What to include for a strong research statement for a faculty position?

What a hiring committee for new faculty is looking for is evidence that the applicant will be able to continue a strong research trajectory over the course of (at least the) next 6 years, and become an established leader in his or her chosen field.

To make a convincing case for this, you need to include evidence both that:

a) you have succeeded so far in doing this: that is, you have a track record that if it were extrapolated linearly over the next 6 years would result in tenure. So you should spend a good deal of your statement explaining what you have done, and why it is important/influential.

b) You can plausibly continue your trajectory. To do this, you should express a cohesive
research agenda that ties in with your past work, and plausibly leads to a large number of meaty, interesting, unsolved questions. The more closely related this is to things you have already worked on, the more plausible it will be that you can carry it out. But it should also be different enough that it is new and exciting, and not merely a rehashing of your thesis work.

As in all statements, what you write about should form a cohesive story. If you work in several disparate areas, or would like to branch out to new areas, try and find something that ties them together, or some reason why your experience in both areas gives you an edge.


How would I justify that my work isn't just 'normal' design and creation

I should've read chapter 8, design and creation properly. The answer is in the textbook (Oates, B., Researching information systems and computing, 2009).

According to the author, the major differences are that in the typical software industry is that the less that is learnt or the less that needs to be discovered the more successful the project is deemed to be. If all is going according to plan then using existing knowledge, avoiding backtracking and changing of design or avoiding having to redo analysis would be seen as a part success. Having to change your design, backtracking and redoing analysis are perceived as a negative risk which needs to be mitigated. These risks could overrun the project constraints such as time, budget etc. Therefore industrial practitioners often leave out risky or uncertain parts of a project.

A researcher on the other hand focuses on these risky and uncertain items because tackling these risks and uncertainties successfully would lead to new knowledge being created. Hence you can claim to be doing research rather than 'normal' design and creation through the risk taking of your software product or process. You can further claim justification for your design by using theoretical underpinnings such as mathematical formulas and or formal methods from the field. You should also be able to say how the knowledge aquired from your design can be applied generally to other situations.


Where to start with grant proposal writing

To avoid treating it as a shopping question, I'm providing other advice beyond reading. You'll see that reading can only get you so far.

I'm in the US so some of these scattered thoughts may not apply, but I wish the other some would be helpful to you.

Find a senior collaborator: As a start you may want to consider being a co-investigator with someone who is more senior. Most of the time, you should be able to find one in your department. Some may also use their previous PhD mentor as a start, which is good but do make it a point to diversify your pool of collaborators.

The senior collaborators can help you navigate the system, give comments to your work, and even share examples with you. They provide a lot more than what one can learn from books.

Gather information, make them handy: Ideas ebb and flow, establish a habit to regularly browse journal articles, have an idea taking mechanism at hand (phone, computer, notebook, etc.) Keep adding, revisiting, and thinking. You have also acquired some books, keep them around the desk so that when you want to write, you don't have to get up to look for stuff.

Build internal network: Make an effort to attend research seminars in your institute, build connections with some peers who are going through the same stage as you do. They can be from the same department, or other departments that compliment what you do.

Build external network: In the first 2-3 years this may not be as crucial, but be mindful to allocate some time and resource to connect with people outside your institute. Join some professional committees and contribute as an author or help with the committee; attend conference and present; go to new-collaborator mingling sessions.

Be familiar with institutional support: Meet with your department head and other related deans to learn about what supports are there. For instance, do you have a grant support office? Can someone draft the budget for you? Can someone provide the list of the university infrastructure which is sometimes required by grant proposal? What is the due time to hand in all your final draft? How much overhead would your institute take? Any lab space and hard/software support? etc.

Be familiar with granting agencies: Through your conversations, collect information on the granting agencies. There may be governmental or paid sites that collect and collate grant proposal requests that you can search, or be e-mailed to you based on your specified keywords. Once you have identified a request for proposal, read the document very carefully to make sure you can craft your proposal appropriately. If they have a grant manager, feel free to connect with them if you have any specific questions.

A bigger picture is also important here: for instance, how many grant cycles are there? How particular or peculiar their application processes are? How much overhead would they allow? Is there any mechanism such as STEM or new investigator privilege/advantage you can capitalize on?

Schedule fixed writing time: That's pretty much what it says. Grant writing usually got crowded out by other administrative and academic work. Schedule ahead and safeguard the time.

Have the right mind set, don't be shy: If you have gathered a group of peers, consider forming a writing group and circulate drafts for each other to comment on. If grant review came back and you want to talk about how to address the critiques, circulate that as well. The core thought to cultivate early is that your work is not you. Sometimes you may get scathing review and sometimes you may get good reviews from everyone but one person just hated it. Having a group of peers provides a channel to decompress and get feedbacks.

Participate in ad hoc grant review: As a new investigator this may not be an immediate opportunity, but if you're invited to be an ad hoc reviewer of grant proposals, consider it. It requires tons of time and work, but it allows you to get an idea on how reviews happen, and what are the topography out there. Immensely useful.

Revise, reuse, recycle: Keep this a running mill. And in the same time, keep a paper writing mill. Look for win-win in between teaching, proposal writing, paper writing, and learning. For instance, direct some students to write and submit a paper on a topic you work on; use journal article to refine an idea or compile and release preliminary work (you'll need that in the proposal); proposal got rejected by perhaps being too premature? Use the background section to write an editorial; proposal got rejected again because you're too junior and the work is too ambitious? Break it into some smaller seed grants, career training grants, or student mentoring grants. Be creative and relentless.

Draft a 1- and a 5-year plan: Now that you have more clues. Draft a 1- and 5-year plan. Be wild and have fun. Think about what you want to see done in future. Keep re-visiting and revising the plans.

Document your mood and productivity: Later you'll realize that you enjoy some parts of this process, but not some others. Having a mood/productivity evaluation would be very useful. Once you have accumulated enough data, you can start to see where you shine (e.g. you are great at conceptualizing, but very stressed when writing the statistical analyses; you love the literature review, but hated the process of looking for them.) With that, you can better identify collaborators who compliment you.

Get your hands dirty: There are a lot to do, but these can be done in a long run, go prepared but don't spend too much time to over-prepare. At a certain point (when you may still mentally think "I'm not quite ready yet.") jump in and start.


Should I test my algorithm using a standard dataset that I believe is flawed?

You leave a lot unsaid here, such as how expensive (time, money) it is to run the algorithm on any given dataset and how much effort to create a new one.

Three pieces of advice, though. If it is more or less standard to use the published data, then using that should give you some basis for evaluating your algorithm compared to others. With a new dataset you lose that opportunity.

A new dataset also leaves you open to a charge that the "great" results you got were just an artifact of the dataset you created on your own. You should probably avoid that. At least as the first iteration.

There is no reason that you couldn't use the existing dataset, gather your results, but also, in the same paper, discuss the shortcomings of that dataset. This also gives you an opening to future work and you might even get some advice on how to avoid the second point above.

Ok. Four pieces of advice. If you are new at this (and not a doctoral candidate writing a dissertation) you don't need to push the boundaries too far to make a contribution. You can use the simplest case to set up your case 4. for the future. But if you buck current practice very much you need to justify it.

On the other hand, if you are a doctoral candidate, the significance of your work is normally considered more important than the time you need to put into it and the expectation is that it is novel. But you still need to avoid the charge of tailoring the data to fit the desired results.


You could try and mention, explicitly, that further applications are the subject of further research - but in a similar paper that I had published (with a similar comment from a reviewer), I provided a couple of specific examples of other similar applications where the model could be applied.

A colleague noted that this made it a bit more likely that the paper would be cited, due to other authors relating to the comment relating to potential further work.


Does Oxford ever waive the IELTS language requirement?

This is not very specific, I thought you were referring to undergraduate but if you have 4 peer-reviewed publications already then I guess you must be at least PhD level?

In the former case, in my experience Oxford University does not waive the requirements for English and you are probably better off if you take the test again. By the way, my understanding is that you need a 7.0 average AND at least 7.0 in each component.

If you are applying for something more senior (PhD, Postdoc, etc) then it depends on the individual department at which you'd be working.

-edit-
Aah, just seen you tagged this with PhD. The requirements you list (7.0 ave + 6.5 component minimum) are for a Master's degree rather than the DPhil.
To my knowledge the IELTS requirements vary by department (mine doesn't seem to have any, for instance) but it looks like a 7.5 average with no less than 7.0 in any one component is the most common requirement. Based on that you will definitely have to resit the IELTS exam.

You can see the generic requirements here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/applying-to-oxford/application-guide#content-tab--3
For a DPhil the 'higher level' requirements would be needed, if applicable to your subject.


Referencing others' ideas in introductions and conclusions?

