texts: How to write a letter to nominate an awesome Professor for an award?

texts:
How to write a letter to nominate an awesome past Professor for an award for work he has done in our university?  This professor established a cyber security scholarship program at our engineering university for students to pursue this field, especially when it was emerging 15 years ago.

What pointers do I mention in the letter?
How long can the letter be?
What tone should I use (serious, humor, etc)

Please advise.

The award is given by the university based on these criteria:

  A record of outstanding teaching effectiveness both within and outside
  the classroom

  The ability to inspire, promote, and sustain the intellectual
  development of students

  A pedagogical approach that is innovative (new approaches using
  current or new models of teaching), intellectually rigorous, creative,
  and engaging

  Demonstrated scholarly/professional contributions and their
  integration into the classroom that foster critical thinking and
  challenge students to independent inquiry

  Advising/mentoring of undergraduate or graduate students or doctoral
  and clinical supervision-interactions outside of the classroom and the
  quality of such interactions

  Contribution to developing or enhancing curricula in the field

  Length of service

  Internal school awards/honors received


texts:
I am a teaching assistant and I am writing a list of instructors that I have assisted.

Should I go with full titles such as Assoc. Prof. Dr., Asst. Prof. Dr. or is it enough to write Dr. only.

I have encountered many CVs that only uses Dr. no matter the person is either assistant professor, associate professor or professor. I think people only write Prof. instead of Dr. if the person is a Professor Dr. What is the right way to do it?

The same question applies to writing names of project supervisors, thesis advisers, references etc.

The country I will send my CV is Sweden.


texts: What are the pros and cons of writing papers alone?

texts:
In my field (economics), there are many co-authored papers. People are even writing some chapters of their PhD thesis with other colleagues.

I know that single-authored papers are more appreciated when you are a Ph.D. student and when you are in the job market.

Until now, I always prefered writing my papers alone. This is not because I did not want to interact with people but I did not really want to be dependant on other people during my Ph.D. (I know that some projects take so much time to be accomplished since everybody has its own research agenda.)

I wonder if writing papers (or chapters of a Ph.D. thesis) always alone is a bad sign on a CV? What are the advantages and disadvantages?


texts: Should I cite the reference if I have already cited it in the previous paragraph?

texts:
For example,

  A [1] is a dataset for training the model.

I have cited once in this sentence.

Then in the second sentence somewhere in my paper,

  I would like to use A [1] as my experimental dataset.

Should I cite it again?


texts: Specifically academic alternative to LinkedIn

texts: It is well-known that LinkedIn is used by scholars too, but I think that the business-friendly structure of your profile-page makes it markedly less suitable for academic purposes. Is there a specifically academic website that includes the same characteristics as LinkedIn plus the possibility to add some more scholarly elements in your profile?


texts:
Imagine that a paper by [Author A] has pulled together some literature on the misuse of a technology in context X. I now want to talk about misuse of the same technology but in context Y. When creating a different narrative and putting together different arguments, much of what I say uses the references of [Author A] with a similar or the same opinion.

Take the following made-up quote from (Author A):

  Technologies have values embedded in their design (Author B).

I think it would be wrong to only directly cite [Author B] and make a similar statement without acknowledging [Author A] since the idea really comes from the way that the latter uses the former. Also, it would just feel wrong since someone else has done a lot of the work in finding the references.

This occurs many times and so it would also be obvious how I found the sources (of course, I will state in the background section that I did a backward search to find sources). At the same time, my analysis is different and hence I cannot just say "read [Author A] for a literature review]" - I need to connect it all to my topic (and also other areas not covered by [Author A].

What is the correct and, if allowed, most elegant way to handle second-order citations? Particularly when I need to do it many times. Is there an alternative to using second-order citations?

N.b., this isn't a meta-survey like you would find in medical science or similar.


texts: Value of Print on Demand Publishing of PhD Dissertation

texts:
Following on from my question here, I understand there are many non-traditional methods of publishing a PhD dissertation as a book. One of it is Print of Demand (POD) method. A contributor to the question in the above link gives VDM as an example.

However, a close look at the Wikipedia article (same link as the VDM) reveals that POD is not peer reviewed and often adds little to a person's publication record.

I am wondering that if a PhD dissertation is of sufficient standard to be passed by the relevant university (assuming the University is reputable itself), why does it need to be peer-reviewed? Also, if it is reproduced as a book by POD, why shouldn't it add to the publication record of the author.

The PhD is often the first major work of many students (I fall in this category) so making the most out of it is the only way to add value to one's CV.


texts: What makes securing faculty positions difficult?

texts:
This question is an off-shoot from this one, where it has been agreed by most that securing faculty positions is difficult in general. I would like to know what exactly makes this so.

Though in theory university rankings may be pointless, there is a broad quality-based classification of institutions in any country which many will agree on - for example, the crème de la crème, top tier, middle tier and decent universities, of which there could be a few hundreds. We shall assume the student has passed out with a good thesis and impactful publications.

Is it tough for a student graduating from a higher rung to gain a position in the lower rungs?
What factors dictate the difficulty in securing a position in a university in the same league?

PS: In India, the answer to Q 1 is "not at all", as there is a heavy crunch for faculty positions even in top institutes. Instead the difficulty arises only when students from low rung colleges seek top positions: in most cases, such students are found wanting in skills.


texts: How important is the choice of a guide/adviser for pursuing PhD in a topic

texts:
I am really in a fix in my career.

I completed my Masters in 2014. I qualified in a PhD Scholarships Test in 2015 and in the same year joined in a University for research work.

My interest lies in Linear Algebra, Topology, Abstract Algebra. My guide offered  me to work in Spectral Graph Theory. As  I was not quite acquainted with the topic I took up this topic for research.

As I am reading on my own, I am getting stuck on many theorems and some problems.

My guide has said recently that he does not have much expertise on this topic  besides the preliminaries and hence he can't answer each and every problem of mine. He has said that the topic is new to him also. I have found now that also does not have any research papers to his name on Spectral Graph Theory as well. I was not aware of this before

My question is how important is the choice of a guide/adviser for pursuing PhD in a topic and what needs to be checked before joining him.

Is it wise  continuing to  work with him or should I look for some alternatives. Does getting a PhD depend a lot on your guide or I am  expecting a lot from my guide? Does pursuing a PhD mean you have to do all along yourself?

I know there are many in this site who have got a PhD or have served as guides/advisors for many students. Please help. Any suggestions will be helpful. I would be happy to give more inputs if required.


texts: Recruiting coauthors for sake of the Introduction section

texts:
I'm a student. A professor recently gave me an open question to think about, and after three months of working on it as a hobby, I think I have something good.
It is not an exact mathematical theorem or anything, but I have the code and some proofs in special cases.
So, I'm writing a paper and thinking about publishing it.
Now, the professor isn't active in the research area that this paper would naturally fit in. They did help with the technical details, but have no time to become an expert in this area.
But, all papers in this area have an "Introduction" section of almost a page, citing 30+ papers from the past two years. I have read a grand total of four relevant papers.
How to proceed? I don't think I am capable of doing this in a reasonable amount of time, as I don't really follow what's going on in this research area. And I have other pressing things to do.
I am thinking about writing to some PhD students in my institution which publish in this area, to recruit them as coauthors. Maybe they could even improve the paper.
But how to contact them?
Is it dumb to say: "hi, nice to meet you, here is my current draft of the paper, do you want in? By the way, you are going to write first section"?


texts: Is there something I need to do on arxiv if I lose academic affiliation

texts:
When publishing on arxiv, users with recognized academic affiliations may be exempt from the endorsement process, as mentioned in arXiv primer.

