What should we say to affected students about Trump's travel ban?

Put it in its historical context.

The United States can be a wonderful place to visit or even live, but it does have a long term history of periods of political unreasonableness. During those periods, it becomes so afraid of some group of "others" that the fear overrides human rights, treaties, justice, common sense, and the US constitution. Keeping the US safe from the feared group is the overriding concern, and nothing else matters compared to that. Often, the feared group includes a few people who really are dangerous, but the danger gets grossly exaggerated and makes the US deeply afraid of an easily identified larger group.

There was a mild one during Nixon's presidency, when the feared group was people protesting the Vietnam War. The most recent really severe one, in the 1950's, was McCarthyism, when the feared group was communists. In WWII the feared group was people of Japanese origin or descent. Now, the feared group is Muslims, and people stereotyped, based on e.g. national origin, as being Muslims.

The good news is that, after a period of fear-based unreasonableness, the US always sorts itself out and gets back to sanity.

Any students from one of the affected countries, and perhaps Muslims in general, who need to make immediate decisions about e.g. a postdoc should consider going somewhere other than the US. If you are planning an international conference, it may be better to pick a country whose visa policies make it more likely that all interested academics can attend.

In the longer term, the current fear of Muslims will go the way of fear of Irish Catholics, fear of Chinese immigrants, Japanese-American internment, and the McCarthy era.


Probably the faculty person's plans are already made, months in advance, so your asking will have no impact on their actual plans. Possible, but not likely.

That is, if they'd not already planned to attend, they had reasons to not do so, or insufficient reasons to do so, and these reasons will probably not be changed by your own attendance... especially when the faculty person has made a recommendation.

Yes, as often, there is some risk of accidental misunderstanding about motivations, personal versus professional. The usual irony is that only the scrupulous, honorable people worry about such things... :)  But, in any case, I'd think that the on-the-mark question would be "are you yourself going to be there... for me to bounce questions off?"

As in many situations, asking the actual operational question, rather than any sort of circumlocutious persiflage, is ... good. In fact, the tone of many circumlocutions can accidentally/inappropriately suggest unintended intentions... of course.

This is yet-another one of those situations where worrying about "coded" communication is not productive. Be forthright.


Difference between "Referee-reviewed articles" and "Referee-reviewed conference contributions"?

Typically, "article" refers to a journal publication, while "conference contribution" would refer to conference papers.


Feeling unprepared for PhD because of poor educational system in my home country. Should I leave PhD to retake courses somewhere else?

In the European programs I have been involved in, there is no (or a very minimal) fixed curriculum students need to go through. However, students do follow specific courses to learn specific techniques. Typically/ideally the student discusses with her/his advisor what is needed for the project, what is needed for her/his future career, and where the gaps in her/his knowledge is, and how to fill those gaps. This is the kind of discussion you need to have with your advisor.


How much of the statement of purpose should be focused on each of my academic background and my work experience?

The SoP should focus on what you can add to the programme that no one else can. In your case, it sounds like the work experience is really what sets you apart. The students who apply for PhDs will generally all have taken difficult classes and gotten good grades in them, so that's not something you should spend time on in your SoP. The only exception is if any class contained a project or small dissertation or research component where you did really well: this should be mentioned. Anything else will show up in the transcript.

So yes, focus on the experience you got from working, and how that will make you an asset in an economics lab.


Can I use my university email to contact professors in other university?

That is actually a fair question. (Some commenters here have possibly missed the point that for the beginner in academia even the most obvious things may cause confusion).

And the answer is: yes, you can.


On Pedagogical Tools: Is swearing or chewing someone out a viable method?

It's one thing to criticize the group for poor work - I've witnessed this and it is fully called for to say that the group has come unprepared and has underperformed. It's a very different thing for a professor of all people to lose their cool and use expletives in front of students. I am in Europe and this is poor personal control, poor personal culture, and by all means unacceptable behavior within a classroom. No matter how bad a group - they will deservedly get a bad grade in the end - but you can simply never - and it is never acceptable to lose your cool like that and pretty much insult students  in front of their peers. In school we get grades, not expletives. This is never acceptable. Never.


How feasible to learn undergraduate math in one year?

I see that this question is being voted down for being interesting, so let me blacken my own reputation by addressing it.
Mathematics undergraduates do not study mathematics. They study studying, they study structuring their time, they study the work-life balance, they study manipulating their teachers, they study the opposite sex,… and in their spare time they also study mathematics.
As an adult you therefore have a considerable advantage over the children because you have studied all those other subjects and graduated in some of them. That means that unlike them, you can devote 100% of your time to mathematics.
On the other hand, there is a natural pace at which one can learn. Learning is not a conscious process but an unconscious one, and we have very little control over how fast the unconscious mind decides to process things.
Moreover, in mathematics 90% of one’s learning time is completely wasted - the remaining 10# then more than makes up for it. When you are learning from people and with people, this process adjusts itself naturally. When learning in isolation, it is not clear that it will. You do need someone to guide you. The guidance is not actual tuition (as it would be if you were an 18-year-old child) - more, it is mentoring. Your guide will tell you things like “yes, that concept is difficult” or “this book’s approach does not suit you: try that one instead”.
So think hard about who might be able to guide you. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone senior. I don’t know enough about your situation and environment to be able to advise.
BUT I have read your question a few times and I cannot understand why you are specifically talking about one year. There may be good reasons for it - but without those reasons, it sounds unnecessarily restrictive. You will certainly be able to learn some one-semester subjects in a couple of weeks. But there will be others that will take far longer than you expect.
Overall though: the signs are good and don’t worry about being too old!


If your Statement of Purpose is self-contained (in particular, it includes a list of references), you're free to pick your own citation format. Otherwise, you need to pick a format that allows the reader to identify the work you're citing. Using first author et al. probably doesn't help, because that author will likely have written many papers, moreover, their name is not likely unique. Using

author et al. (venue, year)

should suffice.


Involved in potential friction in department over a postgraduate seminar I co-organised - should I worry?

I don't see anything that you should be worried about, as you've said in your question, your supervisor is the DPD and is the one who approved everything you did.

This head of research group probably didn't know that your activities were approved by the DPD and just thought this was a bunch of students adding to his workload. My expectation is that the DPD speaks with this head of group and they sort things out between them. Your personal supervisor will have your back on this one and has more clout than the group head.

I share the concerns about health and safety though. That sounds like it should be done by a health and safety professional, which your institute will have, rather than student lead.


What are strategies for handling multiple students visiting office hours?

I would suggest an alternative: rotate after each question, not after each student. So solve a question from one student, then allow a different student to ask a different question. If multiple classes are present, you can go by class rather than by student.

This has several advantages:

Everyone will prioritize their questions: no one feels rushed by the people behind them, nor like they wasted a trip because of someone in front of them
Students (in the same class) may not all have the same questions, but they'll benefit from seeing how you approach each problem.
Students in different classes can digest your previous answers and try to apply those concepts to new questions while they wait for you to circle back
This should be helpful for the majority of students -- if there are any special cases (e.g., students with individual issues that aren't useful to the rest of the group), they'll see what's going on and will appreciate your invitation to schedule an appointment
You get to keep your position at the whiteboard, which is less exhausting for you


Introduction depends on preliminaries. What to do?

We are introducing a new topic (from a comment you made) --- Then you'll want to look at papers that deal with new topics. Can't you just give a non-technical overview, something in which someone who doesn't know this topic can follow, with possibly a statement telling the reader that precise definitions of some of the terms are given in the preliminaries section? I've seen quite a few math papers do this, where there is an introduction followed by a "notations and definitions" section.

Here is a freely available example of a paper with a general introduction followed by a preliminaries section that gives detailed definitions of terms used in the introduction. Also, at the time the paper appeared, the main object of study (sigma-porous sets) was still fairly new and not widely known, and it was almost certainly not known by a typical reader of the journal in which this paper was published.


Papers published during undergraduate degree: can they form the basis to a PhD?

I don't think this is impossible, but I doubt that many doctoral programs would permit it. Not zero, but not many. That is up to your university and an advisor.
You have published some papers which is good and will likely win you a slot at a good place, but there are "papers" and there are papers. If you have proof of some hundred year old conjecture that Erdős et al failed to prove then, sure.
But, since you seem to be good, I'd rather suggest that you spend the time it might take to earn a doctorate to do some even better work, ending up with a truly awesome CV and professors who will strongly support you in your career. I think that most places will still make you pass comprehensive exams, showing that your knowledge and skill isn't too narrow.
In the US, finances aren't a problem (unless you need to support a large family) as you will normally have a TA (or more likely an RA in your case) so that you get both a tuition waiver and a stipend.
But the early work you have done can certainly form the basis of what you will need to do for a dissertation. You might find the faculty of the right institution helpful in extending it, or not. But the experience would be a much more solid basis of a career than taking, what I think is a minimal path.
And, if you are as good as that then I'd think your path won't be all that long anyway. And the opportunity to get a bit of teaching experience as well will give you a better career base.
So, possible? Maybe. Advisable? Not so much.