If I understand your question, you're asking whether statements in an introduction or conclusion which summarise fully-referenced, more detailed statements in the body of your writing should be referenced too.

The answer is the same as for anything, regardless of where it's found in something you write:

If a statement is your own conclusion based on information you have drawn from outside sources, then as long as you note what information you got from which sources by referencing correctly within the body of the document where you explain how you came to your conclusion, you don't need to reference this conclusive or interpretive statement; it's the result of your own mental process.

On the other hand, if the statement is information from another source, you must reference it. Whether or not it's heavily summarised or you intend to expand on the statement, with references, later, the simple rule of referencing everything that did not originate with your own work still applies.

As a rule, though, I'd advise you to check with your teacher, tutor, student advisor, TA, lecturer, or whomever else applies. What I explained above is technically the right way to do it, but it wouldn't surprise me if some institutions at least aren't quite that strict.


Admitting candidates from a no-name college?

Every student, whether they come from a well known or an obscure university has to make his or her own case for admission. While it is easier to accept that the education from a well known place is adequate it isn't impossible to evaluate the record from someplace not yet represented in the student population. Some colleges have people who will do this as a matter of course.

Perhaps one or more of your professors can help. Sometimes the web of academic personal reach in a given field is quite broad.

But the case is still yours to make. You should demonstrate in your materials that you not only have taken courses at your university, but that you have learned the essential things needed to advance further. The presumption that MIT, for example, turns out skilled students is, for the most part, justified, but it doesn't imply that NOT-MIT cannot also do so.

But you need to make your case.


It could be either, but it usually goes back to the reviewers that requested the major modifications. Whoever the editor sent it to, it means that it is being reviewed again in full.


Thesis contributions: where/how to specify them?

Usually that is included in the Preface, which comes in the beginning of the thesis. Some call it 'Declaration of Authorship' instead of 'Preface'. See for example these guidelines.


How do Professors feel about writing recommendation letter?

Although I'm not a professor, my position has a lot of similarity and I have often been asked to write recommendation letters.  My reaction has been a mixture, depending on who is asking for me to write the letter:

Students who I like and respect: "Sure, I'll be happy to.  What are the aspects of your work that you'd most like to have emphasized?"
Students who I haven't got a strong opinion on: "I'm not sure that I know your work well enough to write a strong letter.  If you really need me to, I can, but I think you'd be better served by getting somebody who knows you better."
Students who I have been disappointed in: "I'm sorry, but I don't think that I would be a good person to write the type of letter that you need."

You only want letters from the first type, who will happily sing your praises.  And for a student like that, it's no burden at all: I'm going to want to push your career forward, because I'm hoping I'll get to see somebody who I like prosper, and maybe even return to work with me as a colleague in the future.

As for the multiple letters question: don't worry about it unless you're applying to like 20 schools.  If the programs you're applying to are similar, they're probably just going to be writing just one template letter about their experiences and filling in a couple of blanks to customize for the institution.  Now certain institutions have terrible forms that will make it a pain to send that letter, but that's hardly your fault, and your recommender will be used to it...


Diversity Statement for Faculty Position in the US?

This comes off a bit to me like "this application asks for a teaching statement but I haven't ever taught or thought seriously about teaching, so what do I write?"  Well, if you haven't done anything or thought seriously about it, then you're not going to be able to write a very good statement.  The first steps (which it's probably a little late for) are to start thinking about issues around underrepresented groups and getting involved in some way.  Barring that you just have to resign yourself to this being a very weak part of your application.

That said, there are some other aspects beyond racial/gender diversity which you might think about and might have something to say about.  For example, maybe you have relevant experience concerning teaching ESL (English second language) students, or first-generation college students, or students coming from underrepresented rural areas.


I usually see "J. Reine Angew. Math." without "Crelle".

MathSciNet has citation information in the form of BibTeX entries; for references indexed there, I recommend going with that. (Indeed if you use BibTeX you can just download the bibliographic information without writing it out again.)


Why do Computer Science degrees contain a high proportion of mathematics?

Oxford University’s overview of their CS degree says it all:

Computer Science is about understanding computer systems and networks at a deep level. Computers and the programs they run are among the most complex products ever created; designing and using them effectively presents immense challenges. Facing these challenges is the aim of Computer Science as a practical discipline, and this leads to some fundamental questions:

How can we capture in a precise way what we want a computer system to do?

Can we mathematically prove that a computer system does what we want it to?

How can computers help us to model and investigate complex systems like the Earth’s climate, financial systems or our own bodies?

What are the limits to computing? Will quantum computers extend those limits?

In other words, the language of computer science is math, not C++. If you were looking for vocational training in computers then CS Is probably an inappropriate choice.


What are the key points in short descriptions of research experience?

In a one-sentence statement, I want to state as precisely and concisely as possible as much relevant detail about the project I was working on. For instance

  Analysis of Widget Manufacturing

doesn't tell me much about what you did. On the other hand

  In-situ XYZ Experiments and Numerical Modeling of the Parametric Influence of Temperature, Humidity, and Cooling Time on the Strength of Widget X under Load-Bearing Conditions

tells me much more about the problem you're working on.

If you have perhaps a paragraph, then I went a short summary of your work. You should provide: a motivation for the problem, an overview of what you did, and a summary of the main methods, results, and conclusions of the work.


How does the proof process in Elsevier work?

Yeah the same things have happened to me a couple of times.
Most of the copy editing is outsourced and I think some employee just copy pastes your latex code into their template and does this in a very rushed and substandard manner. Occasionally they may correct a thing or two but I'm sure they do it because the typeset document looked obviously incorrect or the document did not compile with their version of tex.
The best experiences I've had with copy editing is with journals that do not use LaTeX. You are simply supposed to send your draft as a PDF and tables in MS Word. All the figures are dumped towards the end of the document and captions are placed somewhere else. Here is an example of an "Accepted Manuscript": https://joe.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/joe/aop/joe-20-0437/joe-20-0437.xml I don't even know how reviewers read this and not lose their mind when they're trying to understand Figure 3 for example. The caption is on a separate page, what the actual figure 3 is remains unknown and the location where Fig 3 is referenced in the text is 10+ pages away. So in such a scenario, the proof is actually miles better that what you had when you prepared your paper and everyone is happy :)
So yeah, going back to LaTeX typesetting, I think its just an incredibly manual process, there is no elegant "system" or automated typesetting pipeline. There are some web based typesetting clients I've seen (https://smartproof.cenveo.com/smartproof/login/sg). You see a markdown-like version of your paper but it is easier to spot mistakes, change links etc. Not sure how many people use this though.
In my view, LaTeX journal templates are just so that reviewers can read your article properly and digest it. I don't think it makes a difference when it goes to the typesetter.


How can I get into computer science research as a high school student?

Good on you!

I have a relatively simple suggestion: do a replication study.  First, find a collaborator -- a fellow high school student or college student of similar skill and experience.  You'll learn more in a team than doing it alone. Second, read a dozen or so research papers (probably conference papers) in the field or sub-field that interests you the most.  Pick one, preferably the simplest one you can find.  Your goal is to replicate the methods as described in the paper and compare your results to theirs.  (Don't pick one where you have access to their code.)  Once you have a paper picked out (or a few), recruit an adviser/mentor -- either a college professor or an experienced researcher.  You'll want to meet with your adviser/mentor weekly to talk about progress and problems you encounter along the way.  Mostly, this weekly meeting holds you and your partner accountable for progress.

In my field (Computational Social Science) there are many simulation models that are simple enough to be replicated from their specification. This varies widely in subfields of Computer Science, so your mileage may vary.

The point to all this is to get you an experience in the realm of research without requiring that you first go through all the preliminaries.  By focusing on replicating one paper, you only need to understand the material and methods in this one paper. You aren't trying to break any new ground. Instead, you are following in the footsteps of other researchers.  If they have done their job well, then you should be able to replicate their results.  Replication is a valuable scientific endeavor in itself.


How to respond to a tough referee report?

The main problem with this as a review is not the brevity or harshness (neither one of which is necessarily inappropriate) but failure to adequately explain/justify their objection to your work.

A good review should give objections/criticisms that stand on their own.  References should be used to support the reviewer's points, not given in lieu of any explanation.

In addition, it seems that it is also not obvious how the reference relates to your work.

Make the focus of your response not this reviewer is wrong but I don't understand this reviewer's point.  Explain why your work is different from that discussed in the reference and why you think the objections don't apply, and thus it is not clear to you why the reviewer objects.

In addition, you ought to ask the editor what they have in mind by major revisions.  The "major revisions" response sounds like it was halfway between the responses of the two reviewers.  But that doesn't mean it is a coherent synthesis of their positions.  It doesn't seem there are any changes that would satisfy the second reviewer (indeed, they have pre-announced that).  So what does the editor expect you to do with this request?  I would seek clarification on this.