Suppose that I have already published preprints on arxiv. Later, for some reason, I lose my academic affiliation. (For example, I might be between the jobs, I might leave academia.)

Do I need to inform arxiv that I no longer have an academic affiliation and should I be endorsed again before publising another preprint on arxiv?
If I change to other university/academic institution, is there something I should do on arxiv other than updating my user information?


texts: Is 8:00 AM an unreasonable time to meet with my graduate students and post-doc?

texts:
I am a recently graduated PhD, but for the past few years I have been on an 8:00-16:30 schedule with a lunch break at noon.  I arrive between 7:45-8:00 and get started immediately.

Now I am on as a continuing research scientist and have been assigned to supervise two graduate students and another post-doc that's new to the field.  It's important for our schedules to overlap, so I've instructed them to meet me at 8:00 to get started.

To clarify the frequency, this type of "meeting" would be once a week for the next 13 weeks. I use quotes because it's really just the time we agree to get in the lab and start work together, which is still a meeting but not the one we often think of when we see the word.

Someone I am close to, who has both graduate school and office (industry) experience, tells me this is unreasonable.  According to her, even in formal business environments, the first [half-]hour is reserved for checking your email, getting settled, going through voicemails, etc.

As I like to tell people, I was a student for 25 consecutive years, so I know the ropes regarding when academics typically wake up and get started.  I'm not asking if starting work at 8:00 AM is typical, but rather if it is unreasonable and why I should or shouldn't change my policy.


texts: What should be the order of the authors in a paper?

texts:
Should the first author be the one that worked the most? And then by the amount of work order (descending), but the last one the most-senior researcher?

Are there other ways? Which ones?

Does it vary from field to field? I've heard some areas or even some conferences always ask for alphabetical order. But then there are evaluation committees that count for how many first-author or last-author publications does a researcher have. Can someone provide exhaustive insight into how this is done across many fields?


texts: Should I use recommendation letter from young professor I worked with or well-known professor I met in class?

texts:
I'm choosing reference writers for my math PhD application this year, and need to decide between the 2 following professors:

Professor X is a young professor with whom I took measure theory and
did a research project in my freshman year. The project went pretty
well - we obtained some results earlier than he expected, and
published a paper. He moved to another university and no longer
worked with me, but we still keep in touch.
Professor Y is a fairly well-known professor whom I met at a 1-month
summer workshop. I didn't interact much with her outside of the
classroom, but she seemed to like me: after the workshop, she said she
was really impressed by me and voluntarily asked if I want a
recommendation letter from her.

Neither professor works in the field that I plan to study in grad school.

I often hear that "good at research" letters are way better than "do well in class" ones. However, in my sophomore year, I applied to some REU programs with professor X's letter (and another not so strong "do well in class" letter), and was rejected by all of them. Of course the recommendation is just one factor, but I think my course work was not bad - probably better than many of my junior friends who were admitted. My Putnam score was pretty good too, although I don't think it mattered. The following year I reapplied with both professor X's and Y's letters, and got first round offers from most of the programs.

Do you think this indicates that professor Y's letter substantially strengthened my application, or actually REU programs looked at some other factors I wasn't aware of? Do grad schools and REU programs look at recommendations the same way? Which letter would you recommend me to use? I can't use both because I have 2 other letters already, and many grad schools say they may not read more than 3 letters.

Thank you very much.

Edit:

About the 2 other reference writers that I've already chosen: both did research with me, one of them also taught me several courses.
The other letter I used in my sophomore year (along with professor X's) was probably not that bad. The reference writer said he was pretty impressed that my course grade was 95% or something, while everyone else got less than 60%. It's just that I didn't do research with him.


texts: How to talk to an intimidating professor?

texts:
I'm studying for a postgraduate degree and my courses with a certain professor will start in some time. I have been meaning to speak to him since a very long time but I'm scared to go over to his office. I want to develop off-class relations as well for multiple purposes - opportunity to have good relations with a well-established professor, have access to his way of thinking by speaking to him and last but not the least, I do want a recommendation letter from him as well in a few months. I have no idea how to approach him, introduce myself or begin talking about a topic for a conversation.

More importantly, I don't want to sound like I'm posturing or faking interest. So, how do I begin?


texts: Determining student understanding of a question based on given answer

texts:
I am asking this in regard to all levels of education, however, I am aware that this forum is primarily for higher education. I would like to know what elements of an answer are indicative of the level of understanding the student has of that question. The sophistication of their language? Length of their answer? Use of meta language? Succinctness?

Thanks in advance!


texts: When translating papers from non-English to English, should the sources be translated to English as well?

texts: When translating research papers from Arabic to English, should I translate the Arabic sources (book titles, etc.) to English, or should I leave them in Arabic?


texts: Reusing part of my thesis within the same thesis

texts: Doing an engineering thesis, and I have presented a detailed summary of my data in the abstract.  Is it ok for me to copy/paste entire paragraphs of my abstract to my conclusion without changing a word?


texts: What to do when a reviewer is late while daily posting about other activities on social media?

texts:
I am an associate editor for a journal. I have asked an academician to perform a review for the journal, to which they agreed. The reviewer is already 6 weeks late (6 weeks after the deadline), not replying to our reminders (2 already), and recently I noticed on my social media feed a number of their posts (shared by people I follow) about how they are using the lockdown to do a lot of non-academic stuff, which is fine but I feel it no longer justifies using the lockdown as an excuse for being late.

In this case, should I consider un-inviting the reviewer?

Sorry if this may sound like a rant, I just felt that it is inappropriate to use such a difficult situation to justify being late, while actually doing something else.
Extensions are automatically granted in this journal. Reviewers just need to reply to our reminder to get an automatic extension. However, if we do not receive a reply, we cannot grant the extension.


texts: Applying for second masters/Which GPA matters most?

texts: I have an MA in Education and I've been teaching for 9 years at a community college. I decided to continue teaching but obtain graduate credits in another discipline. I have wanted to change from developmental to another discipline for some time. Which GPA will admissions committee most likely consider, undergrad or grad? My undergrad isn't so great, but I have a 4.0 grad school gpa. No scores were required for program.


texts: Where to advertise a postdoctoral position to widen the diversity of applicants?

texts:
I am planning to hire a postdoc (in mathematics), and have never done this before. My department is far from diverse. I have read that a good way to achieve a diverse pool of candidates is by advertising widely, including circulating them to special interest groups.
I can definitely see the benefit of this. Members of underrepresented groups may tend to be less "well connected" in the community and, as a result, the advertisement might have a harder time reaching them. At least, this seems to be part of it.
I would love to advertise widely, and specifically to organizations which will help me reach underrepresented groups. However, I am finding it difficult to find viable options for doing this... Many sites charge hundreds of dollars for each job posting. While I would love to post it everywhere, it doesn't seem realistic. The main things that I have come up with are:

Mathjobs (https://www.mathjobs.org). I expect that this will reach the largest number of interested applicants (the job is in North America). But this is really just the standard place to post things.
Association for Women in Mathematics (https://awm-math.org/). This actually seems like a really great option.
Distributing the advertisement through mailing lists dedicated to my area of mathematics.
Some professional societies in mathematics allow members to post jobs (I think).
Advertising the job at the end of research talks (although, it doesn't seem to be that commonly done in my area, so it might be awkward...).
Advertise to colleagues and ask them to spread it by word of mouth.
Posting to social media? Although I am a bit wary of this.

