October 1999

Research I: Finding an Advisor and Topic

Marie desJardins ( [email protected]

) CMSC 601 February 6, 2012

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Sources

 Robert L. Peters,

Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D. (Revised Edition)

. NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.

 Richard Hamming, “You and your research.” Transcription of the Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar, March 7, 1986.

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 Advisors  Research Topics

Outline

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Advisors

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Advisors

 Temporary advisors  Research advisors  Approaching a potential advisor  Secondary/informal “advisors”  Changing advisors

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Questions to Ask Faculty

 Are you taking on new (M.S./Ph.D.) students?

   Do you have RA funding? For how long into the future?

What research areas are you working in?

Do you have specific open problems you are looking for students to work on?

 Do you generally suggest research topics to your students, or do you expect them to find their own topics?

 Are you willing to advise a thesis/dissertation in an area not directly related to your current research projects?

 Are you willing to advise an interdisciplinary thesis/dissertation, or to co-advise?

 Have you (recently) graduated any (M.S./Ph.D.) students?

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Questions to Ask Students

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 Is Prof. X accessible?  How much time does Prof. X spend with you?  In what contexts (individual meetings, lab meetings, etc.)?

 Do Prof. X’s students finish quickly?

 Do Prof. X’s students publish in top conferences and journals?

 Does Prof. X give credit to students for their work?

 Is Prof. X consistent in expectations and directions?

 Is Prof. X reasonable in the amount of work expected?

 Do students respect Prof. X intellectually?

(From Peters, p. 46-47)

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Expectations

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 You can reasonably expect your advisor to:  Be available on a somewhat regular schedule  Suggest courses and schedules  Help you to select and solve research topics  Suggest committee members  Provide feedback on written work and work in progress  Suggest possible solutions to research problems  Encourage you to publish  Write letters of reference  Your advisor may also:  Provide financial support (stipends and travel money)  Provide career advice  Help you find a job

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Expectations

 Your advisor can reasonably expect you to:  Develop ideas independently  Do what you say you will do, in a reasonable timeframe  Make (reasonably) continuous progress  Go beyond the minimum amount of work  Be pro-active in pursuing ideas and looking for resources  Ask for help when you need it  Meet relevant deadlines, even if heroic short-term effort is required  Your advisor may also expect you to:   Provide written progress reports Review papers (theirs and others’)  Work with other students in the lab  Publish  Contribute to grant proposals

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Not-so-Great Expectations

 Your advisor should not expect you to:  Perform excessive administrative tasks or paperwork  Contribute to research without authorship  Consistently work unreasonably long hours  Have no life outside of the lab  You should not expect your advisor to:  Constantly remind you what you need to be doing  Solve every problem you encounter  Be familiar with every aspect of your research problem  Provide unlimited resources (time, money, equipment...)

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In the Unlikely Event...

 What if your advisor is seriously abusing or neglecting you?

 Talk to the GPD  Talk to another faculty member you trust  Change advisors  Talk to the department chair  Talk to the Associate Dean  File a formal complaint

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Research Topics

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What Is Research??

 Asking “why” and “how”  Creating innovative solutions to novel problems 2/6/12

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 Also:  Understanding previous work  Testing hypotheses  Analyzing data  Publishing results  Not:  Applying existing techniques to a new problem  Developing a one-shot solution to a problem

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A Good Topic

 ...is unsolved  ...is important  ...is interesting to you  ...is interesting to your advisor  ...is interesting to the research community  ...has useful applications  ...applies to more than one problem

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Scope

 Too broad is bad  Too narrow is bad  Too constrained is bad  Too unconstrained is bad  “Telescoping” is best

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Getting Jumpstarted

 Read!

 Write  Annotated bibliographies  Literature surveys (including open challenges)  Replicate previous work  Re-implement  Re-derive  Re-experiment  Start varying parameters, assumptions, environments

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Read, Read, Read!

 You have to read a

lot

of research papers to become an expert  You have to become an expert before you can produce high-quality results  You have to produce high-quality results before you can complete your Ph.D. (or M.S.)   you have to read a lot of research papers (and other people’s theses/dissertations) 2/6/12

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  you might as well get started now!

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Just Do It

 “People have an amazing ability to become interested in almost anything once they are working on it.” (Peters, p. 181)

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Write Early!

 Write an annotated bibliography  Write a proposal outline  Write a literature survey  Write an outline of a conference paper  Write an outline of the dissertation  Show your writing to your advisor, other graduate students, colleagues, ...

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