Is there a difference between a symposium paper and a conference paper

AFAIK, a symposium is essentially the same as a conference.  I think it tends to suggest a somewhat smaller size, historically, but definitely bigger and more competitive than a workshop.  For instance the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles is one of the most competitive conferences in the computer systems field, and gets maybe 500-600 attendees these days.  Some "conferences" get many thousands, though some get only 50-100 too.

Now, perhaps in other fields than computer science, there is a completely different definition, but if you have to pull the trigger, you should assume it is a conference and not a workshop.

Besides, you submitted the paper and they accepted it.  It would be really poor form to pull out right now, even if somehow it didn't count toward your graduation.  Didn't your advisor know you were submitting it, and think it was a good idea?


Is it advisable to take trivial classes to better focus on independent study?

I assume that you are talking about applying to graduate programs in mathematics, rather than in other disciplines.

To take remedial courses so that you can focus on "graduate level theory" on your own seems like a spectacularly bad idea. Why would a grad school take someone whose transcript shows remedial courses instead of accomplishments in upper-level undergraduate and graduate coursework? It also weakens your overall transcript in the process, since the remedial course will stick out like a sore thumb. Moreover, without some mechanism for documenting the work that you've done on your own, you won't easily be able to convince an admissions committee that you've actually done the work!

If you want to do graduate-level work, just take the graduate-level courses corresponding to what you want to do.


Late withdrawal from all the courses after the census date as I had an accident and will be undergoing surgery

You have to see the people at the university - we cannot give you a definitive answer as regulations etc vary by location etc

There are most likely student advisors or equivalent, admissions dept, your course head, even the department dean who can all be contacted about your situation.

Make sure you have documentary evidence so they have something to work with - doctor’s letters etc

Best of luck.


H-index: Any quantitative (or other) measures on how well h-index actually measures scientific productivity?

Besides the convincing argument in Moriarty's comment to the OP there is also a formal argument that the index is particularly meaningless. The Notices of the AMS recently published "Critique of Hirsch's Citation Index: A Combinatorial Fermi Problem" by Alexander Yong, see here http://www.ams.org/notices/201409/rnoti-p1040.pdf

Roughly: The h index is about half the square root of the number of citations...

More precisely: For an author with N citations to his paper, the h-Index always lies between zero and the square of N. Now assume that these citation are distributed on a number of papers and all partitions occur with equal probability. Then it turns out that the estimated h-Index is then about 0.54 times the square root of N. In the article it is quoted that Hirsch himself has observed that basically all h-Indices he looked at were in the range of 0.45 and 0.58 times the square root of N. Yong also states that, especially for the highly cited people in math, physics, computer science and statistics only very few people have an h-Index above 0.54 times square root of N (and they are never more that 5% above that). The article contains much more data but only for famous mathematicians such as Field's medalists or members of the National Academy of Science and it is really worth a read.


I believe the most 'formal' way to share these would be to write a survey of the area that your open problems relate to, highlighting each problem. This adds a publication, and anyone who solves one of the problems is likely to cite it. Moreover, if the survey is sufficiently in-depth, it can generate a large number of citations as an introduction to the area.


Should I put a "technician" pseudo-internship on my resume for biology grad school?

Yes, why not? For a grad school application, you might as well list anything that shows your interest   and involvement in your field. List it as whatever your job title was, and if possible add a line or two describing your activities.

But if possible you will want to inform them about it in more depth. If the application includes a cover letter, statement of purpose, or similar essay, use it to describe what you did in this internship and what you learned. If the application requires recommendation letters, consider asking the professor who supervised your internship to write one.


Should I send an addendum/erratum due to single error in sign?

No.
I would guess almost every mathematics paper (mine included) has at least one typo of this magnitude.
As you indicate, readers can easily correct the typo for themselves, and some might even do it subconsciously.


Is it wise (and common) to publish in a peer-reviewed journal without an impact factor to prevent impairement of one's own mean impact factor?

This reasoning is Wrong and Bad in several ways.

First, computing "mean impact factor" for a person or group is insane and should be resisted at all costs.  Even amongst IF-crazy groups, the metric is generally how many high-IF publications have been obtained (ignoring low-IF publications), not the fraction of high-IF publications.
Second, even if you're going to commit yourself to such insanity, the reasonable mathematical interpretation of "no impact factor" is "IF = 0", not "omit from data."  Thus, if you're using this crazy statistic, it should be worse to publish in a no-IF venue.
Finally, a journal with no IF generally falls into one of two categories: either it is good but very new (or just not yet covered by ISI), in which case it will likely have an IF in a couple of years and the strategy will be undone, or else is it complete trash and likely predatory, in which case it will be a worse stain on your record than a moderate-IF publication, even amongst the most IF-crazy communities.

My only possible conclusions are that either:

your supervisor is seriously distorted in their thinking, or
your supervisor is lying to you out of embarrassment to cover the fact that they published (intentionally or accidentally) in a trash/predatory journal.


How should I proceed if I am late in applying for postdoc positions?

my colleagues are saying that doing postdoc from the same place is extremely bad for an academic profile

Doing a postdoc only with your PhD advisor might look bad, because it looks like you couldn't get a postdoc somewhere else.  But a brief extended stay at your PhD institution is more likely to be seen as a no-op—most people will understand that it was just a timing issue—especially if you later have a productive postdoc somewhere else.

In any case, you don't have a time machine, so worrying about what you should have done is completely pointless.  Your job now is to make sure your eventual postdoc/faculty application package is as strong as possible.  Do that research!  Publish those papers!  Give those talks!  Build that network!  Cultivate those letter-writers!


What to check when examining paper proofs?

This is basically the last chance to fix anything (non-substantial) in the paper, so in addition to the things you mentioned, I usually check for spelling or grammatical errors, misprints in formulas, etc. Sometimes one might want to add a sentence to clarify something.

Finally, if the journal did any copy-editing, you should check its job. Some journals provide a list of changes they made for that purpose. You should also check if the pictures and formulas are still in the right places.

Added: sometimes it's necessary to update the literature list, for example if preprints cited there have been published in the meantime.


Should I correct a single trivial typo in a submitted manuscript after they rejected the first submission for having too many typos?

I'm assuming you sent it for another round of review. Wait for their comments. Provided that you really did remove most of the typos in your manuscript, and otherwise followed the reviewers' recommendations, I really doubt this will be an issue.

If, however, you sent the camera ready version to the journal, then you should consider contacting the editor and ask if you could re-submit a corrected version.


What are the consequences of not disclosing all Conflicts of Interests (COI)?

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics, retraction is a possibility.  See their Retraction Guidelines, page 2:

  Retractions are also used to alert readers to [...] failure to disclose a major competing interest likely to influence
  interpretations or recommendations.

The Retraction Watch blog has questioned how often this is carried out in practice.


Is it unprofessional or a bad idea to use my department mailing address for personal mail?

Check with the department/school first.

In general for use of any work address:
For something like receiving a single package, it should be fine.
For something like receiving regular mail on a daily basis, no you should not do this.  Besides the issues of policy, there is an increased labor of the recipient to deliver your personal mail.  There may be delays.  And, normally these boxes are in a partially-public area and subject to theft.

I've been in situations like this, so I got a PO box once and a private mailbox company another time.


How to create reference list with maths in title on Mendeley for Latex

Mendeley defaults seem to be to automatically escape LaTeX special characters, which can mean math mode text gets mangled. In my version (1.19.4), this can be changed by going: Mendeley Desktop -> Preferences -> BibTeX and unchecking Escape LaTeX special characters (#{}%& etc.)
Edit: once you've done that you can include math mode markup in your titles, as suggested by @Federico Poloni, e.g. {$2^2$}, and it will not be mangled by Mendeley.
This will mean that all special characters will not be escaped, so you'll have to do it by hand otherwise your compile will likely throw errors. For instance titles including & will need to escaped manually (e.g. \&) in Mendeley.


How can international students improve chances of getting into top US/UK schools

When applying to the UK, if you hold the equivalent of a bachelors degree with honours, at first or upper second class, you usually do not need to take a masters degree. I know this as I didn't have a masters, and I was actually advised by my now-advisor that it was not necessary to have one, since a PhD supersedes it.

Having held an internship with a major research company in Silicon Valley, you should be in a great position to apply for a PhD. With your awards and ranking in the class, I'm relatively confident you would do very well in applying for a PhD in the UK. I can't speak for the USA as I'm not familiar with that system, but their PhD program includes what amounts to a taught masters as well.

I can't concur that international students are rejected hugely often. Certainly not ones of your ranking in the class, with awards and significant internships. Even the fact you had a scholarship to study your undergraduate degree is positive in the eyes of admissions teams.

