC and other territories, that's too broad a question to sensibly answer here.

In some areas (such as NYC), there are local taxes to consider as well.

However, if your stipend qualifies as a scholarship because it is "...granted to meet the cost of education", then it may be tax-exempt.

This IRS Topic 421 is a good starting place, but US taxes are complicated and expensive if you get them wrong, so I strongly recommend getting professional input here.

ALSO US citizens have to file taxes every year, regardless of where they live. Whether they have to pay taxes depends on tax treaties and local tax laws.

This might also be true of your country of citizenship. Again, the only way to know for sure is to talk to an accountant.


Is it necessary to publish in a "research" internship? (undergraduate-junior)

Most undergraduate research experiences, even when successful, do not result in a scientific publication.
The time is simply too short and the experience of the student typically too little to produce a publication-worthy result in that time.  Moreover, because the supervisor knows that, in many cases undergraduates are given tasks that will be useful contributions but are not even on a path for publication!
Moreover, even if you did end up with a publication, the people reviewing your application would have little way of telling how much was really done by you versus your supervisor and/or other coauthors.
The primary value of most undergraduate research experiences, from a grad school application point of view, is if your supervisor likes your work and writes you a nice letter of recommendation, talking about your aptitude for research, your good attitude, and your contributions to their project.
Bottom line: as an undergraduate, don't worry about publications (though they're great if you can get them). Worry instead about doing something useful and interesting that will earn you a nice letter of recommendation.


Mentioning placement offer in a curriculum vitae?

If you are working at the company while you are applying to schools, then it should definitely be mentioned. However, if you are choosing between the placement offer and graduate school (in other words, accepting the offer instead of graduate school), then I would leave it out. This is because this may give the appearance that you're not really serious about applying to graduate schools, which may lessen your odds of getting an interview or an offer.

If you feel it's absolutely essential to mention it, you should do so in your cover letter; however, for the most part, I would do so only if it became important for you to do so (because there's a deadline for accepting the offer, for instance).


Refer to the official departmental website and use the official title. If the departmental website itself is inconsistent (sometimes happens), pick any designation.


How is Google Scholar changing academic evaluation?

Yes, promotion and hiring committees look at Google Scholar, especially in fields like computer science where Google's citation data is more comprehensive than other sources like Scopus, which misses many citations of and by conference papers.  In this respect, Google Scholar hasn't really changed the way people are evaluated, though; we've just replaced one unreliable (and expensive) source of questionable statistical data with a slightly less unreliable (and free) source for almost (but not quite) the same data.

Much more importantly, though, Google Scholar makes it easier to find electronic copies of papers, which makes it easier for committees to judge each candidate's work directly.  In this respect, Google Scholar has had a significant impact.