Apart from the AWM, I don't really see how any of these will benefit members of underrepresented groups specifically, and, even the AWM is mainly targeting one group. Does anyone have any other ideas? Suggestions?
This post focused mostly on where to advertise the job, but I would also love to get input on all aspects of achieving a large and diverse pool of applicants! Please feel free to share any advice you have.


texts: Does it look bad to have more letters of recommendation from undergrad than masters professors in PhD admissions?

texts:
I did my undergrad at university A, and my masters at university B. I am now applying to university C which requires 3 letters of recommendation. Naturally, my thesis advisor is one of them. I also contacted my undergrad advisor whom I did a 4th year project with.

Finding the right third referee is the problem. In my masters, I only took one course with each professor; 8 different courses with 8 different professor. So I don't think that they know my that well, although I did score A in all of the courses. I decided to contact another undergrad professor whom I took 2-3 courses with.

How will the admission committee look to an application where there are 2 referees from my undergrad and only one from grad study ? Will that affect my application in a negative way ?


texts: Asking previous advisor for a better letter of reference

texts: I recently applied for a national scholarship at my university. My application was accepted internally as one of few to be sent to the organization hosting the scholarship. However, the people screening applications at my university were slightly concerned about one of my reference letters from my last advisor, and sent it to me to show me what he wrote (I'm pretty sure those letters are supposed to be confidential, but that's beside the point). A brief summary of the letter is that I'm only slightly above average, and 1/4 of the letter is about his previous research accomplishments. I can't change referees since my application has already been screened. My question is, can I ask my previous advisor to improve his letter of recommendation?


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

texts:
Disclaimer: The GRE Program discontinued the Computer Science Test

If I have already passed a GRE Subject Test for Computer Science, do I still need to pass the general GRE test?

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


texts: Which authority dictates/regulates that in computer science a journal paper cannot be presented in a conference?

texts:
I was taught that conference papers in computer science count as publications. Therefore, a journal paper cannot be presented in a conference because of plagiarism reasons, and vice versa.

I confirmed this information:

Publishing the same results at multiple conferences
Submitting the same research to multiple conferences
Journal publication and acceptance to competitive conferences
Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?
Present journal paper at conference or the same work at multiple conferences

The weird part for me is understanding which authority (IEEE?, ACM?) regulates this? Is there any document that support this? It seem that this policy in CS emerged from the community (bottom-up; see for example this) – sort of like hand shaking or bowing in Japan – and is therefore self-regulated by people.

Related to this question (EDIT: I will ask them separatedly later as suggested in the comments but I feel I need to clarify certain issues I seem to be confused with):

I have had multiple arguments with colleagues of other fields
that disagree with me in that conferences papers/presentations don't
count  as  publications (I am in a multidisciplinary field). I feel I
tend to loss these argumentations because it is one CS student against
the rest. In a way, it would be easier if I could refer people to some
authority.
If I simply don’t want to follow the rule for conferences that
apparently don't count papers as publications, what are the real
consequences apart from the social lynching? To be clear, the work is
done but not published - just somehow presented in a conference (*).
Is there any way to confirm that a conference or proceeding is formally
registered as an (or to an) editorial/publisher?
Is there any other way of presenting published results in a
conference as, for example, simply abstracts (*)?

(*) In some areas people just present abstracts, and depending on the area, the conference accepts almost everything. The main goal of this seems to be networking - presenting the work and having the opportunity to interact with people that assist to your presentation (if any).


texts:
I am a senior computer science student and I am working on my senior graduation project. My supervisor said that I should implement a job search web portal as a graduation project. But I want to make some research oriented project rather than raw coding. My supervisor insists on this because he won't have to spend time with me.

So I have decided to get involved in research myself without his help because he is not helping me. I had to register for his project class because other slots were full. He does not want to deal with students but due to school constraints he had to open this class.

I have never done research or I don't know what exactly it means. How do I start this myself ?


texts: Dealing with low-quality legacy student-work

texts:
My task is to summarize an MSc thesis some student finished months ago. The summary will go into a technical report. The report is going to be reviewed: one or two people will read it in a quick-and-dirty way at least once and make comments. The area is computer science. The thesis size is 100 pages, and it has to be compressed into around 20 pages.

The problem is that the student's work is very poorly written, both language-wise and research-wise. Reading and summarizing this lazy, full-of-plagiarism, incomprehensible low-quality paper is a challenge, but has to be done. How do you deal with this tedious, boring task?


texts: Is it good to have all the PhD publications in one journal

texts: I have two papers published in a APS journal and another paper just got accepted to the same journal (the journal is a reputed one in my field). It has been almost two years for my PhD. So I have started drafting my next research outcome. My plan was to try another journal this time. However, my supervisor is suggesting me to submit to the same journal. If in case this journal's reputation goes down (however, this is very unlikely), all my work kinda get wasted. On the otherhand, is it good to have all PhD papers in one journal (It might look like I cannot reach scopes of other journals)? Thanks in advance.


texts:
I'm considering doing a 1-yr MST program and teaching high school for a few years before I do a PhD. Setting aside the cost of the program, is this a bad idea? Reasons I'm considering it are

to solidify my interest in doing a PhD (I hope to use weekends to read widely and try to get a better picture of exactly what research topic I'd pursue in a PhD)
to leverage teaching skills for when I apply to PhD programs, as well as for when I apply to academic positions
in the event I can't get an academic job, I can fall back on high school teaching and will have the credential, since what I ultimately want to do is teach in some capacity (ideally college)

Reasons I'm worried are:

my resume will appear "stale" or lacking in direction if I apply to grad school 3-4 years out of undergrad, with a master's already
rec. letter writers will forget who I am (I hope to keep in touch)

Is this path common or feasible?


texts: Why professors spend most of their time to write proposals than doing research?

texts:
I have been working in academic career in several years. I have noticed that almost all professors spend most of their time to write proposals?

And to my surprise, they are not working on research papers. This is reflected by the fact that the number of technical papers with first author (single author) as a senior professor is decreased quite dramatically.

My question is, therefore, is there any hidden (but valid) reason for this?


texts: What if my paper is accepted, but later my institution doesn’t allow me to publish in this journal?

texts:
My paper was accepted by a publisher; an acceptance letter was mailed to me.
However, later my institution didn’t allow me to publish there, because it the journal isn’t indexed by Scopus? How can I withdraw the paper; is there any issue if I submit my paper to another publisher?


texts: Should I justify the organization of chapters and sections in the research paper?

texts:
I am using a research handbook written by Creswell to guide me in writing my Bachelor's Thesis.