While the process of applying for a PhD differs across countries, if you have a contact at a university you're interested in (or perhaps an idea of a prospective advisor), you should reach out to them. Many universities place the incoming applications into a "pool" on an internal portal, where academics can browse through candidates. I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere, but it's definitely the case at some institutions. If you are able to apply with a specific advisor in mind (who you have communicated with), you have very good chances.

As a small personal anecdote which hopefully shouldn't be irrelevant to this answer, I applied to a named supervisor, with their knowledge, having previously discussed the idea (and actually having met them and discussed it). Having done this, I then understood I was guaranteed to be accepted, given how the opinion of the academic was so significant in their application system.

While this won't be the case everywhere, if you were to apply with the credentials you stated, and it was in a relevant field, I'd be calling you back ASAP. Funding for an international student is sometimes slightly more difficult to organise, but that's not a barrier - actually the majority of our current PhD students are international. This university, while not one of the immediately named top universities, is actually top within a couple of fields. Don't overlook a university without checking where the appropriate department lies on the REF scale (research excellence framework, used to rate the quality of research output).

I'd therefore recommend you look into how the application process works, and plan your submission for any personal statement or case-for-support questions. Having some interesting and well-written answers should be enough. You have industrial experience which you should focus on, as well as your academic performance, and current research experience. That's a lot more than most (accepted) applicants have!


What is "arrêté de nomination" in ATER application for the French universities?

From my understanding, this document should only be asked for persons who have already a permanent goverment employee position in France. For applications for ATER positions, this would for instance be the case for an academic that would have succeeded at the agrégation, which is one of the recruitment level for high school teachers. A number of persons in academia in France start by getting the agrégation or a lower-level CAPES guarenteed high school employment before starting their PhD. They could then apply for an ATER temporary position, but the administration will need to be told about it beforehand.
This document mentions that it is only required in such situations (I - POUR LES FONCTIONNAIRES DE CATEGORIE A which means for A-level public servants.)
If you are not familiar with the French system, it is quite likely that you do not need this document.


Asking to see a manuscript in preparation

No, it's not bad etiquette.  Most people will be happy to know that someone wants to read their work.  Of course, you should take the time to try to find it yourself first.  It may have been published under another title or in a hard-to-find place (like some conference proceedings).

From the comments, it seems that you're worried about hurting the author's feelings by reminding them of a paper rejection.  I don't think you should feel that way.  Rejected papers are part of a normal academic career, and in any case you don't know whether that paper was rejected.

If you ask me for a copy of a paper that happens to have been rejected, I'll send it to you.


How to address a reader and a postdoctoral research assistant?

The formal way to address a postdoc in Germany would be Dr. [Surname]. My experience is that at least among Phd students/Postdocs people will quickly switch to an informal first-name address.
But for first contact you should use the formal Dr. [Surname].


In a new job; is it OK to recommend a partner for a job search?

My question is: is it out-of-line for me to contact one of my colleagues on the hiring committee, explain the situation, and ask about the status of my partner’s application?

This is definitely out-of-line --- any contact with the hiring committee to attempt to influence them in favour of hiring your partner is contrary to the assurances that universities make to applicants to hire on merit.  If you do this, you will rightly be seen as attempting to influence the hiring process based on considerations where you have a personal interest.  Secondarily, the hiring committee probably has no right to give any information to you on the status of any person's application, since you are not part of the hiring process (and if you were, you would need to declare a conflict of interest).

I would strongly recommend you don't raise this at all, particularly if you are a new staff member.  Depending on the particular rules of your institution, there is a possibility that this could be considered a breach of university rules, or even a form of employee misconduct, which is not a good start to your position.  Please bear a thought for the other applicants for the position, who are not dating an academic in your department.  These people want fair consideration on their merits, without any "whispers in the ear" of the hiring committee.


Depending on your data and work, it maybe beneficial to make some sort of visual representation and/or simulations of your work. People are draw to visual representations that move and do something. Stationary images, while informative, are not always interesting to the layperson (or well even those interested in the field). You could create a presentation that shows the hardware that collects your data, the raw data and then create a road map back to your students at your lab. Show screen grabs of any software that your students might utilize from day to day. You don't need to get too elaborate and there are many resources (power point, desktop applications, web applications, etc) that you could utilize to create your presentation with whatever level of effort you wish to put into it.

I would also suggest looking for someone to consult with, not affiliated with your lab, to view your presentation.This way you can get a fresh outlook on how your presentation flows. If your school has a scientific and technical (STC) writing program, I would also suggest you talk with someone in the program about your presentation. They might be willing to help out with making things more interesting and clearer for prospective visitors. You could possibly even see if a student in the program would be willing to create a presentation for you as a senior project.


My master thesis supervisor wants me to continue as his PhD student, but he has no funds at the moment. Any advice?

There are -mainly- two options in the Netherlands to arrange your own funding.
Get a talent scholarship from NWO. See here: https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/programmes/magw/research-talent/index.html
Or, as you are in beta science a very good option, is to find a company that will hire you and will allow you to do the phd externally. This allows you to gain some work experience while doing the phd. You will take longer, but you will stay connected to practice.
By the way, in my opinion, to much of this 'yeah i would love to but i dont have funding' is coming from professors. If they really want you, they should only offer you a funded position. But that's from someone who left academia :)


It's generally accepted to use passive voice in scientific papers. This would turn the cited paragraph into:

For the health belief model, four specific points were discovered
(taken into consideration?): perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits and perceived barriers. It was noticed
people aren’t very open when talking about covid, so the questions
were asked in the following manner. First, they were requested to rate the
severity of each point from 1 to 5. After they answered all the
questions, they were asked for justification of their replies. This
way ensures that respondents are more truthful.

Additionally, to avoid repetitive use of the same words, I highly recommend to look for synonyms in a thesaurus. There are also programmes that check English grammar in a text, perhaps it's also a good option for you.


How do I cite programming manuals and software user guides in IEEE

The IEEE Style guide gives the following format for citing reports:

  The general form for citing technical reports is to place the name and location of the company or institution after the
  author and title and to give the report number and date at the end of the reference.
  Basic Format:

  [1] J. K. Author, “Title of report,” Abbrev. Name of Co., City of Co., Abbrev. State, Country, Rep. xxx, year

For handbooks:

  [1] Name of Manual/Handbook, x ed., Abbrev. Name of Co., City of Co., Abbrev. State, year, pp. xx-xx.

And online sources:

  [1] J. K. Author. (year, month day). Title (edition) [Type of medium]. Available: http://www.(URL)

For example:

  [1] J. Jones. (1991, May 10). Networks (2nd ed.) [Online]. Available: http://www.atm.com

Examples for manuals/software:

  [1] L. Breimann. (2003). Manual on Setting Up, Using, and Understanding Random Forests v4.0. [Online].
  Available: http://oz.berkeley.edu/users/breiman/Using_random_forests_v4.0.pdf, Accessed on: Apr. 16,
  2014.

  [2] M. Kuhn. The Caret Package. (2012) [Online]. Available: http://cranr-project.org/web/packages/caret/caret.pdf

Side note: this answer comments that in BibLatex you can use @software to generate the correctly formed citation. I'm not sure however if this is supported by the IEEE style templates.


Do you have to have a PhD to be a PI on a grant for your own funding?

As Nate Eldredge points out, who qualifies as an eligible PI varies widely between different programs. However, in general, one important distinction can usually be cited: you must be a professional researcher (as opposed to a student or trainee) to be eligible to submit a direct grant. Students would normally need to have their advisors submit the grant proposals on their behalf.

You need to consult the specific rules of the grant you're interested in applying for. Moreover, if you are at an institution that often applies for grants, you should check with the local grants administration office for more guidance. They may have internal policies regarding for whom they will submit grants.

It is also important to note that different countries and different agencies have varying standards. Here in Germany, for instance, you must have the equivalent of a doctoral degree to be eligible to be the coordinating Principal Investigator of a proposal. You can participate as a team member without a doctoral degree, but not be a principal investigator.


Publishing a second paper which is an extension of the first paper- same methodology, problem formulation and literature review

If the first paper has not been published yet, you may want to contact the editor who is handling it and ask him whether it would be possible to withhold publication (in case it gets accepted) and publish the two papers together as a series of papers. In this case setting up the context for the second paper should be fairly easy, as you wouldn't need to rewrite the introduction and literature review from scratch.

If that's not possible then you'll have to rewrite introduction and conclusions so that the paper can stand on its own. Of course, you can be a bit more concise and write upfront that the second paper is an application (or an extension) of the first one, and that additional details can be found in the latter. However, note that if you rely too much on another paper some journals (depending on the field, I guess) might complain about a "lack of novelty".


Imaginative Student Has Trouble Adjusting to Workbook-based Curriculum

You are trying to achieve something, presumably a mathematics degree. Often, it is necessary to do dull, uninteresting things to get what you want. You have to decide first whether you want the degree, and the opportunities it will bring, enough to be willing to do things you do not enjoy to get it.