It may well be that the difficult reviewer will not have their way in the end (the fact that the paper was not rejected by the editor as they requested suggests this).  So you may be able to simply add some more supporting text for your approach, have their inevitable reject decision overridden by the editor, and be fine.


What is the minimum time one should spend in a post-doc?

Postdocs are cheap labor. Furthermore, unlike grad students, they show up already fully trained and ready to do productive work. This is all a wonderful deal for the lab that the postdoc is working for.

If a postdoc is applies for a job after 7 months, they will probably still have been in the postdoc position for about a year before they actually leave. This is perfectly reasonable. Tenure-track jobs are so scarce and hard to get that any reasonable supervisor's reaction in this situation should be, "Wow, that's wonderful that you lined up a tenure-track job so quickly!"

In any case, this will presumably come up when the postdoc asks the supervisor for a recommendation for the job. If there needs to be a discussion of how long is long enough, the discussion will happen then.

  Three years give sufficient opportunity to get some work done, without moving to a new country every year.

My perception is that 2 years in a single postdoc used to be standard. It may now be common to do 2 or more postdocs, each of 3 years or more, but that's an expression of market conditions, not of any moral obligation that the postdoc owes to the supervisor.


Do journals in general have any kind of policy regarding papers submitted by someone without a research affiliation?

Some journals implement a double-blind reviewing process, meaning that the reviewers are not aware that the authors are from academia or not, and only the scientific content is judged. That being said, it's worth mentioning that it would be hard for someone without a proper "paper-writing" training (such as the one one can acquire in academia), to produce a paper that would be accepted by reviewers. Some general structure is expected, such as related Works, critical discussion, rigorous methodology, and I would say that without that, it would be hard to get the paper published (I have myself rejected papers from graduate students, not because the idea itself was bad, but because the structure and the presentation were not meeting the standards one could expect for a scientific publication).

EDIT: After reformulation of the question, assuming that the quality of the paper makes it indistinguishable from any other paper, then, no, as far as I know, there is no general policy regarding the official affiliation of the author(s). For instance, in Computer Science, it's not rare to see papers published by people working in a "normal" company (i.e. not a research company), typically on some concrete problems/solutions they have found. Some people even keep publishing after starting their own startup, and therefore the affiliation is something like "MyCompanyWeb2.0".


What is the difference between a plenary and a keynote talk?

They are both used (often interchangeably in my field). A plenary is a talk which does not have anything scheduled against it. A keynote is an invited talk in a conference or session.


How detailed should I be about my implemented system while writing a Ph.D. thesis?

When I think about such problems, I find that there are two main aspects of mechanism documentation to be considered:

Reproducibility: The standard that you absolutely must adhere to is to provide enough information to allow others to reproduce your scientific results.  This means that you need to provide all of the key ideas that would not be readily re-generated by any skilled practitioner.  This means that all of the "ordinary" programming work doesn't need to be explained, and indeed would probably be distracting if you did spend time explaining it.  Note also that reproducing a result is not the same as reproducing data: e.g., if your system provides O(log n) growth in resource requirements, that's what needs to be producible, not the exact particulars of how you tested that experimentally.
Accessibility: Even if a result or system is reproducible, it's often a lot of work to reproduce it.  If your system is likely to be something that other people might want to use themselves, then you should share the code.  Architecture diagrams and similar documentation are nice to make that code more accessible, but they key is to make sure the code is readily available under a free and open license (see also the question: Should I share my horrible software?).

Now, the nice thing about a thesis is that there's typically no limit to the length or types of artifacts that you can attach to it.  I would thus strongly recommend that you make sure to bundle the software, with adequate documentation to allow a skilled computer scientist from another subfield to understand it and apply it.  Don't worry about explaining the "uninteresting" parts of the design, however, unless it's actually directly relevant to your scientific results.


To avoid similar issues cropping up again, after the initial brainstorming phase, it's important to agree on a plan for who is doing what. If you agree on a direction you both think should be checked, then make sure you have the discussion about who is going to carry out the next step, and if it's not you, then make sure you identify something concrete that you can contribute later on. If the discussion is in person, then fire off a quick email afterwards to confirm what you understood from the meeting so that you both have it in writing.

Can it be useful to you that you are acknowledged by a superstar colleague? I think so. I've seen many application forms that ask you to show that you are able to foster collaborations with colleagues outside of your research group. This is the kind of example that you could put as evidence that you are working with some great people.

In your current situation, I think you are probably right that there's not much you can change at this point, but there are perhaps a couple of things that you could try:

If you are able to see a possible extension or improvement to what your colleague has already done,  then suggest it, and jump in there straight away with "... I'll get straight on to looking at that" (i.e. don't give him an opportunity to just take your suggestion and use it himself). You might be able to push your way into being more integral to the paper.
You say he's a very very nice person, it might be worth talking honestly! Not an easy conversation to have, but you could try something like "Wow, that was quick work, I'd been wondering if we might have worked on it together! Is there anything further that I could contribute?" ... so long as you can make sure that it comes across as positive rather than bitter.


Is it taboo to disclose info to 3rd parties about the review status of a paper of other authors?

To me, their response was very unprofessional. I'm assuming that the review is still blinded and further communication with the authors directly may not be possible or even useful.

As a peer reviewer, you are a volunteer for the journal. If the lack of professionalism of the authors made you uncomfortable, you could communicate this with the editor. Although the editor might not do anything about it, he or she might reconsider publishing future papers from authors who do not respect blind peer review. Publishing our work is a privilege, not a right. I am not an editor, so I'm not sure how editors may handle such a situation. Although this case involved the reviewer and not the authors, PLOS ONE received attention a few years ago for removing a reviewer who made a sexist remark in their review: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/plos-one-ousts-reviewer-editor-after-sexist-peer-review-storm


Correcting grammatical errors versus content in post-graduate coursework submissions in the sciences

I am somewhere in between physics and mathematics. My personal policy is this:

I mark any spelling, punctuation, or grammar mistake I find, but I do not explicitly search for them. However, I usually do not go at lengths to explain why something is wrong.
This does not affect the grade unless the number of mistakes severely affects the readability of the text or is particularly egregious. (Being in Germany, I may be more lenient on submissions in German by non-native speakers, depending on the programme’s main language and other factors.)

My rationale for this is:

As I have to thoroughly read the text anyway, the additional effort for marking mistakes are negligible in comparison to the reading time. In most of the cases, it’s adding a comma, crossing out a letter, or replacing a single word. This applies to analogue submissions as well as to digital ones.
Just telling students that they made language mistakes somewhere in their writings does not really help them. The effort of seeking help from a third party is unfeasible in most situations (and disproportionate in comparison to my effort). However, I expect that they are able to find out the source of a specific mistake that I marked.
The admission requirements should not and cannot be so strict that only people who completely mastered the language can be admitted. In many languages, even native speakers tend to commit some systematic spelling mistakes (in particular regarding punctuation) that can only be weeded out this way.

So in short, I think that the other HoD’s rationale is blatantly misjudging factors.

We do not have any departmental policies regarding this here, but I know many that follow a similar policy.


Presentation of 'relevant research' for a postdoc interview, when switching fields

A synthesis of (1) and (3), directed towards the goal of joining the project.

It's an interview, not a seminar or research talk, so my recommendation is to explicitly argue why you are the best person for the job. You want to put all of your relevant skills on the table, regardless of how you acquired them, and show that the present application is part of a coherent strategy.

You don't have to claim that you are following a fixed trajectory from the beginning. But it will help a lot if you can demonstrate an ability to form a synthesis of your previous experience that builds towards your current interests. Having a vision, even if the committee members don't individually agree with it, is better than being perceived as a passive weathervane that follows all winds.

In the end, the committee will be judging primarily whether you will materially contribute to the project, meaning that you bring skills that are useful, and that you and they can agree to walk in the same direction during your time there. This is the overriding consideration.

Questions of whether your career choices are good ones, or whether you will be happy in your work, are secondary considerations. You might expect questions from the committee regarding your changes in subject, but it is enough to have a mature answer.


Can I use the mm.dd.yy date format in academic writing?

The International Standard ISO 8601 is YYYY-MM-DD.
See Wikipedia and A summary of the international standard date and time notation.

Sadly this is not used by everyone as can be seen in this article about date formats per country:

The most popular order is day-month-year (Little-Endian, cyan in the image), used by about 57% of the world population.
Next is year-month-day (Big-Endian, yellow), used by about 29%.
Then month-day-year (Middle-Endian, magenta), used by about 6%.
The remaining 8% use a mix of the above.

But, in the end the most important is the standards used in your university or the conference or journal you are sending your papers to.


How rude is it to ask a potential PI for their CV?

It would be a strange person who starts “despising” someone for making an innocuous social faux pas. In novels one reads about such people, but real life people are, by and large, more reasonable.