Specifically, I followed his research design model.

Should I justify why I structured my Methods Chapter the way I did by saying that such structure was recommended by Creswell?

For example, I may say that Creswell suggested that this section should be included in the research design.

I live in a developing country. My institution has no specific style guide.
They underestimate undergraduate research, but I cannot wait for my supervisor to tell me what to do as long as my sources are authoritative.

Here is a link of a summary of the book.

I cannot consult my supervisor at the moment nor wait or state why here.

Thank you


texts: Same recommendation letter for different semesters?

texts: I applied to a NASA internship for the spring semester, and I want to reapply for the internship for summer. Is it okay and good to ask the same professor who sent a recommendation letter for my spring application to resend the same letter for my new summer application? Does it weaken my application in any way?


texts: Create a website for adding supplementary material of a journal paper

texts: I just got the reviews for the paper I submitted to IEEE TCSVT and one of the reviewers asked me to provide them with some supplementary results. I am planning the create a website for them so they can go and download the results. Any suggestions on how I can create such a website for my paper?


texts: Does a masters degree help completing PhD sooner?

texts:
Do students with Masters Degree complete their PhDs (in US, but I am curious about other countries too) sooner than the one's who have entered the PhD program after their undergrad?

I know it depends upon the individual, project, major and the supervisor but is there a general trend?


texts:
I am preparing a proposal for an ERC call. I am a little bit unsure about the amount of salaries.

Since I solely work on this project, 100% of my time is devoted, and I should set a full salary for myself. Is there a standard salary scale for this purpose? How much I am flexible in setting the value? Is it dependent on the country of host institution?
My collaborators already have full-time job, and they are paid full salary from their universities, which includes their research duties. If Professor X is contributing 20% of his time as a collaborator to my project, should I include 20% of his salary in the proposal? Again what is the salary scale I should follow?


texts:
I am recent graduate from a UK university in computer science. As I am not sure what to study for my master degree, I went for a Web-Developer graduate job, and got accepted. As I will probably go for a master in 1-2 years, I was wondering if my undergraduate degree will be consider useless. And my master degree will possibly have nothing to do with the job I am currently accepted for. For example if I choose to do a master degree in computer graphics. Will that be a problem? (I have modules related to computer graphics in my degree, so my question is that will they be still valuable after 1-2 years as computer technology changes everyday) help? thanks!

(this may not be the best forum in stack exchange to ask these, but it is the closest)


texts: Is it an insult to my US university to not walk in graduation?

texts:
I will be graduating with a degree in Software Engineering. I have a 4.0 GPA at this institution (not counting the 3.85 GPA I transferred in with). The institution is awarding me Outstanding Scholar for my degree program/campus/year.

I am seriously considering not walking in graduation. Being on stage in front of people is not my definition of celebration, and I am not a fan of tradition unless there is a logical reason behind it. (I'm an INTJ personality type.)

For the outstanding scholar award, they will be giving me a certificate and honor cords at an awards banquet that is before graduation. Does that imply they expect me to walk? Is it an insult to not do so when they are giving me an award?

Actual diplomas will be mailed sometime after the ceremony in the summer. The ceremony doesn't cost anything to be a part of (other than the cost of getting a degree :). There are about 20 people graduating this year in my major. I have a sister graduating the same day in a city 8 hours away (and only an hour from home), so most parents/relatives will be at the other graduation anyway. As an alternative to the ceremony, I am thinking of writing thank you cards to the teachers and mentors who were influential in helping me get to this point.


texts: How Might The Pedagogy Of A PhD Supervisor Differ From That Of An MSc Supervisor

texts:
An MSc and PhD are quite different both in terms of the length and the expectations placed on the students undergoing the program. First, let's just assume that the 'students' I reference below are hard working, want to be in their programs, and make an effort to be a good mentee.

Trying to put myself in the shoes of a supervisor, and all else equal, I would expect (in the general sense) more from my PhD students than I would from my masters students - although I recognize there are probably instances where supervisor expectations might be similar, but I doubt they would expect more of a MSc student than a PhD student.

What I am curious about is how a supervisor might approach their end of the student-supervisor relationship from a pedagogical point of view when the student is a PhD student in contrast to being an MSc student. For example, what values or attitudes might a PhD supervisor try to impart on their student that might not be warranted for an MSc student, or what type of expectations might a supervisor place on their PhD student that might not be appropriate to place on the MSc student?

I say pedagogically because I think the question can be answered without needing to reference a specific field. I'm not sure if it really matters or not, but if you think it does, one can use Canada-US as a place of context.

While some might view the question to be ambiguous, I think it is relevant enough for the forum because it can help shape a healthy student-advisor relationship.


texts: Choosing between letters of recommendation

texts:
I am in the process of preparing an application for a grad school/PhD program in Economics. The program I want to apply for requires two letters of recommendation so I was wondering which professors to approach to maximize my chances. There are basically two major research fields I am interested in and I could get a letters from a professor in each of the fields. However, there is also professor at a higher ranked university I attended a course at who could give me another letter of recommendation in one of the fields.
My question is whether it is better to have two letters from professors in a single research field rather than from each of the fields?


texts: Is Master Program Rank Important for PhD Application

texts:
I am looking to go into the neuroscience or stem cell research fields. I was recently offered unconditional acceptance to the University of Edinburgh for Regenerative Medicine and to University College London for Neuroscience. Both are one year masters programs and included a dissertation.

Essentially, I am wondering how rank plays a role in applying to PhD programs. Does rank play a part in doctoral  acceptances? Both are well ranked, but UCL is ten or so spots higher on a world ranking scale.

Most of the research I have done has said that rank can be important for jobs, but I have not found much regarding the transition into a PhD, which I plan on.

I appreciate any input or opinions on the matter. Thank you.


texts: Been working towards undergrad degree on and off, now finally found my passion and want to go for a PhD. What should I do?

texts:
I went to college right out of high school not really knowing what I wanted to study. I ended up with medical issues about two and a half years into my degree, lost motivation, and dropped out. After taking the occasional class at a community college, I helped open a math tutoring business with my parents. I've always been good at math, but I have absolutely fallen in love with it now, often spending most of my free time going through early graduate level textbooks and staying up all night reading proofs. I now hope to pursue a PhD. in Mathematics. I have been accepted as a transfer student to finish up my bachelors degree in mathematics, which is quite different than my original intended major of theology. I graduated from high school in 2007 and will likely finish my undergraduate degree around 2018.

**QUESTION: ** as a result of being unmotivated in my years right after high school, I have some F's which have resulted in around a 2.5 GPA, although I do not know if that will be shown on my transcript, since it came from a different institution. If I show motivation and a passion for constantly striving to push my knowledge in mathematics and receive over a 3.7 in my 300-400 level math courses, can that overcome my failures in the past?


texts: "We" when I mean "I" or should I say "the author"?

texts:
I am currently working on my thesis and facing the problem of choosing between "I", "We" or "the author" when I want to talk about things I defined, decided etc. I am the only author of my thesis, but using "I" is not very common, is it? I saw quite a lot of work of single-authors that used "We" when referencing to themselves.