If the answer is "No" drop out now without wasting any more of your time and money.

If the answer is "Yes" you need to think in terms of doing something today, doing it now, to get what you want in several years time. Each homework assignment turned in on time is a small step to your objective. Its entertainment value, or lack thereof, is irrelevant.


Would it be considered cheating to ask for homework help on the internet, if I openly acknowledge the help received?

This depends a great deal on the professor and course in question.  Better to ask first if you plan to do this.  Also, check the syllabus if there is a stated policy regarding help on homework.


Why do funding agencies like the NSF not publish accepted grants?

  Has the NSF ever published a justification for not publishing accepted proposals online?

While it is correct in a technical sense that the NSF "does not publish accepted proposals online", I think this framing of your question is a bit misleading. The NSF has a process for allowing the public to access awarded proposals. This process, based on the Freedom of Information Act, is designed precisely to balance the public's need for transparency in government spending with other important things, such as the government's need to function properly (which is why even FOIA won't gain you access to top secret military information, for example), and the completely legitimate desire of researchers to pursue their research plans on their own timeline without undue stress or fear of having their ideas scooped and exploited by others.

  Some good reasons for publishing these proposals are:

  It increases transparency, so that the public directly knows what was funded with tax payer money.

As I was saying above, the key word here is "balance". You can't have maximal transparency, because all sorts of things would go wrong if you try to have it - researchers would protest loudly, and/or eventually start including less and less useful details in their proposals, making the evaluation process more difficult and the outcomes less meritocratic; and/or eventually seek alternative funding sources or try to get by without NSF support, with detrimental results to their research. On the other hand, no one is advocating for complete secrecy either - note that the current system is already a compromise between privacy and transparency: researchers do understand that their proposals will be reviewed by a panel of experts in their fields, and accept whatever small risk of scooping/misuse of ideas may exist given this situation. Writers of proposals also understand that in the end their proposals can in fact be looked up by curious members of the public, journalists, and people in Congress, who may end up accusing them of wasting government money on useless research or other unpleasant things. Everyone accepts that when you take public funding it comes with some strings attached, including a certain amount of public exposure and some level of disclosure of your research ideas. So again, I think your framing of the question is slightly loaded, as it risks painting an exaggerated picture of the grants process as being shrouded in secrecy, and of researchers as somewhat paranoid people who are always fearful of having their ideas stolen. The truth is much more balanced and reasonable than that.

  It would help future PIs find example successful proposals in order to create better proposals. The current system of asking friends for copies of their proposals is super frustrating and seems like it is likely fostering an atmosphere of cronyism.

I am not aware of any "system" of asking friends for copies of proposals. That's something that some people do and others don't (I didn't). And calling it "cronyism" seems like a huge stretch. In fact, I think it's rather the opposite; from my experience with the grants process (including serving on several NSF panels), while the grants process is far from being without flaws, it is as meritocratic a system as anyone has been able to come up with for a complicated process of handing out several billion dollars a year to many thousands of people based on a very messy and noisy dataset. And yes, it's true that the process is very competitive and can be frustrating for many people. That would remain true even if all awarded proposals were made publicly available.

  Has the NSF ever published a justification for not publishing accepted proposals online?

The NSF page I linked to above offers an explanation of how to request access to proposals, and what kind of access will be granted:

  National Science Foundation policy is to make the fullest possible disclosure of information, subject to restrictions imposed by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act, to any person who requests information, without unnecessary expense or delay. [...]

  Copies of awarded proposals are available upon request, there may be applicable fees. Personal and proprietary information will be removed from the proposal documents before they are released.

The reference to personal and proprietary information provides some justification for why the process works the way it does.


Adding an author to a conference paper only for sharing the cost of conference registation

Yes. This is unethical. Any paper author should contribute intellectually to the paper. Even if that is supervision where the supervisor sometimes gives high level guidance.


Consider forming a small study group with a few of the other students with whom you feel at least a bit of comfort. It may well be that others feel as you do, and a group in which to discuss issues, both technical and otherwise, can be good fro all of you. Three or four people is enough. If it is too big it will be less useful. It can also become a long term collaborative relationship.

Some students thrive under minimal supervision, being able to develop their own ideas. But others, most I think, require some guidance from their advisor or or other, senior, members of the lab or the faculty. Many require a lot of guidance, especially at the start. In the US, a doctoral degree normally starts with a lot of coursework, giving you the opportunity to meet faculty and build relationships. But, I think that anywhere, it is a lot to expect that a graduate student is already so well formed that no guidance or other specialized instruction is needed.

I don't think that you are in a hopeless situation, but you will need a plan for focusing your knowledge on the task at hand and acquiring skills and knowledge that you will need for success. Your lab-mates may be able to help you with this or at least give advice about the kinds of things that it would be helpful for you to know. Ideally your advisor should supply this, but not all are willing to do that, being more focused on the task at hand than on the students making it possible.

Again, I suggest that you treat this partly as a social question. "How do I get more connected to those in my lab for mutual benefit?" There is more to it than that, of course, since you come from a different field, but it might make it easier in the long run. A senior member of the lab, a student close to finishing, might be an especially valuable resource - especially if a co-advisor is not possible.


Best options for publishing original research without being in academia?

My advice: Work on the second point, get contacts.
Send an email to people working on related topics, ask them if they would like to take a look at your work, if you can ask them a question, etc.
If possible, try to contact PhD candidates or recent post docs, as they often have more time available than a professor and might be more willing to look at what you did. For that you should have a nicely written, complete draft available, that is both short and informative and that is nice to read - for example: don't put way to long equations, try to drop these and state that "one can prove, that...", maybe adding that you will send the proof if needed.

Once you have established a contact, the first thing should be to find out if what you did is really worth a publication. Maybe it is already known and you simply don't have access to the journal? Maybe it is not interesting enough, e.g. it might be considered a simple homework exercise for someone who is an expert on the field?

If the expert agrees that what you did is indeed new and a nice result worthy of being published, ask him for advice to proceed. If possible, get him as a co-author or ask him to refer you to one. Such a co-author might take care of things like

Literature review.
Explaining why the found results are important and have an impact on topic X.
Which journal to send to?
Given his (known) name, journals will no longer reject due to unknown author.
...

Of course you would not be the single author anymore and people might think that your co-author came up with the idea. How to deal with this topic depends on what you plan to do next: Do you want to go for an academic career? Do you say you don't care as long as people get to read your results, because you are only doing research in your free time and it will most likely be years until your next publication?


Do professors from different fields use the same data set in different ways?

Yes.  The number of ways to analyze data is very large.  If the data is complex, it would be unlikely any two people would pick the same approach.  Keep in mind that analysis methods are selected from the knowledge of the user to suit the goals of the user.  Analysis methods are only partially selected based on the actual content of the data set.


Accepted by a different proposed supervsior: writing a thank you letter

All it really takes is something simple.

  Thank you both for considering my candidacy. I'm happy to join the program under Professor Y's direction.

And stay friendly with everyone.


Can the editor of a book add citations of individual chapters to his own citation count?

No. Generally, an individual's citation count includes only work which they have authored or co-authored.

An editor counting citations of individual chapters of an edited book would be substantially similar to e.g. the editor of a journal adding to her citation count every time an article in the journal is cited. Definitely not an accepted practice.


Cite articles "in preparation" or conference presentations in post-doc/junior positions grant application

As noted by @aeismail, there are many grant mechanisms that expressly prohibit listing anything that's not "in press" or published, so the first stop would be checking the rules for the grant application itself.

If it is allowed, it's understandable to a junior scientist to do this (and indeed, I did this on several job applications). A few general notes:

Don't list a journal. No one cares that something is "in submission" to Nature or Science or Cell or what have you, and it erodes your credibility.
Do be sparing in what you list. These should be papers you're actively working to prep for submission, are being circulated to co-authors, etc. Things where in another few months your CV might look markedly different. "I've written the title and maybe half the intro" doesn't count. Every idea and musing you've had doesn't count. There shouldn't be a wall of these, or way more in prep entries than actual published work.
Do be prepared to talk about each and every one of them (this follows from the previous point). I have been asked about papers I had in prep in a fair amount of detail (they were interested in the topic).