I can only speculate, but I suspect the professor was mildly annoyed and/or amused by your request, told about it as a funny anecdote to his spouse later that day, and has by now forgotten all about it. The fact that he bothered to answer your email, and that the reply was polite, even if curt, suggests that he wasn’t terribly offended.


Soon to have a PhD in theoretical biology - now what?

Might I suggest you look at the idea of becoming a patent attorney? It would afford you the ability to use your current level of knowledge on your subject and also learn new things everyday.

This website has articles on careers in intellectual property (IP) and related job postings.


When is reference for a definition needed and not needed?

You need to make crystal clear what is your contribution and what isn't. In general, all definitions that are not your contribution need the proper reference.

In practice that could get cumbersome, so you end up not citing what is considered common, basic knowledge. However, that line is somewhat blurry and one needs experience to do it right.

You can check good papers in your field to guess what is/isn't common knowledge. Another interesting tactic, that I often use, is to say:

  "Since we are using XXX, we will briefly review the involved concepts [X]".

That way it is clear that they are not your contribution and that reference [x] can be consulted for further details, without too many references and unnecessary text...


Non-Disclosure Agreement & Data Publication

There are a few solutions:

Use a different dataset for your paper. For example, if you design a new data clustering algorithm but cannot use the company data to evaluate your algorithm, you may find alternative datasets that could be OK to use just for the purpose of writing the papers. I have done this for some industrial project.
Some companies may accept to release anonymized or transformed data. You may try to discuss this with the company to see if this is a possibility.
Some journals and conferences may request that you share your data and code publicly. But some other may not be so strict about this. Choosing appropriately conferences/journals may help.
You may add some text in your paper to explain that data cannot be made available due to a NDA. Reviewers may be satisfied by this explanation or may not be, but it can be good to do that.
You may consider submiting in conferences where there is an industry track. Your paper may be more well-suited for this than for the regular track.

I would also add that doing academia/industry collaborations is great but not all companies have the same level of openness toward publishing papers. It is generally better to make things clear about how paper can be published as early as possible in a colloration. When looking for a new industrial collaboration, I will always talk with the company first about whether or not I can publish papers and what are the requirements to make things clear. Some company will ask you and even push you to publish papers, while others are against it. I even talked with a company that allowed to publish a paper but did not allow to publish the developed algorithm... (which makes no sense...as you then cannot write paper with just an introduction/related work and then a result section without describing the algorithm/method).


Is it common for a postdoc to develop the whole commercial systems on his own for his supervisor's industrial customer

As vonbrand mentions, whether the postdoc legally can be assigned to a customer project really depends on the funding source. For instance, we have recently explicitly hired a postdoc to lead a transfer project (essentially a "development project" that will hopefully end in a real product). The funding we use allows and supports this so I see no issues at all. Of course, if we used money that was given to us for some other cause (e.g., to conduct some fundamental research) it would be a different story.

However, I have the impression that the issue here is something else entirely. Notably, I suspect that the OP got hired under the pretense of a regular postdoc (i.e., on a position that is usually considered a stepping stone for a professorship) and is now pushed into what is essentially an industry development job due to her/his specific skills. Such situations are not uncommon in industry - people get reassigned to different roles based on changing company needs all the time. However, in academia, this (while maybe legal) is a rather shady move. Given how competitive academia is, there are strong career implications in working for a substantiated time in a specific role that does not progress the metrics that are typically required for the next career step (publications and acquired funding, typically).

As such, the OP should definitely discuss her/his career plan with whoever wants her/him to work on this customer project, and decide whether these career goals are consistent with the management goals of the lab. In the worst case, a move to a different lab may be a better option than working on a project that ends up a negative factor in the career progression.

  You know, a postdoc is usually paid less than industrial employees, it results in relatively lower costs of the system than software companies.

I am not sure whether this is correct (I certainly make more than many entry-level professionals), but anyway it does not seem to be the important issue here.

  At the same time, is it possible to publish?

Maybe? This is impossible for us to tell from the outside. But anyway, the question should not be "can I publish anything at all?", but rather "how much less am I publishing, and how much weaker are my scientific contributions, because I work on this product rather than on my science? Essentially, what are the opportunity costs in terms of scientific productivity for working in a developer role?


Who typically serves on a graduate school admissions committee?

At my (large CS) department, the graduate admissions committee officially consists of:

The director of the graduate program.  This is a ~3-year rotating position among the senior faculty.
About a dozen faculty members, distributed roughly uniformly across topic areas and faculty rank.  The department head is not a member; he's way too busy.
About a dozen graduate student volunteers.

However, our graduate admissions database is open to the entire faculty.  Each faculty member is expected to help review applications, and in particular, to identify applicants that they would be willing to advise, offer an RAship, help recruit, and/or recommend for fellowships.  We ask each applicant to name a few faculty they'd be interested in working with, so I usually start by reading the applications that mention my name.  I haven't been on the admissions committee since 2000, but I still read a few dozen applications every year.

For each round of admissions, each research area (theory, graphics, architecture, etc.) provides a ranked list of applicants for their area to the committee, along with estimates of advising/funding capacity.  This usually requires discussion among the area faculty, coordinated by the area chair, who may or may not be a committee member.  (I was the theory area chair for several years.)

Final admissions decisions are made by the official committee, but positive reviews from extra-curricular faculty carry a lot of weight.  In particular, nobody is admitted without at least three positive faculty reviews, including at least one potential advisor.  Decisions are folded back into the database so that faculty can track their favorite applicants' progress, and if necessary, drum up more faculty reviews.

So, in practice, everyone is on the committee, including the department head.


You should do basic research on the topics the professors is researching himself. Afterwards, you may either see whether there is a project around where you could supply your workpower, or you have an idea on a concrete project where he could extend research. (Keep in mind, he might need to get a funding for that).

If you do have an own project with independent funding, it might be easier - however, it should fit in the reseach area of the professor.

If you just come around, most professors I know simply will skip your application, as the normally have sufficient requests and work to do.


What are some side jobs with which a mathematician in a postdoc or non-tenure-track position can make ends meet?

Universities (especially if they're large R1 universities, almost certainly if they're in top 10) usually ask its department members whether they are willing to teach a calculus/lower-level math courses in the summer for extra pay. These are often accelerated and they are over in a couple of months. Teaching one class, in my estimate, should earn you an extra 5-10k, depending on your institution. You can easily pick up two of these classes over the summer. If there is more than one university in your area, you could also try teaching at the other universities.

You could also tutor students. This is admittedly a little awkward when you are a faculty member, but as long as you are not teaching them, there shouldn't be any problems. This works especially well in an affluent area; I'm told that some people, given good credentials, can support themselves completely on tutoring students.

Sometimes, websites dedicated to math education, such as Art of Problem Solving, hires online graders. The flexibility of the job means that you can pick it up on top of being a postdoc.

Lastly, remember that you're on a 9-month salary contract. This means that you could be an intern at some large company using your statistics/programming skills during the other three months, and earn a huge paycheck.

These are not really "odd jobs", but probably the easiest to get given your situations. Of course, you should keep in mind that these will take away from your research time, which might make finding a tenure-track job more difficult (I totally sympathize with you; the system that we have is far from perfect, and it puts so many people in your position. But this is the reality and you should be aware of it when you're contemplating taking up another job on top of your postdoc position, which is already more than a full-time job).


Is there a minimum amount of methodological modifications for extending previous work from other authors?

You need a little bit more than for the results to be better than the state of the art - you need the modification to be a non-obvious one that moves the field forward.

For example, there are a lot of results in my field that I can improve by tuning some parameters (to make the results in a given scenario "better") or by combining two known methods. If the modification involves new intellectual or technical insight, it's a meaningful extension and can be published. Otherwise, it's probably not publishable.

The "minimum" modification that is necessary for the work to be publishable is the modification that involves (at least) the amount of new intellectual content that is necessary for work in your field to be considered publishable.


How to rectify no publication after PhD graduation?

Summarising details from the comments, the final verdict would be

  Start publishing now!

If you did qualify as a PhD in a reputable university, you should have the ability to publish a peer-reviewed paper. And so it seems that there is no excuse out of this way. As stated by @GEdgar, academic affiliation is not a primary requirement for paper publication. The only way to rectify would be to start framing your manuscripts today.


Should I answer a revise decision saying that I will?

Just submit the revisions when ready, according to whatever the procedures for that particular journal are. No need to bother the editor with an extra message that doesn't require any action from them.

Often, journals request revisions within some time interval; if you expect to need more time, for example if reviewer requests will require additional experiments, the journal will probably ask that you request an extension. Otherwise, no contact is necessary unless asked for until you send revisions.


Does the letter of completion for degree (PhD) allow me to use the degree officially in Europe?