"The author" seems nicer to me, but it is not common?

Any recommendations or remarks?


texts: Is it disrespectful to write very similar emails to multiple people?

texts:
I need to write to several academics with a very similar request. Would it be disrespectful if I just copy-paste most of the body of the email, and change just the person-specific details?

On one hand, nobody likes mass-produced emails. It could be irritating for them and embarassing for me if one of them forwards the email to another, and the similarities become clear. On the other hand, what I need to say in each case is very similar, so once I write one "optimal" version of the message, it's hard to see how and why to produce another version.

For context: I have been working at a problem which is somewhat outside of expertise of me and of my supervisor (I'm a PhD student). I think I have a solution, but I am not sure how original it is and how interesting it is. It could well be that it's been known for decades, but I can't find it because of differences in terminology. Hence, I would like to write to some people who have more expertise in the field. The email explains roughly what the problem is, how I came to consider it in the first place, how the solution works, and what what specific pieces of the work of people I write to make me think they might be interested in problems like that (this is the person-specific part). If relevant, the field is pure mathematics


texts: How to cite multiple sections of book using IEEE Citation Style

texts:
I'm currently writing my bachelor thesis in computer science and use the IEEE Citation Style with LaTeX. There already exists a good BibTeX style file. However this question is not about the style rather the usage.

Let's keep this simple: I use a book for my thesis. There are two possibilities to add it to my bibliography. Either as @book or @inbook. If I use the first I cannot add a pages reference to it and would just cite it as [1] in my thesis. The later allows me to add pages to this entry. However, I only saw entry like pp. 100-200.

This is fine if I would use this book only for one reference, but I use the book all over. My question is: How do I cite this book / the sections of this book correctly. Should I add multiple @inbook entries for each page reference or should I add a @book entry and cite like [1, pp. 100-200]. Using the \cite[pp. 100-200]{bookID} allows me to do that. But is that allowed by IEEE?


texts: Will leaving a PhD program show on my transcript?

texts:
I just finished my 2nd year in a social science program and decided to stop. I received an MA at the end of this school year. I have decided to leave without finishing, however I do not want to leave the program without a job offer. So I hope to search for jobs (while completing an MS degree, which is over half way done now) in the next year and exit.

Here is my question. Although I will have two Master's degrees upon leaving the PhD program, will leaving the PhD program show on my transcript? Will that negatively affect my chance of getting a business-related job? You know, for people who recently graduated, companies will always look at their transcript.

Thanks a lot for the output!


texts: What to fill in the following gap in a journal's publication system: "The author was supported by ..."

texts:
I have this question, (that could be closed because it is not a problem of mathematics):
I am a PhD student, my first article was accepted by a journal, and for the publication in the web site of the journal , there is some sentences to fill, between these senteces there is this one to fill:
"The author was supported by ......."
what to write here ?
Thanks for any answer and sorry for my english


texts: e-mailing a professor: first lines of an email (US/UK)

texts:
Not being a native speaker of English, I would like to know how to best introduce myself, what sounds too formal, and what is maybe a bit too colloquial. I have a few questions I want to ask, but I am not sure how to start the email in the first place.

Since many people have pointed out the culture dependency of the question, I would like to make clear that I am concerned with the US / UK, or roughly the English speaking academic world.

Also, for future, subsequent emails, can I just start the email with things like:

Dear John,
How are you? ...

Dear John,
I hope all is well in Brighton. ...

Dear John,
I hope you are doing good! ...


texts: Is it plagarism if the entire paper is copied, but each sentence is quoted?

texts:
I have some high school students submitting assignments where the entire paper is copied from another source.  They cited every line.  Is this plagiarism?  I'm sure they are just being lazy, but they are a smart lazy.  I can't find anything to back up my suspicions that they should get a 0 on this assignment.
Thanks.


texts: CV for tenure-track application: not sure whether to include Master's thesis

texts:
I was wondering about whether I should include/mention my Master's thesis in my CV. This doesn't count as a publication, since it was not published, and it's also not an original contribution. Thus, it doesn't belong to the "Publications" sections.

So where should I put it? Should I put the title in the point where I describe my Master's degree? Should I simply forget about it and let it go?


texts: Switching tenses from past to present within a paragraph in a research paper

texts:
I am confused about which tense to use in presenting my results in a paper.

"In this study, we created a mathematical model of the herding behavior using the A-algorithm. The goal of this mathematical model is to allow the ..."

Am I correct in using the past tense "created" in the first sentence?
Notice that in the second sentence I shifted to "is" instead of "was".

When do we use past or present tense in the results portion of the paper? Your insights will be of great help.


texts: Reproducible and exact calculations vs. approximate and slightly random results in experiment

texts:
When experiments are performed and reported in an academic article, I learned that reproducibility is important. I am implementing a system where I stand between the choices to use GPU acceleration to perform certain calculations, where reproducibility can not be guaranteed, or to perform the calculations on the CPU, whereupon the calculations are exactly the same. The problem with using the CPU is that it is much much slower. However, it seems that the calculations on the GPU are about the same at each run.

I have the perception that researchers sometimes have to choose between qualitative or quantitative measurements. This may seem obvious to experienced researchers, but what I am asking is if a possible solution would be to perform a number of measurements on the GPU that provide estimates, and then calculate an average of the results? Is this "scientifically accepted", although calculations depend to some extent on randomness?

I should add that the results are only going to be part of a project at bachelor level, but I'm also interested in how it works in "real life".


texts: Have a job, but might not finish Ph.D. on time.

texts: I have a few irons in the fire as far as jobs go. I have one offer so far and am waiting to hear on a few others. I am working hard to finish up my PhD, but might not have it completely finished by the time the Fall semester starts. That being said, I am optimistic about finishing and have heard encouraging things to that extent from my adviser and other faculty members. How should I broach this subject with schools after I get the job offer? I want to be honest and up front that there is a non-zero chance that I will not finish before the position starts, but I don't want people to second-guess me when I might finish on time. And all of these positions are adjunct/lecturer positions if that matters. I also didn't get a masters on the way to my (eventual) PhD. So when and how should I bring up this subject at least for the school I got the offer for?


texts: System for organising printed papers in folders?

texts:
For the people here who do not yet work entirely electronically, and still use printed papers & old school folders to organise their papers, do you guys have a system for organising these papers?

I have bought a few folders today and have made a few rough distinctions, but I am wondering how more advanced academics organise their papers once they've read hundreds to thousands of them (and also roughly on the same very specialised topic).


texts: What is the current status of submitted manuscript?

texts:
I submitted a manuscript to ASME journal. Now the different status is showing as in the figure below: in the general screen, the status is associate editor assigned. However, in the detail screen, the status is under review.
I wonder that the manuscript now has been sent to the reviewer and is under review, or still with the associate editor?


texts:
I wish to apply for M.Sc studies in Computer Science to 3-4 universities. Only one of them requires the applicants to take a GRE (general test), and my question is as follows: is it a good idea to send the scores to the rest of the universities even though they do not specifically require it? Will it affect my chances?