Online classes - student says his learning style is different so he doesn't attend

This is a hard question since it has so many elements to consider. Let me begin, at least, though I may need to add more over time.
First, however, consider your own somewhat precarious position. If you do something that isn't really in accord with the rules, but lack tenure, then you might be at risk if your more senior colleagues object to it. The solution to that is to start a local discussion to see what people in your department see as reasonable exceptions for uncommon times.
The more important question, generally, of course, is what is pedagogically good for the student so that they can master the material. This is much harder.
For this, first note that you have, I hope, set up the course structure so that most, if not all students can learn and be fairly judged. You set lectures, perhaps, readings, exercises, projects, discussions, etc. so that learning is highly likely to occur when students apply the necessary effort.
So, at a minimum, the student wanting an exception, needs to be warned that they may be lessening their likelihood of success by deviating from what has been established and that they are taking on some risk in doing so. There are, of course, people who learn very effectively on their own and can demonstrate it. For them, rigidity has no benefit.
But, beyond that, if you are going to allow exceptions, which you might here, you also need to start to think about the whole structure and how such students will be evaluated fairly. Beyond evaluation, however, is the issue of giving them reasonable feedback in a way that fits whatever scale you need to teach in. If you have appropriate exercises (for reinforcement) and can give proper feedback then such a system of "exceptions" can be successful. But if a student simply disappears and then suddenly reappears for an exam, then it is harder to judge whether they have learned what they need. This is for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that exams are a poor way to judge overall learning.
And, specializing to CS, it may be that some group work is essential to the educational process and this might be more difficult to achieve if students want certain kinds of exceptions.
So, my advice is to think about the entire educational structure and how it might be maintained properly if some part of it has to be modified in some way. Unfortunately this is a long term research issue that is difficult to apply in the short term under pressure of a pandemic.
And don't forget to get buy-in from your local colleagues.


Do PhD students complain more than people in other professions?

No.

To quote Drew Carey:

  Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? You know there's a support group for that. It's called everybody. They meet at the bar.


Should I write more books as a grad student, or focus more on studies/research?

Only you can answer this question. What exactly do you want to do after you graduate? Which is more important to achieving that: the PhD, or the money?

I'll only point out three things you might not have considered: first, if you're already in this much demand, you could conceivably quit the PhD and make creating video courses your full-time job. Second, you could tell the publishers you need to finish your PhD, and that you'll be willing to do this afterwards. Finally, when it comes to education, the credentials of the teacher is a big draw. Yes you might not be teaching something hard enough to require a PhD, but there's still something to be said about "the teacher cgmil earned a PhD in [the topic being taught] from [some university especially if it's a top school]".


Had your paper not been accepted as is, you would definitely have made these changes. Although typos are usually taken care of in the copyediting and page proofing stage, I think it would be a good idea to write to the editor asking whether you are required to make the changes.


Software for snowballing (data mining) academic papers

I don't think there's any such software available, and I doubt it would produce anything useful for the following reason:

  This goes on and on till I converge.

Without any restriction such an approach would probably not converge, at least not before reaching a few millions papers since it would follow citations across fields. Even with restrictions, you're likely to end up with a vast amount of data which would be very hard to exploit manually.


Is it okay to apply to more than one professors for internship at the same time?

User Karl has good advice, I will only add that if you ask two professors for positions, make sure that you at least hint that there are other possibilities under consideration.  If you indicate that you would take an internship with a professor while you are looking for another, it might cause hard feelings later.

But if you present it as "I'm looking around for opportunities for an internship and wonder ..." then it doesn't immediately sound exclusive. If you get more than one offer you then have a comfortable way to go back to the ones you aren't taking with an update. "Thanks for the opportunity, but ..."

Keep your lines of communication open as much as possible.


Am I allowed to teach my online students someone 's book?

Copyright is about copying, not about use. So, it is possible to do this if you use a bit of caution. First, though, you should ask the publisher about fair use in this case. The author may not actually hold the rights.

If you have learned from the book and teach what you have learned then you are probably fine. But if you give them sections copied from the book to read, say over the internet, then you are probably not fine.

Normally there is an expectation that the students have some access to the book even if they haven't purchased a copy. Borrowing a copy from the library or from a friend. So, an instruction to read Chapter 3 or do assignments 3.7 and 3.9 sends them to the copy for which they have access. None of that is copying and so is perfectly normal.

But if you send them a copy of Chapter 3 or even the literal assignments then you are on shaky ground. Ethically and maybe legally.

But you can make up assignments that are similar to those in the book, based on your own understanding. That should also be fine as long as you aren't being devious about just changing a value or two in a math exercise.

I'm hoping that publishers will be a bit more lenient than usual, given the current situation.

I'll note that copyright law varies widely around the world as does the definition of fair use. The creation of the Xerox Machine changed all of that and publishers have become quite stingy about such things. Your academic librarian almost certainly has guidelines about fair use in your country/region.


Advice for having children during graduate school

Congratulations! First of all, you are in for a wonderful and life-changing experience.

However, your life is going to change quite drastically - so try to be prepared.

Some things that come to mind in no specific order (some of these are not specific to academia):

On the personal side, you must first realize that you will have much less time to work. Get used to the idea. The way to deal with this is to organize your time and stick to your schedules. No more random web browsing during work hours - use your time with your child as time for brain rest. As a scientist you may know that it is not always easy to be creative/focused on cue, but you will learn to get used to it with practice.
As JeffE commented, if your advisors don't know yet, notify them. A supportive advisor can make a huge difference in terms of flexible-work time, working from home, and even moral support. I would also try to gently ask if they increase your salary or offer some other kind of financial benefits. Also, your graduation will most likely get delayed, hopefully not too much - try to see that your supervisors are ok with that.
If possible, have your family help as much as possible.
The first year with a child is a huge change and can be quite difficult, especially in your situation. Help each other and be understanding towards each other.
Your school's HR can give you information about benefits you could get for children (healthcare, day care).
You can find tons of used baby/child stuff (toys, clothes) for free or very cheap, because they are often useful only for a short time.


How should I discuss about a paper with my potential supervisor who is one of the authors of that paper?

Organise a meeting with him, sit down and say "Bob, I have a couple of questions about that paper you suggested I read last week". And then ask the questions.

Don't overthink this. It really is that simple.


Appropriate salutation for female German full professor

The closest to the picture you are showing is

"Professorin Dr. Johanna Schmidt"

where the "Dr." needs to be replaced by the correct specification, e.g. Dr.-Ing., Dr. rer nat, ...

If you are having less space, you can use "Prof." instead of "Professorin" (note that "Professorin" is the female form of "Professor")

If the real title is a PhD and not a "Dr.", you should write

"Professorin Johanna Schmidt, PhD"

In all cases, the first name might be abbreviated. In Germany it is relatively uncommon to use the second name - you should check how she uses it and follow the style she prefers.

I would not write "Professorin" underneath the name - it looks strange to me.


What does "abstract aspects" of a subject mean?

Ok, let me try to clarify the difference. As an English writer, I hope it helps. But you could also translate the terms into your own language and seek sources for those terms.
In theoretical work we form a hypothesis about something unknown (or only partly known) and then seek evidence as to whether the hypothesis is true or not. The subject of the "theory" might not even exist. In theoretical work you are exploring the unknown. You are attempting to add "detail" from the real world - evidence to support the hypothesis or not.
Abstraction, on the other hand, is a process of removing details from a complex topic to try to come to the essence of some question. For example, democracy is an abstract concept that exists in the world in many forms, some of them very messy. The abstract concept of democracy removes much of the detail to arrive at some core "essence" or abstraction of the idea. So, the US and the UK are both democracies, but have a very different governmental structure. But, there is not really such a thing as a "pure democracy" conforming to the idea without any of those messy details. Abstraction lets us work with very complex systems in a simpler form.
Language, actually, is a form of abstraction. Many of the things we speak of would be impossibly difficult to discuss without the simplification of removing details thought to be unnecessary to the essence. If you want to discuss me for example, then, for most purposes, you don't need to know my height or hair color. The me you discuss is an abstraction.
It would be possible to work in the political arena in a theoretical manner. One could devise a theory of government not represented in the world and then seek evidence as to what the effect would be. Science Fiction does a lot of that sort of thing.
On the other hand, one can do physics as a form of abstraction, looking at what exists in the world and trying to "abstract" what is making it behave like it does. The orbiting of the Earth around the Sun was explored in this way. See Heliocentrism. At the time of those explorations, there was a Theory that the Earth was the universe (or, more properly, a religious dogma). But in the end, that theory proved to have little evidence.
Note that the "elliptical" path of the Earth around the Sun is itself an abstraction. The Earth is deflected slightly from the ideal elliptical path due to various forces, such as passing asteroids.
And, sometimes a field has to go back and forth between theory and abstraction, when a theory needs to be revised due to contrary evidence, leading the practitioners to try to devise new abstractions that might be better representations other aspects of the data not originally considered.
So, you can't say that it is all abstraction or all theory. You need to consider the process by which researchers in a field actually work.
Finally, theory, itself, is an abstraction.


Advisor moving to a different school, should I move with him?

There's no simple answer here. Contrary to "The Fire Guy," when I moved, all of my students stayed at their old institution—primarily for financial and personal reasons. However, I received approval from the department at my old university to continue advising the students who remained.

The big question that you haven't addressed is what you'd have left to do to finish at school A. Are you one or two years out from graduation, or more? And how much extra time would you need to spend at school B completing requirements? And are there other issues, such as teaching load and organizational duties, that may extend your time beyond what you'd have at school A?

As far as being involved in a lot of projects, that's a double-edged sword: you end up with an experience profile that's a mile wide, but not very deep. It's not something you tend to be able to convert into a PhD thesis relatively easily.