Perhaps you can apply for jobs already (explaining that you already finished your PhD). You could even receive a job offer, and start working on the immigration procedure.
However, many official applications (to the goverment, etc.) require you to submit a copy of your Diploma registered with Apostille. This is also true for many attractive immigration programs.
Don't forget to get this Apostille before departing from the US.


How to handle newly discovered problems in second and third round reviews

(1) The comments of other reviewers should not bother you; often reviewers will be from mutually exclusive fields, so as to provide better representation. You should stand by your professional opinion irrespective of the others.

(2) I firmly believe that you should spend a lot of time on first and second review. If you are finding new and significant errors beyond these rounds, it means you didn't do your job rigorously before.

EDIT: Several comments highlight the valid point that sometimes revisions are required just to make the paper readable. My position on this is that if more than 2 'readability-reviews' are required, the authors are either unable to use the language adequately (and should be directed to a suitable resource- a reviewer is meant to check technical content, not be a style coach), or are unwilling to make these suggestions; in which case there is no point asking once again.

Comments/questions regarding your previous objections are ok, but entirely new objections in third or subsequent rounds leave a bitter taste and lead to a lot if time being wasted.


If a PhD student is bad in interpersonal communications, would he find trouble doing his PhD?

Of course interpersonal skills are important in completing a PhD. As you note, a PhD some fields involves working in small to very large teams, where interpersonal skills are essential. Even in the few fields were individuals typically work alone, interpersonal skills are necessary to navigate relationships with peers, graduate advisors, other members of the community, etc.

This is not to say that with poor interpersonal skills one is doomed. Such skills can be learned, and one can improve substantially with effort. It may even be true that in some areas of science, interpersonal skills are less important than in other jobs. But to say that they are not needed would be a gross misrepresentation of what it is like to get a PhD or work in academic science at any level.


Paper rejected based on one very short wrong comment

Wait. The editor has to assess if your claim is correct. People are busy. In addition, they may need to ask a more expert colleague for a quick opinion; this is not a full round of review, but still it will take several days. I would give them at least two weeks, personally (but publication times are heavily discipline-dependent).
If the editor agrees with the reviewer, consider seriously the possibility that they are correct and you are wrong. Ask privately for another opinion to a collaborator/colleague you are in good terms with, just to understand where the truth lies.
If you conclude that the referee is completely bonkers and their claim is ridiculously wrong, ignore their remark, submit somewhere else, and make a note for the future that this is not a good journal.
If you conclude that the referee is wrong, but their one is a reasonable mis-interpretation and someone else may get it wrong, too, then revise your introduction: mention mr. X's papers and explain in your manuscript why they don't solve your problem. Then, submit somewhere else.

(Note that case 4 is much more common than case 3.)


How to make students learn prerequisites

I think you can't make students learn anything, and it would be especially difficult to make them learn something other than what you are teaching at the moment.  Still, I can think of some things to address the problem (many of which it sounds like you are already doing):

You can make sure that the unprepared students see early on that they are unprepared and liable to fail the course.  This might not motivate them to learn, but it is still a nice thing to do.
You can give exercises that require them to learn prerequisite notions incrementally, giving them hints on where to find information not covered in the lecture. Just don't expect them to learn more than they need for each problem.
At the end of the term, you can make sure not to pass the students who didn't learn the things you said they would need to know in order to pass.  (Otherwise you justify the very behavior that you complain about.)
You can pitch the course at a lower (but still nonzero) level.  In my opinion the only reason not to spend more time on the basics would be if there were a significant number of students who would be bored by this.  But maybe they would appreciate a review anyway.
Instead of changing the course, you could change the course description to try to deter more of the unprepared students.
If the students vary too widely in their backgrounds, you could try to create different versions of the course in future years.


I would distinguish between narrative and citation. In narrative text, it is best to refer to a person by their current most preferred scientific name. In citation, on the other hand, it is best to provide the information that will best guide lookup of the document in various search and databases.

When the two are not clearly connected,  giving a footnote or parenthetical note will help make it clear to the reader that the difference is intended and not accidental, but it is not strictly required.


What are the master's degrees in engineering a bachelor in computer engineering can be admitted in?

There are a plethora of the graduate programs, could which be taken into account by a grad with B.A.Sc. in computer engineering (CE), due to the interdisciplinary inherent of this field and considerable overlap between CE and many other majors. One might assert that the passed courses and the probable research experiences could pave the way toward some of the potential fields, noticeably.

If you are interested in/have passed courses about the electronics, computer engineer, CAD and VLSI and so no, you might be pursue a M.A.Sc. in electrical & computer engineering...

If you had some background in biological systems, bioinformatic, neural networks, implantable circuits for human body and so on, I can stress on biomedical engineering, as a potential graduate major for you...

If studying in the field of network and data transfer systems and architectures had been taken into account by you, putting aside ECE, you would be interested in media studies and related humanities...

You might be interested in robotics and had some experiences to work with them in view of algorithmic approaches or hardware-driven mechanisms. If so, computer science or mechanical engineering program could be fascinating for you...

I can continue this roster, as you wish!

Just clear your interests... The way itself will be emerged...

Best of luck


Are researchers for big digital companies experienced researchers/scientists or just experienced industry programmers?

Microsoft has a prominent research arm, Microsoft Research.  Intel has Intel Labs.  Both organizations hire research-focused PhDs from both industry and academia, and both employ researchers that have joint appointments on research university faculty.  Employees at both organizations also routinely publish fundamental research at peer-reviewed conferences and workshops, and in journals.

Apple is a tougher nut to crack -- they spend truckloads of money on R&D, but rarely publish in peer-reviewed venues.  However, they do hire plenty of PhDs who do focused research on products that sometimes turn into the next iPhone.

All three companies file many patents, as well.

Many other big companies also have research labs, and openly hire researches specifically working on fundamental research.  However, as with any company, research tends to be focused in the direction that could eventually produce profitable products -- if you are considering a research job at a company, you should take this into consideration.  For what it's worth, Microsoft Research seems to be closer to the "research for the sake of science" than some other labs, although there are others (notably, labs such as (formerly) Xerox PARC and Bell Labs are famous for groundbreaking fundamental research).


If a conflict of interest is not literally declared, is it safe to assume there is a conflict of interest? What does this imply about the findings?

Conflicts of interest on their own do not imply poor results is the blanket answer to this question.  It is true that in several high-profile (and most likely lower profile) research projects funded by industry that muzzling or cherry picking has happened (here is an interesting analysis of one particular industry and its issues).  Industry obviously has an interest in funding research that will give them favorable results.  However, just because industry has funded the research does not mean that it is automatically untrustworthy.
Unless there is good reason not to, we have to trust in the peer review process and acknowledge that it is our job as readers of research to interpret and contextualize studies regardless of conflicts of interest.   For instance, we should always be sure to thoroughly read and understand the methods used in the research and to determine if they are up to acceptable scientific standards.
It is similarly important to understand that a single study or suite of studies does not imply scientific truth.  For instance, if a paper shows that they were able to observe a particular thing in a particular population, that implies only that the observation is possible under certain conditions, not that it is universal.
Conflicts of interest are also sometimes unavoidable.  A drug company trying to do trials of a specific, proprietary drug must fund those trials.  That's a conflict and they obviously have an interest in favorable results, but just because that interest exists does not automatically imply that the results will be untrustworthy.
Finally, just because something is not declared does not mean that you should automatically reject it.  Of course be critical, but don't assume that just because something is unclear the authors are being evasive.  At the end of the day you can always try to send an email to the corresponding author and ask.  Worst thing that happens is you are ignored.


Reviewers decision: Summary rejects typically do not receive technical feedback

"Summary" here is used in the sense of "performed speedily and without formal ceremony" (see Wiktionary, adjective definition 2).

They have concluded that the paper is clearly not suitable for publication in this journal / conference, and so they are rejecting it without a full review.  In such a case you will not receive detailed technical feedback about the work.

Some possible reasons:

The work is on a topic not covered by the conference
The importance or interest of the result is much less than what the conference normally expects
The work has major obvious technical flaws
The paper is extremely poorly written or incomprehensible
Your paper doesn't conform to the conference's submission requirements  (e.g. formatting, page count, double-blinding)

It would be wise to have a colleague in your field look at the paper before trying to resubmit somewhere else.


In mathematics in the USA, is it appropriate for your teaching letter of recommendation to be from a previous university?

I think it depends on what kind of job you are looking for.  For research universities, I suspect you can get away with it; I actually used a teaching letter based on recitation teaching from graduate school when applying for TT positions 4 years after graduating, because for a variety of reasons, there wasn't anyone else I felt comfortable asking for one from.  Honestly, I don't think job search committees put much stock in teaching letters just based on classroom observation.  Any value they had has been inflated away by the fact that they are always positive, and to be honest, most mathematicians at research universities don't worry very much about teaching skill when looking at hiring, beyond not wanting to hire someone notably incompetent.  If they do, they're much more likely to try to judge from your interview or from student evaluations rather than a teaching letter.