FYI: I did one practice test and didn't get a good Quantitative Score (only 145), although I took the test without preparation, without paper (soon after taking the practice test I've read that is allowed scraps of paper) and after 4-5 years after finishing undergraduate studies.  I think with 2 months or so of moderate studies I can get about 160. What do you think I should do?


texts: What do you do when your PhD student is spending too long on a problem?

texts:
I am in math and I am fairly new in supervising PhD students, so I need some advice. I have a fairly good student who has made very good progress initially. But after a promising start, he's been stuck at the same problem for over one year, without making any progress. I have at a few occasions suggested that he should try another problem. He would then spend one or two weeks on another problem, but then he would always get back to the original problem with some new approaches/ideas (which still haven't turned out to work). He seems to have grown attached to this problem and feels that it would be a waste to abandon on something he's been working on for so long. I obviously admire his persistance and I always feel bad to discourage him from working on something he feels passionate about. But at the same time, I am worried that the longer he spends on this problem, the less likely he would be willing to move on and eventually give up altogether. What would you do in this situation?

Thanks in advance.


texts: Diversity Statement for Faculty Position in the US?

texts:
I am crafting applications for US faculty positions and Californian universities require diversity statements. Now, the problem is I have no idea what to write in it, since diversity can mean literally anything. I've seen various examples that are all based on personal struggles by people belonging to minority groups or active in some program related to mentoring/teaching to minorities, which makes writing such a statement much easier.

Now, I've never been involved in any "program" of this type. There's no research/teaching about minorities in my field (science). I'm no minority, since I'm a white european. I've lived here and there for various years (outside of my homeland) in my early life and to work these last 5-6 years, so I'm technically an emigrant, but I guess it'd be offensive to people emigrating due to serious reasons to pick on this to develop the statement.

I was wondering whether anybody can give me a solid to develop something tasteful. I thought about something about multidisciplinarity since I've worked and studied in various fields, but I think the purpose of such statement is to address racial/gender/sex diversity.


texts: Why do some professors have M.D. as well as/instead of a PhD?

texts:
I'm interested in stem cell, regenerative medicine, developmental biology, and genetics for reverse ageing. Since these topics are dealt with in one or both of medical school and school of science and professors have one or both of MD and PhD, I'm confused about my grad school prep. Also, I'm really not interested in clinical medicine, but I want to be a researcher throughout my life.

So, I think I need only PhD, but I'm wondering why some professors in these areas have MD?
Is it just because they decided to become researchers although they initially intended to work as a clinical doctor?


texts: Is it a good idea to dedicate a page to thank people on a personal website?

texts:
I wondered if it is a good idea to dedicate a whole page on a personal website to thank some people who have been useful/important through an academic career.

It would be something similar to what we can see in the "Acknowledgments section" of a PhD thesis or a book for instance but more general.


texts: How to know a supervisor's working style before joining his group?

texts:
I have recently joined a research group, where everything was excellent until two weeks of my joining.

My supervisor was very friendly when I met him for the first time at a conference. He was very interested in conducting work similar to mine in his lab. He showed interest in the subject and insisted that I make an application for a vacant position in his group.

He was very happy when I cleared all formalities (completed the application, was shortlisted, performed well in the interview and received an offer letter). After joining, I felt that I had joined a very good group that could help me enhance my research skills, as my colleagues are very friendly and helpful.

However, two weeks later, when I met my supervisor to discuss my work, he suddenly gave me many difficult tasks, many of which are very new to me and out of my skillset and told me that everything should be finished within another two weeks. He also told me that I should do everything by myself and never disturb my colleagues.

When I discussed this with my colleagues, they told me that he is very strict, not a good person, and he intends to dominate.

My question is how would I know about these things before joining his group?

For now, I can’t imagine how to continue to work in this group.


texts: Appealing failure in PhD qualifying exams

texts:
For a student who has failed the PhD qualifying exams twice, is there usually any hope for him/her appealing to stay in the school?

Any advice from professors/students with experience in this will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

Edit: Just asking out of interest, I haven't taken the quals yet.

Extra info for those who saw my previous question: I am now on good terms with 2 of the admin staff. One of them regularly chats with me. Learnt my lesson, no intention to make any enemies / offend anyone.


texts: Should I add a person who left my group to my evolved paper?

texts:
The answer, in theory, is trivial -- add them if you think they contributed -- but there are some nuances...

1) This person (who left about 4 months ago) was a more senior researcher (not Prof. title, in fact below the Prof.) who was in charge of managing a small research group that I'm part of. This person expected to be in the author list of all papers, given the seniority, even with minimal contribution (1h meetings every 2-3 weeks where basically I explained what I was doing and was given some high level comments)

2) We did have a couple of meetings prior to the departure, where the idea (the 'direction', the 'goal') of the research was agreed upon and how it could be tackled.

3) We agreed on a possible solution that I proposed, but this solution did not work (the person is not aware of this, since we haven't been in touch since the departure) and the paper is now quite different. Even though the technique I'm using now was brought up in a conversation, I had already had the idea that it could work so it was not this person's contribution (although the person might think so because it was 'said first').

4) We have had previous arguments over paper authorship, and I gave in and added the person just to be in their good graces.

I do not think this person contributed enough, given that the initial idea was mine, the solution was mine, the paper and experiments were done by me. But I don't want another enemy in academia. At the same time I have negative emotions toward this person because I was on the receiving end of some name calling and threats during a previous argument that affected me negatively.

Thanks for any input.

EDIT: I'm a postdoc.


texts: How to cite webpages in author-year citations?

texts: ACM requires author-year-style citations but I have several references such as web pages that have neither an identifiable author and don't state their year of publication. How should I cite such documents?


texts:
I've got a pretty awesome CV (I think), through hours of trailing through websites and reading tips. However that was back when I'd just finished University and now it needs updating!

I'm 25 and I am into my 3rd job since university and so have quite a bit of experience about these roles.

I have a few questions.

It seems my job experience now out weighs my education. Should I move my Work Experience to page one and my education to page two?
Do I still need my GCSE's on my CV? They don't seem very relevant.
How much detail about my education do I actually need?
Do people still care what A levels I did?
Do people want to know my dissertaiton title and what key subject I learnt, or is my degree title now enough.
Moving onto my work experience. I have had two jobs that are really relevant to what I'm aiming at and the third is less so. What is the minimum I should put for the third job, it's title?

Let's hope someone can help, everything I normally find is for new graduates CV's, bless them but I need some help too!

EDIT
Looking for UK or European answers, the US is too crazy. I don't have a GDP ;-)


texts: I am currently applying for a research/study grant, and need three letters of reference. Would it be out of line to ask the recommenders to coordinate with one another so that they don't say anything conflicting, and don't double up on the same exact content? Not sure what the norms are.


texts: Is there any PhD program does not accept foreigners due to its strategic importance?

texts:
I have heard that some countries do not allow others to have specific skills to avoid them earning strategic skills, e.g., about nuclear physics, or the genome.

Are there any examples of students not being except just because of their origin, religion or interest in special topics as a foreigner?


texts: How to negotiate a salary in Norway/Scandinavian countries?

texts:
So, my application looks like its going very well. I've got a feedback from the Norwegian institute that I am the most suitable candidate for the job among 13 ones. In a few weeks, I will be in the interview. I examine that there will be salary negotiations after the interview, taken into account the hard processing for all the applicants to the job and the committee's decision to choose me as the best candidate.