Is this a useful pagination style for a PhD thesis?

Is it good practice to give [feedback on the reader's relative position in a manuscript by including the] sum of pages[, e.g.,] Page 13 of 200 or 13/200...? Or [is it] unnecessary, redundant, distracting or demotivating...?

Giving feedback on the relative position can be useful, but you needn't explicitly provide additional information (e.g., page 13 of 200), since this information is already implicitly known, e.g., from the physical stack of paper or from the PDF reader.

Pro-tip: Make sure the page numbers match the PDF page numbers.


Graduate training programs from other departments, how helpful are they?

Yes, as @JeffE attests, there is at least a balance to be struck in the diversification of your skills and perspectives versus having a clear focus that will mark out your niche. You can overdo either one. My perspective, as someone who has been involved in inter-disciplinary research for 15 years, and who has had a lot of advice from much more senior folk about this, does err somewhat on the side of Carroll. In particular, your goal is to mark out a well defined territory that is not too diffuse. "Trajectory" in your career (mainly your pub record) is a primary consideration for hiring and promotion, and it's difficult to build up a body of work if you dabble in many areas.

My own perspective resonates with Carroll's here: continual, long-term dabbling is Bad for getting tenure. It will dilute what others will be able to confidently perceive/predict about your current and future impact in a specific field. But being a "drone" who just followed faithfully in the footsteps of his/her PhD mentor, using the same perspective that might already be "old-fashioned" and not future-proof to the growing inter-disciplinary pressures (you should be able to insert your own field-specific examples here!), is also Bad. Either because you find eventually yourself bored or devalued as a "mere follower" rather than innovator, or because your micro-focused view dries up in terms of peer interest or funding.

Remember that institutions at least pay lip service to inter-disciplinary work. Some actually really support it in a meaningful way, and look for fresh, innovative thinkers to join them. As a junior academic, now is a good time to explore what's not too far from your area and learn more about how to position yourself with a unique and/or highly desirable set of skills and body of knowledge. So, this can be exactly how you end up being successful in contributing in a clear direction in exactly the way I interpret from Carroll's blog post.

For you, ask your mentors and colleagues how they see the current and future combination of the two disciplines you are talking about, and what the interesting questions are. Then try to see how you could fit into that and do something innovative while remaining feasible and concrete. It's tricky, but finding that sweet spot should get you a long way, and it could be much more rewarding. Just be careful who you work for. Some places or people talk the talk but don't walk the walk. When it comes to decisions involving money, if your institution's administration or your peers don't know how to properly evaluate your highly innovative inter-disciplinary work then you might "fall between the cracks" and be passed over for a more traditional candidate whose work they can, at least, easily understand! Good luck


Is it frowned upon to obtain a recommendation letter from a recent Ph.D. graduate?

I wrote one or two recommendation letters as a graduate student, though only after encouraging the students to find someone else if at all possible.

My experience is in math, which may be different, but it's been that a letter from a PhD student counts for somewhat less. Prestige of the letter writer matters a bit, as does experience, and a PhD student generally doesn't have either.

It would be common in your situation, I think, to have the lead faculty member write the letter, but consult with the PhD student about what to say. (Or even to have the PhD student write portions of the letter and have the lead faculty member complete and sign the letter.)

When students have done a research project but the supervising faculty member doesn't write a letter, that can be a red flag. A letter from a PhD student helps, especially if it explains that they did most of the supervising, but it still raises questions.


Include rejected paper in Masters application?

I would recommend putting it in your cv as a Manuscript in Preparation section where you list authors, title only. If you don’t do that, it’s something to bring up very briefly as either a bullet point of writing a resume, or in the cover letter. You may wish to spin this as “motivated to disseminate research” rather than to prove your aptitude for research, since publishing and doing research aren’t synonymous. Good luck


Should I prefer PhD programs with "higher quality" students?

It's worth considering in your case because your graduate experience will in part be shaped by your peers. Your peer group in graduate school will help (or hurt) your research and teaching experiences --- at some schools your peers will help lift you up and inspire you, at others they will underwhelm you.

Your peers will also help with networking. The people who are finishing when you arrive in grad school will be useful people to get advice from when you go on the job market, as they will have recently been through it themselves.

I'm in the finishing stages of a PhD right now and I've benefited a lot from knowing the top-notch students who had come before me. I learnt from them, they have given me lots of feedback over the years, they've helped me with networking, etc.


(APA) Citations for figures I created with existing data (An Egotistical Dilemma)

Plagiarism is one thing, and I support your view on this situation as paraphrasing data. But a more important reason to add a citation is to let the reader know where the data is coming from (and how the data was collected). This is immensily important for the reader to understand and analyse your presented data correctly. In my mind, we should always write with open cards, i.e. so that our work is repeatable and deductions are easy to follow.

Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?

I would recommend a sentence in the figure text of something like: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source]." Preferably add an equation reference to the equation that the plotted data is a result of: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source] by using (equation reference)." or ..."by applying (equation reference) to it."
In my mind this kind of sentence will make it clear where the raw data is coming from, and that the figure you present is your work and therefore not found in the source.

Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?

The reference to the raw data should be in the figure text. A common way to read a report/article is to read summary and conclusion and scroll through to read highlights and look at figures. Therefore the figure texts should explain their figure in a quite independent way, so that the quick read gives a good understanding of what the figure presents without searching through the main text. References to how the data was collected and computed, is part of the foundation for understanding the figure.


How do I move forward after working with a toxic academic supervisor?

I think you will have to be transparent about the relationship in the lab when potential employers ask for that reference. However, assuming you warned whatever graduate degree you had, it can also be taken as a sign that despite a toxic work environment you were able to still carve out success. Everyone has experienced a toxic work environment, so if your story is authentic, and you sound authentic, employers might be able to identify that.
But what you can’t do is use that supervisor as a reference, and you most likely won’t get other faculty to speak poorly about your supervisor in a letter. So, I would argue, that you just need to be transparent about your experience when you need to confront it.


You just described the difference between short and long term memory. Seeing something, say in a lecture, will only get your short term memory involved. To have something retained for the long term you need to actually actively learn it. Listening, reading once, seeing a video are all passive.

Yes, take notes. There is evidence that taking notes on paper is better than typing the notes as you listen to a lecture, say, because it engages the brain in a different way. Good typists, for example, can copy text without really reading or understanding it. It is just a physical, rather than mental, act.

There is brain science that shows that learning requires physically changing the stricture of the brain - reconnecting neurons. See The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull, for example.

But taking notes is only the first part. Practice and repetition are needed for real retention. What can you do with the information you just heard in that lecture? For undergraduates we give them exercises to reinforce the learning and make the students active in retaining it. That happens less in doctoral studies. But among other things, especially in maths you can think about and write down how this connects to other things you know and have already retained. Make the connections explicit in your thinking rather than just implicit.

When I was in grad school (maths also) I made extensive notes in lecture on paper. I still have them 50 years later and have consulted some of them recently. I do wish I'd used better paper, actually. If I were to do it again, I'd use index cards with only a single idea on each card. Better yet, take notes on good paper and just after the lecture, extract the key ideas (three most important ideas) on individual index cards. Everything here is done by hand. I did some of this actually as an undergrad (not enough) and still have a box of index card notes.

You may think that using computer based notes is superior. That is questionable. You may think it is better for retention, but it isn't for retention in your mind. Even retaining things in a computer over 50 years is problematic, since media and operating systems change as do some formats. If you back up regularly you are safer but you may also need to translate the old formats to new as many software vendors have little incentive to support really old formats. Paper lasts as long as you can keep it dry and away from fire.


A student who asked me to write a rec letter seems to have committed academic dishonesty in my class, what do I do?

You agreed to write this letter, and it is due tomorrow (!). Reneging on your promise would effectively torpedo the student's applications, as they are very unlikely to find another recommender on one day's notice. Given that you haven't even confronted them yet (much less convicted them), this would be altogether unjust. (Clearly, your dilemma would be very different if this incident had come to light a month ago.)
Given this timescale, I suggest the following:

Write the letter without any mention of your unproven suspicions.
Confront the student.
If the student confesses or is convicted, you could then consider contacting the programs to withdraw or amend your letter. This is a natural, just, and foreseeable consequence of A's decision to cheat in a class taught by their recommender.

One other thought: consider doing #2 ASAP -- you could ask the student if they are available for an urgent, important call regarding your letter of recommendation (that should get their attention). You can then confront them and also explain how this will (not) affect your letter. This conversation has a few possible outcomes:

You proceed as above. Indeed, I recommend writing the letter before having this conversation precisely so that your letter is not (even unconsciously) affected (as even innocent students may react poorly to serious accusations).
They withdraw their request for a letter. You certainly shouldn't pressure the student to go this route -- I wouldn't even bring it up. But it's possible the student will say that they prefer not to use your letter given the accusation; in this case, you should respect this.
They confess to cheating, at which point you can either rescind your offer to write the letter, or you can agree to write a letter that reflects this incident.