If you're looking into more teaching focused schools, it's harder for me to say.  Maybe I'll just leave that hanging and let someone else answer.

EDIT: To address the question of getting two letters, I agree with Noah.  I want to be clear that this advice only applies to research universities, but I think getting two teaching letters completely gets wrong the risk/reward calculus for teaching letters.  They cannot get you a job, they can only lose one for you.  Probably they won't even look at teaching letters until they get to the short list, but if they do, it will be to sort out bad teachers, not to separate competent and good.  By far the most important thing about a teaching letter is that it doesn't say anything bad.  By getting two, you are doubling this (small) probability for absolutely zero benefit.


Research related questions from industrial researchers to academic researchers

Disclosure: I am a researcher working in industry.

I think that the rule of thumb is: make it as simple as is wise, but not simpler (paraphrasing Einstein).

Always make it clear who you are (name, company, etc), and what your intent is (e.g., better understanding of a paper, creating your own implementation of an algorithm in a scientific publication for research purposes only, developing a new product based on a scientific publication, writing a patent, etc).

Be open and honest (e.g., do not claim that you just want to understand something, when in reality you want to use it in the development of a product).

If you are asking about quite generic technicalities (e.g., something you might also publicly ask to a speaker in a conference), you might just drop an email and ask. As long as you do not disclose any confidential information, and you do not expect so from the researcher, you just can ask the question.

When you do need to disclose confidential information (e.g., specifics about a product your company is developing), you will need to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

Also be aware that if you are asking the academic researcher to do work for you beyond just answering an email, or provide you with something of value (e.g., working code belonging to a scientific publication) a monetary reimbursement is in place.

For the latter two items it is quite likely that you will need to involve other people within your company (the legal department, a budget holder, your boss, ...) before reaching out.


Is writing a research paper necessary for thesis?

Are [students required to publish to be] eligible to write the thesis?

No, this is institution dependent.


Paper excluded from conference proceedings

Is this common?

Not getting a visa to enter the country where a conference is held, is quite common. It is not common for someone to ask for their money back months after a conference though: while people do occasionally get delayed in asking for their money back, usually this is done immediately after finding out that you won't be able to attend the conference. Not months after the conference is over.
I've highlighted two words in what you wrote:

Since conference presentation was mandatory for publication of my paper in the proceedings, I contacted the organizers to let them know about this issue and if there was something I could do like sending a video presentation. I didn't get any response and assumed that they were going to publish it anyways.

If doing X is "mandatory" to get Y, I would recommend not to "assume" you will get Y without doing X. If this happens again in the future, I would perhaps send a polite reminder about my inquiry for presenting the work through video conference (not just one email and then "assume" that the paper will be published even though they never replied to your email), and perhaps make it clear that you would like your money back if there is no way to get the paper published. You might also consider getting a colleague or friend to present the work for you, if you know anyone else going to the conference who you trust with that type of thing (I have had people present my work for me at conferences before, and I've even seen invited speakers gets their post-docs to present their talk for them if they are too busy to attend).

Is there something I could do to get the money back?

You can ask again politely and include a summary of the timeline of events, perhaps with copies underneath of your old email inquiries which were ignored, but I do not recommend to have very high expectations here.
A friend of mine has this motto: "Low expectations, High hopes"


Website allowing one to look up mathematicians, publications, and number of references for each paper

Maybe it was Zentralblatt (math-specific, partially free)?

Other possibilities (gathered from the comments to compile an answer) are Google Scholar, as well as Mathscinet (math-specific, non-free), Scopus (non-free), Web of Science (non-free).


Is it common for undergraduate students to feel overwhelmed by the reading assignments? How to deal with it?

You don't need to read from the first word of the title to the last word of the conclusion. You should learn how to skim through the large materials. Use a highlight marker to highlight important sentences, terminologies, dates.

If you find it the text lengthy, try replacing it with online videos or similar shorter texts. A book can be replaced by a single research article.


Using a statistical method in an applied context for (probably) the first time. How do I convey this?

In lots of papers I've seen a phrase:

  According to (or to the best of) the author's knowledge, this is the first time that method XX has been applied to YY.

which seems fair and safe enough.


Admin/teaching workload in a UK university, compared to other research universities

Many universities, including those in the UK and US, talk about the split between research, teaching and admin. A split of time of 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service is not atypical at an R1 university (e.g., UK Russel Group). Some schools might go as low 20% on teaching and others might go as high as 80%. Some schools allow you to "buy out" of teaching with grant income and give teaching releases to new faculty.

In the UK, the work year consists of about 1800 hours (37.5 hours per week times 48 weeks a year). With a 40% teaching load, you should be doing 720 hours of "teaching". Teaching obviously consists of more than just standing in front of students lecturing. My UK university developed a work load model to capture our teaching. We were credited with time for supervising undergraduate final year project students, our mandated office hours, marking, tutorials, and lecturing. For every hour of tutorial and lecture, we are given either 4 or 8 hours of prep time depending on if it is new teaching or not.

For my school, a standard load includes providing 15 hours of "teaching and prep" for each of 6 project students, 10 hours of first year tutorials, and 10 hours of second year tutorials, and 40 hours for office hours for a total of 230 hours. Over the course of the year we typically have to mark 400 essays and 100 lab reports at 0.25 and 0.5 hours each. This brings our "teaching" outside of regular classes to 380 hours. This means we need to provide about 68 classroom hours a year or 3.4 hours of teaching time every week of term time. Depending on what you mean by two course a year, in the UK that could very well equal 3.4 hours every week.

Our workload model tries to capture admin work in a very superficial way. We get credit for attending faculty meetings, away days, and department seminars, but do not get any "prep" time. Committees are banded based on expected number of hours spent. Some drastically underestimate the load and others are about right.


Can I do PhD from different country after getting one PhD from one country?

In general, yes, this is possible. More concretely, it depends on the rules of the institution your apply to (and on the people reading your application).
What you cannot do (at least in most reputable institutions) is to use the same research for two degrees.

However, do expect the question on why you want to do a second phd and prepare a good (and honest) answer.


Preparing a very short presentation for a PhD interview

It sound like you need to give an elevator pitch with slides. Short presentations are tough! You need to follow their instructions exactly and describe both a project and your fit to the program. You need to have this in mind: this is a sales pitch, so be short and to the point.

The objective is to sell yourself, so details on the project matter less than how you contributed in a way that’s relevant to the PhD program you’re applying to. So if your program is on graphic design focus on how your designs were used in the project, if it’s programming, focus on your code contribution etc.

In the part about you, try to show that you’ll be an amazing fit to the program: high-level plans, your agenda, your vision etc. you need to convince the committee that you’ll be a valuable asset to the program.

You must practice your talk several times till it’s perfect, and ask your friends to listen to it!

While conference talks are different, I highly recommend Simon Peyton Jones’ advice on how to give great talks, here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/give-great-research-talk/

Good luck!


Decision to peer-review a paper by author who does not believe in acknowledging reviewers

In my opinion, you are overthinking this.

Academics do many things as part of their jobs, some highly visible, some behind the scenes; some acknowledged, some not.

In addition, social norms vary by discipline, by geography, and by individual. I have thus far once acknowledged a reviewer, since their comments improved a paper of mine signficantly, more so than others with whom I workshopped it with previously. However, I certainly don't write such acknowledgements as a matter of routine. To me it would feel like meaningless boilerplate.

And frankly, while I do appreciate the importance of the peer review process, fairly often the nuggets of gold are also mixed with piles of dirt -- reviewer comments which, while well-intentioned, are at best of marginal value and yet take lots of time to figure out how and whether to address for at best slight benefit. I think most authors feel this at various times, and so while we recognize the worth of the peer review process overall, and if we are honest also recognize it has on balance improved our paper, our mindframe may not be exactly condusive to writing effusive acknowledgements once we finally craft a reply to comment #17! And it's good to recognize this mindframe challenge when we are playing the reviewer role as well.

Finally, I view the activity of reviewing more as part of my membership dues to my profession, not as anonymous acts of kindness to authors. I feel positive when sometimes (and I don't go out of my way to check) my reviewer's contributions get reflected in the final published paper, but I'm not sure I would notice whether there is a pro forma acknowledgement at the bottom or not.

However, this is a worthwhile discussion to have. I will henceforth set the bar under which I as author acknowledge in this instance lower, since your question has brought to my attention that you, and presumably other people, care about this more than I do!