The salary pay scale is 57-76 according to the Norwegian system. To be honest, anything less than 68 will not be of interest to me. However, I don't want to lose the job because of such decision.
I don't find any information on here or the internet about how can I negotiate a salary in Academic Norwegian organizations.

I would appreciate your help or experience. PS: I have a family, maybe this can explain why I need a higher pay :P

Thank you.


texts: I 'm planning to apply for Masters in Computer Science (Non-thesis). I 'm wondering if both, pregnancy and school, can be managed at the same time. Or is better to wait until I get my baby and then apply for the school. I 'm trying to learn from others experiences.


texts: What to do when a PhD supervisor is not collaborating on publications after the PhD from it?

texts:
If someone's (SO) PhD supervisor is not collaborating on publications from SO's PhD. The problem arose as SO raised his mistrust (for the supervisor) on other academic issues. The supervisor treats student's work as his, and SO does not agree with that.

SO has one paper just rejected from a journal but could be submitted in another journal. This is from SO's PhD, so he would like to publish it and more from the PhD. SO is not sure how to go ahead with this, (with the supervisor or without). The paper is intellectually SO's but the supervisor helped in improving the writing (of the rejected paper). As the supervisor is refusing to collaborate, how can SO publish that? Can SO do that without supervisor name? What could be the consequences?


texts: I am a new lecturer in the field of Computer Science. I got my MSc and I would like to go for a PhD. However, I would like to improve my teaching methods and way of thinking before I pursue this goal. Any recommended books or articles?


texts: Getting a LOR from a postdoc for PhD applications

texts: I've always been advised to only ask for letters of recommendation from professors who have worked in their field for several years. However, I was wondering if it would be reasonable to ask for a letter of recommendation from a postdoctoral researcher who works in my field of interest and has graduated with a PhD from a school I am planning to apply to.


texts: What's the proper order for multiple educational degrees/certificates?

texts: Assuming someone has a PhD, MD, CISSP, CPA, CFA, MS, etc. etc. What's the proper way to order them after their name and is the comma needed after the last name? (i.e. Jane Smith, PhD, MD, etc. or John Smith MD, PhD, etc.)


texts: Testing out of Undergraduate Major Requirements

texts:
Background

I am a pending transfer student (incoming undergraduate sophomore) at various universities. I plan on pursuing a double major in math and physics.

Now, I believe that I am proficient in many of the math/physics topics required for a double major at these universities. However, I taught myself much of this material, so I do not have official coursework in these fields from my previous university.

I would like to get credit for these major requirements so I can focus on taking classes in new (hopefully graduate) topics.

Question

Is it in the norm to request an exam to place out of a major requirement?

If so, is there any protocol for making such a request?

If not, are there other methods of getting out of major requirements?

Thanks in advance.


texts: I am looking for a online PH.D in hospitality and marketing

texts: I would like to find an affordable worldwide (or at least not top $$$) and recognized Ph.D. program to write my Hospitality Marketing book as my Ph.D. any advice or suggestions?


texts: Working on other stuff (side projects and activities) without permission from the professor and department

texts:
I started a postdoc in a new lab a few months ago.
In my former lab, people worked on a variety of activities all the time. By these I mean activities other than the funded project and teaching, e.g. reviewing papers, grant writing, participation in working groups/editorial boards/societies/etc, (co)authoring papers on other topics, meeting researchers from other departments for informal discussions, and so on. Of course to a reasonable extent that it doesn’t conflict with the main activities for which the researcher is paid.

I was thinking that is the norm in academia, however in my new lab people seem to work only on their project and don’t do anything else. While I am not prohibited to work on these things, I am uneasy and puzzled to continue, but also I am not sure if bringing this topic to my professor is the best idea.

Should I continue working on these without an explicit permission? It is really important for my career to do other work too, e.g. I am currently finishing a paper I have been working on during free time, but it has nothing to do with my current project (which is good for my cv).

Can I have repercussions if I publish a paper on a topic that is not part of my funded job? Can I just say I worked on it in my free time or during weekends?


texts: Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?

texts:
I recently finished my PhD thesis which will be published as a book soon.
Now I'm wondering if it's possible or allowed to submit parts to a journal?

Normally the process would be the other way round I think: Submitting papers and "gluing" them together for the thesis. I've read the guidelines of some journals which state "that the work described has not been published before" or that "Papers must present scientific results that are essentially new".


texts: Can it hurt me to accept a brief "Visiting Lecturer" position?

texts:
I must make a difficult decision, so am having to turn to the wider community to gain some perspective.

My situation is the following: I am currently outside USA and am trying to enter academia here. I have been invited as a visiting lecturer at a top US university. However, I am worried that though certainly valuable, a purely teaching position might be a huge negative against me in terms of prospects for a more research oriented position (Asst or Assoc Prof). Or is my trepidation unjustified?


texts: How to improve chances of acceptance of a paper with an atypical structure?

texts:
I am working on a manuscript for publication in a chemistry journal. I find that my approach to the problem is very different to previous work on the matter. I find very hard to fit its argumentative line into the common scheme: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References.

I am scared that my paper will be automatically rejected if it doesn't follow conventional sectioning. Is this an issue?

What should I do to increase chances of acceptance of my paper?

I can only think of the following alternatives, but I am not experienced and I am unsure of which is the best way to go:

Force the standard sectioning at any cost of the argumentative line?
Use many paragraph in the introduction to describe the sectioning?
Just use my criteria and structure the paper in the way I think it is better?

My thesis is that previous work did not consider some peculiarities and because of that their results aren't reliable. I need to prove the existence of these peculiarities and argue that my approach is better in these cases. Only experts in method X itself know that method X fails in some cases, and most researchers just apply method X assuming that its results are very good, so I feel myself in the need to show believers in method X that the method fails in certain cases (I'm not an experienced published author, so maybe my ideas are wrong about the need to convince others).

Finally, as there is not a method Y that works for all cases, I used results of many methods for each case and made a deep analysis considering the strengths and weakness of each method. Due to this, and the particularities of each case, I used a different method for each case. Even if I list methods for each case, I would have trouble fitting this into a Methods section early in the paper.

Due to the peculiarities I mentioned, I analyzed secondary properties as well. This gave rise to a lot of methods and situations that are hard to describe. I performed many calculations with a variety of objectives (first showing the existence of the peculiarities, and then calculating a useful value), and as many of the readers are not experts in the method itself, I think I need to provide a lot of background information before describing the methods themselves.

Note: The reason I chose a journal in which I know that most readers aren't aware of these kinds of situations, is that the properties calculated are of their main/exclusive interest. In other fields these kinds of things are well known and this work does not provide any insight on them. I'm just trying to correct previous values reported in one field, by applying well known facts from another field.


texts: Points to consider when deciding whether to get married during a PhD

texts:
Marriage is a recurrent topic in the lives of most PhDs. The meagre pay and the burden of responsibility could make marriage in the middle of PhD look like a terrible idea. But on the positive side, marriage gives one an intimate companion in a long and bleak journey. The pay hurdle could also be overcome if the partner finds a job.