Note, if you do confront the student ASAP, you must be careful not to pre-empt the judicial process, nor to create an abusive, blackmail-like situation. Assure them that you have written a positive letter that does not mention your suspicions, and that you will not rescind or amend your letter until/unless they are formally convicted. Despite your best efforts, A will doubtless still be stressed; accusations of cheating are always stressful. But being transparent and giving A as much agency as possible is the best one can reasonably do under the circumstances.


How to organize my binder of activities for review of time as assistant professor?

I think that you had the right idea about having six tabs to organize each section. From there, I would have card stock paper (or something similar) to separate out your evaluations by semester. Have each semester labeled on each sheet. That will create a subtle yet efficient way of dividing out your evaluations.


If there's a reason for someone to visit your lab's site other than it's new and should be visited, then you could write up a short announcement and post it to a relevant mailing list for your particular discipline or sub-discipline.

Otherwise, the best and most persistent advertising you and your groupmates can do would be to include it as a signature block in your email. People who want to know more about your group can then click on the link. Other methods to generate traffic without purpose will likely tick off more people than inspire them to visit your page.


Can I fill an application for a PhD program, and send the scores of GRE and TOEFL later? How much later?

It depends on the university and the department and there is usually no way to tell from the outside unless the website is explicit. Unless you have information to the contrary, you should treat the deadline as the deadlines for all materials to arrive.

Many universities/departments will red flag missing TOEFL scores from international students and treat the file as incomplete - which means the application won't even get forwarded to the admissions committee. Some programs will also red flag missing GREs for both domestic and international students. The committee won't see these files.

In the application management system I used at my old department, I could run an alternate search for incomplete applications and still find incomplete or flagged files, but they wouldn't show in the default view and certainly not in the exported spreadsheet we used for committee ranking assignments.

So if your materials are arriving late, I'd write to both the graduate school and the admissions committee director or graduate studies director and make sure they know to flag your file for further attention. They may also tell you there's nothing they can do about an application that is missing material.

By the way, we usually have made our decisions by mid- to late- February so your scores arriving in March will definitely be too late and your application would likely get rejected as incomplete (unless you can argue that the TOEFL is inapplicable because you went to an English speaking college or some other reason).


How do you handle a double barrel name in citations/publishing?

Unfortunately, a lot of journals are not very friendly to formats that don't match the standard of: First, (Middle,) Last. It's gotten a lot better, but many systems expect one capital letter per name (so O'Brien is out).
Of course, always make sure you (or the corresponding author) enter your name correctly, so that the citation and metadata generated by the journal are correct. However, not all journals do that, or make it easily available. You can make a point of mentioning it in talks, etc., but that is slow to disseminate.
Besides that, you have two main options, in my opinion.

Hyphenate them. You can use a different name in publications than you do in real life.

Use a middle initial, e.g. "Sasha L. Baron Cohen." This implies that everything after the middle initial is one unit, whereas "S. Baron Cohen" would imply "Baron" is your usual first name, and "Cohen" your last.

If you see people (like in a tweet) or journalists - or ArXiV submissions - writing about your articles, feel free to correct them (publicly or privately), but correcting citations in published articles isn't usually possible, unfortunately, which is a big headache for the trans community in particular.
Do not feel bad about standing up for your name. In fact, the more people stand up for their own names, the more people who feel like they cannot (because they are foreign, or trans, etc.) will be able to.


How to cite information removed from a working paper when it was published

This is a rare situation, because “interesting enough to cite” and “interesting enough to include in the final draft” tend to be highly correlated. Therefore I wouldn’t expect there to be a “standard” way to do this.

However, there are standard ways to cite working papers. For Chicago style, it’s this:

  Author. Year. “Title of Paper.” Title of Series. Sponsoring Organization, Month Day.

  Add URL at the end if available online.

  Deal, Ashley. 2009. “Collaboration Tools.” Teaching with Technology Whitepaper. Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation, Carnegie Mellon University, January 23. http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/technology/whitepapers/CollaborationTools_Jan09.pdf.

Source: CMOS 14.228, as quoted here.

I would switch the first part of your citation to match this format. The additional commentary that the result was excluded from the final paper is, in my mind, extremely important to include. I would do exactly what you’ve done (after correcting the second citation to Chicago style as well).


How do I find out when grad schools host their open house?

If you are in the middle of the graduate school application process, they will generally tell you (upon acceptance) when their open house is. If you are thinking ahead (e.g., to next year), I would send an email to the office of graduate admissions, or perhaps to the chair of graduate admissions for the department you're interested in. They may not have organized large-scale tours for prospective graduate students who have not been admitted, but I imagine they might be willing to work with you to get you on a campus tour, set up a meeting with professors whose work you are interested in, etc.


Are relationships allowed between students and faculty?

To give one data point on how this issue is actually framed and enforced by universities (or at least public universities in the US), let me quote from my university's Campus Administrative Manual:

  An individual may not initiate or participate in institutional
  decisions involving a direct benefit or penalty to someone with whom
  that individual has had a sexual relationship.

  Relationships such as those between supervisors and their subordinate
  employees are inherently asymmetric. Current or past sexual
  relationships can adversely affect decisions, distort judgments, and
  undermine morale. Any university employee who participates in academic
  supervisory or administrative decisions concerning another employee
  with whom he or she has or has had a sexual relationship has a
  conflict of interest in these situations.

  Accordingly, no individual shall initiate or participate in
  institutional decisions involving a direct benefit or penalty
  (employment, retention, promotion, tenure, salary, leave of absence,
  etc.) to a person with whom that individual has or has had a sexual
  relationship. He or she must take specific actions to remove himself
  or herself from all decisions and actions that may influence the
  career or status of the other employee.

[...]

  In cases where a conflict [of interest] is identified, the UEO [Unit Executive Officer] must develop a
  Supervisory Relationship Management Plan that redirects
  decision-making and bypasses involved parties. Such procedures must be
  agreed to in writing and approved through all administrative levels.
  For changes in existing positions that might create a supervisory
  relationship in the same unit, review and approval is also required.

[...]

  The appropriate human resources office will conduct periodic
  compliance reviews. Failure to abide by this policy constitutes
  misconduct, subject to discipline under applicable University
  procedures.

tl;dr: Sexual relationships between students and faculty are not per se forbidden, but the conflicts of interest they create — either real or perceived — must be carefully and explicitly managed by multiple layers of campus administration.

It is worth emphasizing that these policies are invoked not only for sexual relationships that are generally considered inappropriate, such as undergraduates and their instructors, or graduate students and their advisors, but also with married (and formerly married) couples.


Am I responsible for not reproducibility of collaborators’ result?

It sounds like you are in a difficult position, but, yes, if your name is on a publication or report, people will assume that you are responsible for everything in it.

It may be that you have been caught by your own carelessness, of course, accepting something you weren't sure about because they "seem more relevant to me". It is hard to be definite here with so little information, but perhaps you need to be more careful.

But the situation now needs some resolution. This is something you need to work out with your advisor and perhaps your collaborators. I think the only way to really solve it is to have a general meeting where you discuss the situation. Someone, somewhere, seems to have been making improper assumptions. Perhaps there is shared blame here. But if all fingers are now pointing at you, then you have to work to find a general resolution as the situation isn't likely to change without your action.

Your attitude in such a meeting should be "this is what happened... this is what I assumed... this is why I acted as I did", being entirely truthful. Some of the blame may fall to you, but better that it be worked out than that it not be.


PhD in Cryptography after Masters with experience

Yes, it will be a plus. And no, you won't need to go into details. But get a letter of recommendation from a superior.

But part of its being a plus is that it is closely related to your academic trajectory and not something different.

And, with permission from the DoD, you can probably say some things, even if not especially detailed. You can, for example, possibly speak about non-classified papers that you found useful in your work. But more important, those non-classified papers that you want to consider for extension - whether related to your work or not.


Are there any citable Github repositories not published in journals, that receive a lot of citations?

The Keras repository has an entry in Google Scholar with 1254 citations.

I'm not aware of the author having done anything special to make it "citable" though, other than giving an example in the FAQ of how to cite it.

  For example, I made a Figshare DOI for my GitHub program in 2013 and it turned out to get zero citations, despite the paper related to the code getting many citations.

Personally, whenever I wish to "cite a repository", the first thing I do is check the repository's homepage / documentation / FAQ / etc. to see if the author(s) wrote any instructions on how to cite it. If there are any such instructions, I use those since I assume that that is how the author(s) prefer to be cited.

If there are no such instructions, my next step is to see if there is any (peer-reviewed) paper published by the author(s) of the repository that describes / uses / links to the repository, and cite that if there exists such a thing.

Only if there is no such paper do I consider directly citing the github link itself. The implicit assumption is that, unless there are explicit instructions stating otherwise, it is preferable to cite (peer-reviewed) papers over repositories.