Manuscript revision deadline: how strict are these [at Scientific Reports]

I had the same issue with Scientific Reports and I contacted the staff asking for an extension. Here is the answer:

  Dear authors, Thank you for your email. This will not be a problem –
  we do appreciate that some revisions do take longer than others and we
  would be more than happy to accommodate an extension for you. Please
  submit your revised manuscript when you are ready.


Is it OK to do a grad school interview if I was already accepted informally by another program?

I would advise that, until you have a formal, firm offer letter, you keep following the steps of the rest of applications you submitted. Even after making you an admission offer, you will have some time to consider any other option and decide (many people get accepted in multiple programs and it is fully alright and understood). Now, once you accept an offer (not only receive it), it is very recommended that you contact the other programs that have made you an offer, and tell them that you will not be attending there because you already accepted an offer somewhere else. They will all understand, of course. But, most important, if you tell them as soon as you have decided, then they will have some time to make an offer to another candidate.


How much of an onus is on the teacher in an undergraduate course?

I do not think you can solve this problem alone. As such I would suggest collaborating with the teachers who teach the prerequisites to your courses. Knowing what is happening in colleagues classes can help you to know what the students needs our in addition to the governmental requirements.
By working together you can determine how much review and overlap should be a part of each course as students move from one course to the next.
This kind of joint cooperation is common at the k12 level where there is often a similarly centralized control curriculum that ignores the unique characteristics of students.


Updating a preprint when it is under review

In principle, anything that happens to the content of a paper before printing (ie, formal publication) should be reflected in the pre-print.  So yes, if you correct a bug while the paper is in review, or revise the paper for a new submission, then you should update the preprint.

However, some journals object to authors' posting post-copy-edited (or even post-refereed) revisions.  And posting a revision while a paper is under review could interfere with the reviewing process.  When in doubt, ask your editor.

Frequent updates may earn you a reputation for being sloppy, especially on a system like the ArXiv that publishes the preprint's revision history.  (Why didn't you fix those bugs before you uploaded the first time?)  But that's still better than leaving a buggy preprint out in the wild, thereby earning you a reputation for not even knowing (or caring) that you're sloppy.  The right answer, of course, is to debug your papers before you post them!


Statement of purpose imposes word limit, but I already have a significantly longer version. Can I submit it as it is?

I would think that two and a half times the maximum would be a bit extreme and leave people less than pleased.
A few extra words wouldn't hurt most likely, but what you suggest seems unreasonable.
Factor out the most important ideas and express them concisely. Consider it a test that you don't want to fail.

A note on the SoP. Don't use it to reprise what is in the CV or other materials. Don't use it to explain past problems/issues. Make it entirely forward looking. What do you expect to accomplish in doctoral study and thereafter. You are wasting words if you try to use it for other things.


How much money can an electrical engineering professor earn from grants in the US?

Professors typically do not supplement their salary with grants with one very large exception. The grant money can allow them to trade some number of required courses for research time.

The big exception to this is that the typical appointment for a university professor in the US is for 9 months. If the professor wants to teach some summer courses, they can earn 3 more months of their salary for doing that, or they can get grants to fill in that time. The National Science Foundation limits US researchers who are professors to 2 months of summer time funding, though, so to get 12 full months of compensation, a professor will need income from some other source (summer teaching, another agency's grants, industrial grants, consulting, etc).

So, that being said, typically professors cannot increase their salary rate. They can only use it to fill in the months that the university does not usually pay them for. Finally, most universities give the option for their professors to take the 9 months of salary over 12 months of payments, so filling in those 3 months may look like a monthly raise from the perspective of their bank statements.


If I work on a project funded (for example by Ministry of Transportation) through my supervisor, is he legally obliged to pay me?

At least in the U.S., the answer is "no." In fact, in general you can't be paid twice for the same work under any graduate student arrangement I know of. You could turn down your external sponsorship (a terrible idea) and then be supported by your supervisor, but you can't have both. With the external sponsorship, you're not working for free, you're being paid by the sponsors to study and do research, and it's typically a good thing that this overlaps with research someone cares about.
One exception may be if the funding level for the sponsorship is less than the graduate student stipend that the grant supports, in which you can be paid the difference. (I have seen this in the U.S.)
I don't know about Canada specifically, but my past interactions suggest that the procedures are similar, so I'll post this in case no Canadians respond!


How to mark student reports more efficiently

I was in a very similar situation this past term. I was also tasked with grading engineering assignments that involved the use of software and a written component for which there were no solutions (mind you they were a little shorter than the ones you are grading). I am familiar with the software so it ended up taking me 5 days to mark.

Jigg has covered most of the bases, I just wanted to add another tip for efficiency:

In an effort to give them good feedback I wanted to write thorough comments. But after I got going on the marking I found that many students were making the same kinds of mistakes and I was writing the same comments over and over again. Eventually I just created an excel spreadsheet that really helped automate the marking that looked like this example:

The totals for points and points available are summation formulas so I didn't need to do any totalling myself. As I graded each assignment, I just compared it to the solutions I came up with and judged how well each of them met the criteria (nothing new). When I saw something wrong I just copied a detailed comment from the comments list and pasted it in the relevant cell. When I was finished with an assignment I just copied the everything in the thick black border into the online comments section, entered their grade, and moved on to the next one. If there was something new (and incorrect) that a student was doing I created a new comment and copied it into the list. Sometimes I also wrote something like "good work" next to the assignment total, just so that there were some positive comments.

Granted this worked really well when the students were all doing the exact same thing, but if your students are writing about different topics, it might not work as well.


Submitting a paper based on another yet unpublished paper

This should not be a problem. The reviewers of the conference paper should focus on the application you treat, but since the paper is available as a preprint, they could also have a closer look at the method if they want to.


If some want-to-be researchers team up, how can they pursue their PhDs together?

This is not generally how it works. One does not "team up" and work on a PhD together in that sense. By definition, a PhD is a proof of an individual's capability to do research. Of course, many PhD students can collaborate a lot, and work on a joint project - but even in that case, each student needs his own research questions, his own papers, and, ultimately, his own thesis.

EDIT: just to clarify a bit more. Collaboration is entirely ok, but when PhD students work together, every research contribution (not necessarily each piece of e.g., code or data) needs to be mappable to exactly one student, and each student needs to have a few of those contributions that clearly were his part in the project. I have seen very bad collaborations, where, essentially, person A was churning out ideas and papers, and person B was writing all the code (because he liked programming). In a company, this model is perfectly fine, in a research context this is highly abusive towards person B.


What happens if my PhD interest has changed after a year?

Since you've been admitted to what's presumably either a single institution, or a small number of institutions, it's probably more useful to try to figure out how things are handled there than what is typical. I would suggest scouring department websites, and maybe contacting your graduate coordinator, or graduate student representatives first.

That said, if you care for generalities, here are a couple. First thing to note is that the stated research interest is unlikely to be binding. If you can find an advisor to work with, that's all that matters, regardless of field. Changing interests is fairly common, but perhaps not between two extremes. However, the selection of admitted students tends to depend on the available funding, which varies with field. Thus, being able to switch to e.g. astrophysics isn't necessarily easy in practice, particularly if it's a small department. (Now, if you come in with your own funding you can do whatever you want, at least as far as the department is concerned. Of course, whoever granted you that funding might think differently...)

Second, there tends to be a number of mandatory courses for all students, and also field-dependent mandatory courses, and elective ones. (Obviously, biophysics and high energy require very different courses.) Due to these electives, and being able to take classes in different orders, the first two years would not be the same for everyone, but time isn't necessarily wasted if you change interests either. Further, a lot of students find their advisor during/after the first year, and would start their research during the summer semester and second year.

Yet, as I said, that's just a quick rundown of the typical situation. You'd most likely be better served looking up the rules and options for your specific situation.


Will a publication in one subfield of my discipline help me get into graduate school in a different subfield?

Even if your publication were in physics or economics or any other field, it would still be a positive component of your application. When I look at graduate applications, a publication record--while not essential--is valuable because it signals the following:

Interest in doing research
Initiative to get into a lab and work on a project
Familiarity with what primary research is actually like
A close enough relationship to a faculty mentor for me to pay particular attention to that mentor's letter of recommendation

All of these hold in your case.


Is it alright for the main body of my paper to not contain any references?

Not having references in the main body of a paper isn't necessarily a problem, but it can be a major symptom of other factors that will cause you to have difficulty publishing a paper. You may be having trouble finding references because you haven't narrowed down what you are doing enough to find out which other people will be interested in it.

"Some of it is philosophical, some of it relates to maths and physics as well."
This sounds like you are writing about the philosophy of science, which is a field with a pretty active literature. Perhaps you can read more in that field, and see if any of it sounds like what you are doing?

"the problems that my ideas can possibly solve in other fields": if you think your work can solve important problems in other fields, then there are probably useful references where someone else has attempted to solve the same problem. Explaining how your work differs from these attempts, and where it can improve on them, would be a standard place to include references in the main body. If you cannot find this, you may not have that well-defined a problem yet.

Even if your work has wide applications, it is often useful to choose one specific problem and address that first - this forces you to be specific, address the questions of one field, and make sure that you deal with what other people have done before.


Making an algorithm public is easy: you can put it on your webpage. By having it published as an academic paper (either conference or journal), you can  get reviews, which is interesting. Reviewers may help you evaluate the novelty of your approach. I thus suggest a paper, with at least:

a motivation for your algorithm,
a review of the related approaches and the explanation for its novelty,
the algorithm with explanations.

It is always a plus if you implement it also in a common computer language, so that others can check its efficiency, find bugs, allow improved versions. A working version of your algorithm in the shape of a code (compilable with instructions) can be put on GitHub for instance, for better versioning.

There are several algorithm related journals and conferences, for instance at the ACM Society:

ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software
ACM Transactions on Algorithms

and you can easily find many more, depending on the subfield your algorithm belong (combinatorics, optimization, real-time computing, etc.). Some are listed at the List of computer science conferences: Algorithms and theory.


European student trying to get a clear picture of US PhD system

To answer your questions in order:

For academic graduate programs (that is, not a professional program like an MBA or JD), either at master's or doctoral level, you apply to the department via a central administrative unit which is usually called the university's "Graduate School" or something similar. The department website will probably have details. The contact person within the department/program is called the "director of graduate studies" or "graduate director." It's a good idea, but not necessary, to contact potential advisors first if you have a clear idea of what you want to work on. Most American students do not do serious research-level work prior to grad school and do not have specific research directions in mind when they enter a grad program.
In addition to your academic credentials, you will almost certainly need GRE scores, and also TOEFL scores if you are not a native English speaker. Check with the program's grad director.

See 1.

Usually, but you can often place out of coursework by taking exams. It is unlikely that you will be able to avoid taking exams in the US system, regardless of your credentials. Check with the grad director.

PhD programs, especially in the sciences, generally admit students with a package of free tuition and a living stipend, which usually requires serving as a lab assistant or instructional assistant. Sometimes there is research fellowship money available through the school or through the advisor's grant which does not have these obligations. There are also some fellowships funded by government agencies, but these are generally reserved for US citizens. Master's programs may or may not offer funding. Check with the grad director and/or the university's Graduate School.


Are the referees of a journal allowed to reveal the title of the papers they review after the review process?

Don't do that.

Everything related to reviewing is confidential.

You will certainly upset some editors if you reveal your identity to the authors without the editor's permission. (Remember that the authors usually know who was the editor. Perhaps the editors did not want the authors to know that they asked you to review the paper?)

More generally, there is nothing to gain by doing this, and everything (= your reputation) to lose. You do not want to do anything that someone might interpret as a violation of the confidentiality of the peer-review process. (Even if you had both the authors' and the editor's permission to publish this information, others might not know that.)


Poster - should I send the file to all my collaborators?

Yes. Everybody who is listed as an author should see and be able to contribute to the poster. You wouldn't want to be listed as an author of a work that you have never seen either, right?


Can I write that I had a phobia in my personal statement?

It is a judgement call. On the one hand, if you are sure it is no longer relevant, then mentioning it could be a problem since some would doubt you are cured, I think.
On the other hand, it shows personal growth. Congratulations.
But having grown as a person may not be as relevant to future research as you think. At least in the minds of others.
On balance, it seems best to not discuss it in written materials. If it comes up in an interview, it is again a judgement call whether it is wise to mention it. But, at that point, you will have more information on which to make the judgement.


Mendeley does let you add notes to your papers: On the right where the bibliography data is normally displayed there is a tab label notes.

Additionally you can add annotations when to a document you open in Mendeley using the buttons at the top.


Is dropping one of my major considered "bad" if I were to study related to that field?

Would this have negative impact in my future career?

Absolutely no one cares what you did in undergrad, except grad school admissions. Further, as Nate Eldredge said in the comments:

  I don't think it would so much be an issue that you dropped the physics major, as that you don't have a physics degree.

So, I think your question is equivalent to:

  Am I less likely to get into grad school for physics/math with only a math degree?

You're certainly less likely to get into physics grad school without a physics degree (though with enough coursework, it's not impossible). For math grad school, I'm less qualified to comment, but I strongly suspect that a dual degree would have more weight than one degree + coursework. So, yes, I think the second degree would help you get into grad school. Only you can weigh this reality against the advantages of self-studying.

By the way, I also wanted to comment on this line:

  the only reason that I'm doing is so that I can have much more time to self-study by which I learn better.

This has been discussed elsewhere, the consensus being that while many passionate students feel this way, few truly do not benefit from a course's structure and a professor's experience. Just one other factor to consider in your decision.


How to balance lecture participation and not being considered a show-off?

A key question is - why restrain your enthusiasm?

Importantly, it does not really matter what the other classmates think of you - you are there for the interest in the subject, not for their approval. As you stated, you have not noticed any negative reaction - it could be a case that a few others in the class are benefiting from your contributions - and more than likely, the instructor appreciates your participation as well.

It sounds like you are polite, holding back and waiting for anyone else to contribute - that is a positive.

If you are still concerned, speak with the instructor, ask them if there are other ways you can help get the class engaged and of course, ask if he/she thinks you are contributing 'too much'.

What to do? Don't change, you have enthusiasm, you politely wait for others to answer before you contribute. (But as suggested before, talk with your instructor about your contributions).

Just to clarify, I am speaking as a practicing teacher


Double-blind review: submit a follow-up paper in a very short time

I've been in a similar situation before. After consulting with the conference chair, we decided to place an anonymized version of the accepted paper in a dropbox folder and cite it anonymously as our own with a link to that dropbox file in the reference. I also added a footnote in the paper to explain that this previous work is accepted but not yet published, and how this previous work contributed something totally different from the work presented in the paper.


What are the available non-academic careers to a newly-minted PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics?

Regarding Finance, perhaps you should instead look for Quantitative/Mathematical Finance (quant) jobs. I think non-mathematical finance jobs do require different skills (though I don't imagine them being more difficult than QF jobs).
Many physicists become quants. You may want to try looking up Emanuel Derman to see his books if you might be interested in reading them and the Wiki pages on mathematical finance to see what kind of math is involved.
I am a grad student of QF now and we are learning SAS, R, Brownian motion and Feynman-Kac theorem. (at least the latter 2 are) Basic for you (theoretical) Physics people, I presume?
Edit: Regarding the mathemagician's comment, I've read some job openings for quants. There's no specific mention of having a degree in QF. They are just looking for master's/PhD's in quantitative disciplines. I recall one mentioning master's in Math, Physics or Engineering as a prerequisite.
Finance is relatively easy to learn. You don't need a QF degree to be a quant. Try checking out Hull's Options, Futures and Other Derivatives or Bjork's Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time, but please be patient with the cute math you may see.
Other sites to check out are the quant stackexchange (save it from beta please) and quantstart.com
Edit 1: Regarding guest's answer, why don't you work a technology company or something?
Edit 2: teaching highschool/secondary school?
My knowledge of Physics is only up to Vector Calculus (or Partial Differential Equations if you want) and basic Analytical Physics so that's all I got haha


I filled the crucial gap; co-authors did the rest–who should be first author?

My gut feeling (I don't work in CS or TCS but I talk a little with people in adjacent areas) is that 1st authorship should go to the person who shared their notes with you; you say yourself that you solved "a step that he was struggling with", which indicates that he and his student had already done significant work to attack the problem. Of course it may be the case that your contribution is somehow the decisive one.

All this said, if you have a diplomatic way of asking this person "who did you think should be first author" I would do so: he may offer 1st authorship to you, or he may not. It is hard to say more at this level of generality.


What is the minimum contribution expected from an M.Sc. thesis?

In my opinion and experience, it is relatively rare for an MSc thesis to yield truly original research resulting in a paper. The primary goal of a MSc thesis is to teach you important research skills: come up with a general idea of what to do, researching literature, coming up with a specific question that you want to address, performing research (computations, fieldwork, lab experiments), and finally writing it down in a thesis. If you successfully complete this cycle, I think your MSc thesis is a success. If the thesis, after some editing, is original enough to end up as a journal paper this is a big bonus.


Paper with editor for longer than two and a half months

One of my papers took well over two years to get published, thanks mostly to two review periods lasting around 10 months (IIRC).  So 2 1/2 months is not that outlandish.

But it does not hurt to ask politely about the status of your paper!  It may be well down on someone's list of things to do, and a polite reminder that you are interested in its fate may be all that's needed to bump it up near the top.  Presumably, if you ask, the editor will give some indication as to approximately when reviews might be ready, and then you'll know when to send another polite reminder if nothing has happened.