Postdoctoral (or tenure-track) positions at ETH and knowledge of local language

For postdocs @ ETH:

If this is not said specifically in the job text, you can safely assume that no knowledge of German will be required, although it may or may not count as a plus depending on the PI. There will almost certainly be no statement in your contract that you will need to learn German within a time frame, as postdocs are not "career" positions in the first place (and neither are they particularly teaching oriented, which is the only place where ETH potentially cares about you speaking German).

For professors @ ETH:

Unlike most other European universities, ETH is actually fairly international. I would be surprised if all of the faculty from around the world teaching there speaks German, although many that I know do (as you say, learning the local language is generally helpful if you stay in a foreign country for a longer period of time). German language skills will almost certainly not be required at time of appointment, but it may become part of your contract that you are obliged to be able to teach in German within a given number of years. This requirement may be negotiable, with the main concern from ETH's side being that this would limit what courses you will be able to teach. However, honestly, I would not worry about this too much at this stage.

For other European universities:

As usual, customs vary a lot across other European universities. For instance, I have seen announcements for German universities where PhD students were required to be able to speak German. That being said, the rules from above are good guesses in the absence of contradicting further information - don't worry about it for postdocs (unless the announcement specifically says that you need to speak the local language), and don't worry too much for faculty positions, but be prepared that you may be obliged to learn the local language.


Why do many PhD programs expect a higher average physics GRE score for international students than US students?

(Some) US departments seek to maintain a critical mass of US students. (I expect that) such departments accept a critical mass of US students - the best that they can get - and then accept some number of international students to fill up their ranks - the best that they can get. Since international students generally score higher on standardized tests such as the GRE general/subject test (for all sorts of reasons), this leads to the accepted international students having higher test scores than the accepted US students.

A more general point, I believe, is that international students are often 'unknown quantities'. While a US student might have recommendation letters, research experience, etc. that gives an admissions committee a well-rounded perspective on them and could potentially make up for less-than-stellar test scores, this is not always possible for international students. So in some sense an international applicant has to have exceptional test scores to make up for being an unknown quantity in other respects. I believe this partly because international students who have been undergraduates in the US seem to fall into the `domestic students' box more so than the 'international students' box.


Can a professor force students to pay a subscription fee for a different site in order to take classes?

This started as a comment but I decided to give an opposing view from the one in Anonymus Physicist's answer.
As you might have guessed, the answer to this question is location dependant.
In my University in the UK, this is explicitly forbidden. It is, in fact, forbidden to ask students to register to any website or service in order to follow the course materials, even if the registration is free. There is a (fairly short) list of approved services, for which the University has ensured that they follow the (now local, but still based on GDPR) Privacy Laws, which students may be asked to use. This list is updated yearly, and I believe the process is substantially more complex than sending somebody an email saying "I want to use X in my classes next year".
As this is done to ensure compliance with Privacy Laws, I am fairly certain that all British Universities have the same clause. As the current Privacy Laws are still based on GDPR, originally passed as European Union legislation, I would guess that something similar is in effect through EU Universities as well.
(However, note that since UK Universities are ran much more like companies than public education institutions, as is common on the Continent, they are also much much more careful about any legal liability their actions might cause. So it might be less enforced outside of the UK.)


Admissions cares about making a positive prediction of your success and whether you will make proper use of resources, along with contributing in the future. No one thing lets people make that prediction, so many, many things are taken in to consideration.
Positive indicators, including successful internships or research, help you. Negative things, such as poor grades, hurt. Letters of recommendation can be very important.
Other helpful things: Indications of hard work. Indications of working well with others and contributing. Wide interests. Flexibility. But no one thing is absolutely determinative. And individual evaluators will all have their own ideas about the "most important" thing.
So, you want your graduate school application to be filled with positive indicators so that people don't need to make decisions "at the margin" in your case.
But an internship or research experience, alone, won't assure your admission, not will its lack, assure rejection. It is one factor among many.


Does one invite adviser / cohort / lab to one's wedding?

Just invite the people you would like to have come.  If there are other students, post-docs, faculty, or staff that you are close enough to that you would want to have them at your wedding, then just invite them.  There is no established protocol for who you should invite, and no one is likely to be offended if you invite some of your lab-mates but not all of them.

This is, fundamentally, a workplace issue, rather than an academia issue, although the laboratory workplace for a graduate student poses some unique challenges.  Whether to invite your advisor is just a particular example of whether to invite your boss to the wedding.

I got married halfway through my Ph.D., and I invited a few other graduate students.  I did not invite my advisor, and I know that he was not offended.  When I got back from my honeymoon, he even gave me a small wedding present.


Is it inappropriate to ask for a salary specification when interviewing for a postdoc position?

I think it's a pretty common situation, during my applications I have noticed one of the two alternatives with regards to salary when looking for postdoc positions:

it's clearly specified in the job advert. This typically happens if the salaries are somehow regulated at an institutional level, thus there is little room for negotiation (if any at all).
it's never mentioned, in the advert or during interviews. I have noticed that many hiring academics have the tendency to think that salary is not an important matter in the decision of an academic position. For the sake of the argument I'll not go into why that's a frustrating assumption, but the fact of the matter is that many group leaders assume that if you are applying for an academic position you have sorted out your priorities and the salary isn't on top of that list.

Let's come back to your case at hand; I don't think it's inappropriate to want to have an idea about your salary before accepting a position. After all it is a professional affair and you are entitled to know every little detail of the rights and responsibilities that come with the position you are considering.

I would however rather wait to see if they will offer the job to you, before taking up any negotiations. So in terms of priorities:

make sure it's you who they pick
try to see what kind of an offer they would be willing to make.

And finally regarding postdoc salaries in Australia; according to this link they are around $75-$85K/year (that is aussie dollars btw). I have no idea how reliable this source is, but that was literally on the first page of a google search, so I am sure you can dig into it if you put in a bit of time on it.

Best of luck! :)


Asking a professor to be on my committee (not advisor) before admission

Lining up the committee this early has definite disadvantages. Your area of research may shift as you learn more about it. The top professor in your field may join the department next year - you would have loved to have her on your committee, it if were not already filled.


Should you answer 'are you interviewing elsewhere' honestly when you don't have other interviews yet?

Short answer: Yes, you should answer honestly.

Long answer: your question contains, implicitly and explicitly, several (mostly) flawed premises.

Premise 1: professors are superficial people who can’t be bothered to come up with their own idea of how good you are as an applicant based on the strength of your application, so will resort to relying on an (essentially) irrelevant piece of information to guide their decision.

The reality: almost no professor would care whether you have an interview elsewhere, or, to the small extent that they might care, it’s mainly to help them figure out if there’s any time pressure to reaching a decision on your application. In the case of truly stellar applicants the knowledge of other pending interviews/offers may affect the salary the professor might offer, but in normal cases it won’t.
There’s also a small number of professors for whom the assumption you’re making may be valid. But by and large the premise is not an accurate description of reality.

Premise 2: you are as good of a liar as you think you are.

The reality: you aren’t. In your question you only factor in the perceived cost of acting honestly (and are incorrect in how high you think that cost is, see premise 1 above) but completely ignore the very real - almost certain in my opinion - possibility that the alternative approach of trying to make yourself look much more desired than you are by not telling the honest truth would come across as clumsy and clueless in the best case, or shady and dishonest in the worst case. That eventuality will lead to a much worse outcome (certain rejection of your application, and a bad reputation that could follow you far into the future) than the eventuality you are actually expressing concern about.

Premise 3: if you say you don’t have any interviews you will have to accept an offer very fast since “they know [you] don’t have other options”, even if in the meantime you do receive some other offer.

The reality: this is false. You seem to have the misguided notion that by stating you don’t currently have other interviews you are committing yourself to never having any interviews. That’s not how the world (academia or anywhere else) works.
Hope this helps, and good luck with your interview!


Should arguments based on the proponent's gender be used in a grant proposal?

This does not feel like something you as an external grant reviewer should really care about. The gender of the applicant may or may not be a tie breaker (or even a major factor) for the jury, but they will know which it is. If gender is a factor in the evaluation, they will also be acutely aware that the applicant is female, because either the system or an administrative person will have flagged the application as coming from a female applicant. No need to tell the jury that this is indeed a female applicant.

In consequence, I think you should simply ignore this part of the application. Keep in mind that as a reviewer, you are not deciding on the application - you are merely laying down the facts (e.g., related to the scientific quality of the proposal and applicant) so that the jury can decide based on their own strategy, criteria and availability of funding.

Side remark: note that even should you disagree with the notion that the gender of the applicant should play a role, you should resist "mentally subtracting some points" because the applicant even brought it up. It's not your place to decide if gender should or should not be part of the evaluation. If you would decide to judge the proposal more harshly to counteract a perceived undue advantage, you yourself quickly become part of the problem. Nothing good can come out of that.


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