While eventually it is a personal decision for the couple based on their commitment and readiness, what are the points to remember when one thinks of getting married in the middle of a PhD?


texts: Informing my supervisor of discrepancy in the results

texts:
I am working on my MPhys thesis, on a certain dataset. Part of this dataset has been analyzed by my current supervisor during his PhD, with published results. He asked me to expand on that work by completing the analysis on the whole dataset.

When I repeat the analysis on the part he had already worked on, I get different results. Unfortunately he has not published any detail about how exactly he tackled the problem, and instead relied on his memory. He gave me advice like: put this parameter to 50, use feature A, use feature B, disable feature C and so on.

I was able to reproduce his result to within 10%, but yesterday I was horrified when I discovered that this was done without using one of the features he recommended, let's say feature A. I have played with the data since and am totally unable to reproduce the result (it is off by a factor of 2 when using my supervisor specifications).

Using feature A totally makes sense, so I am not sure on what to do: I am afraid that should I tell him about this problem, he would delay my upcoming viva. This has a lot of unwanted consequences, for example would force me to pay extra money to the University


texts: How can I get a postdoctoral position in neuroscience after completing my PhD in Mechanical Engineering?

texts:
I recently completed my PhD in mechanical engineering and have been applying for postdocs in neuroscience for the past 5 months.
My field is dynamical systems theory and statistics, so I look up professors working in neuroscience who use those techniques and send them emails.  I have sent 3 dozen emails since February but I barely get any responses.
I got two interview requests in February. One of them rejected me. The other professor stopped replying to my emails after the first interview and he did not pay my interview travelling expenses either.
Sometimes it feels very hopeless. Please, please any recommendations, help or advice is very appreciated; especially from people who have changed their research area post-PhD.
This is my Cover letter.

Hi Dr. F,
I am writing apply for the postdoctoral position in your lab at Columbia. My training is in the domain of dynamical and nonlinear systems theory (primarily in mechanical systems) and I am interested in bridging to Neuroscience for my postdoctoral research.
My interest in the brain goes back almost a decade to my undergraduate
years when I took up a regular meditation practice. I am very
interested in the broad and mechanistic aspects of neural computation.
I am fascinated by the application of concepts such as dynamical
systems, stochastic modelling and network theory to the study of the
brain.
I completed my PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the Some University
under the advisement of Dr. Advisor (June 2018
Conferral). I have worked on a wide variety of problems so far -
powering micro-implants in brain using arterial blood pressure,
stochastic analysis of nonlinear vibration energy harvesters, the
spontaneous spinning of a rattleback on a vibrating surface, sound
wave manipulation in fluids, tunable mechanical metamaterials and
nonlinear metamaterials. I currently have 3 published manuscripts, 2
journal papers in peer review and 1 manuscript in preparation. I have
published 9  peer-reviewed conference papers. During my PhD, I have
worked on collaborative research projects with senior faculty and also
as a mentor to several undergraduate students. I previously earned a
Bachelors and Masters in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute
of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur (Class of 2013).
I am fascinated by > your recent research contributions. I really liked the paper titled "  Abstract Context Representations in Primate Amygdala and Prefrontal >Cortex" that used neural population decoders to show that
representations of task contexts appeared in the Amygdala in addition
to the PFC. Also intriguing was the preferential weakening of the
signal in the Amygdala when an error was committed.  I also liked you
paper titled "Energy efficient Neuromorphic classifiers" that
implemented a basic image classifier on a novel neuromorphic processor
and demonstrated significantly lesser energy and computational cost.
During my postdoc, I intend to apply for fellowships and possible
avenues of funding. I am interested in using my training in dynamical
systems and stochastic analysis to current research problems in
neuroscience and hone my technical skill-set to succeed in my future
independent research. My CV is attached. Please do not hesitate to
reach out to me for further inquiries.


texts: Should i contact professors before applying for Masters in Canada?

texts: I am looking into sending out applications for M.Eng in Aerospace in Canada. I was wondering if it is necessary for me to contact a professor before applying as M.Eng is mostly project based and not research based course. And if I have to contact a professor,  what is the best way to frame an email?


texts: When is it expected to write someone's name correctly?

texts:
It is generally expected that European names be spelled correctly in academic correspondence and citations. This is expected, even when they use symbols not in the English language, when publishing in English (provided that a modern typesetting system will support it).

For instance, the German name "Müller" is expected to be spelled correctly, even though it could be spelled "Mueller" in the English Alphabet (without loss of information). Similarly, Gaelic names such as "Ó Ceallaigh" would not be Anglicised, despite a long history of this having been done before.

However, this is not the case for Asian languages, even Japanese names where they do not typically have the culture of adopting a nickname in Western Countries. For example, "田中" would be spelled as "Tanaka" to confirm with English language readers, despite Japan having it's own phonetic conventions to give the desired reading (e.g., "タナカ").

For a more comparable example, why is it ok to spell “Tokyo” in English when “Muller” is incorrect. The correct romanisation of 東京 is Tōkyō. Yet this is not used, nor is Toukyou or とうきょう which would both be more accurate. This misspelling occurs for names of people in Asian languages as well as names of places.

It's typically argued that this is because English-speaking audiences could not read Japanese names in their writing system but the same could be said for the umlaut, which is often mispronounced or misused (e.g., Mötley Crüe). With digital typesetting systems, would be entirely possible to spell "田中" correctly in a citation, even by someone who cannot understand the meaning, just as we do for diacritics for European names.

If spelling someone's name correctly is a matter of respect, when is it necessary to do so and why are there exceptions to this?


texts: How should someone with a German PhD be addressed in the UK?

texts:
This question has been discussed several times but there doesn't seem to be a clear answer for my particular situation.

I have a Dr.rer.nat from Germany but currently I am working for an institute in the United Kingdom. Is it legal or acceptable to continue to use the title Dr.rer.nat (First Name) (Last name) in the UK or do I need to change it to (First Name) (Last name), (Ph.D)?


texts: Is there any way to only do research after getting a Ph.D.?

texts: I'm currently a Master's student in my final year and I want to start a Ph.D. next year. I really like doing research (one of my papers got published in a fairly reputable journal), but I more or less dislike the teaching aspect that comes with the Ph.D. title. Is there any alternative way to do research, outside of industry, and not be obligated to teach?


texts: Research Posters - Do you put home university logo when you did the research at another university?

texts:
I am currently doing research at a school that is not my home institution. When I create a poster board for this research, do I put logos of both the school where I am doing the research as well as my home institution? Or do I not mention my home institution at all?

If appropriate, where do I mention my home institution on this research poster?


texts: Graduate advisors: what are some qualities that make a graduate student difficult to supervise?

texts:
I am asking this question to seek some perspectives from graduate advisors.

My question is: what qualities of a student makes him or her difficult to supervise? It is all the more valuable if this is based on actual experience.

Note that "difficult" is open to interpretation. The student may not necessarily be a bad student or poor learner; after all, most of the people who are admitted to a graduate program has went through some rigorous examinations in their lives. Maybe a student is such a genius, that he/she won't listen to you, and hence that presents a difficulty.


texts: Will an error in one of my publication affect the outcome of my PhD defense?

texts:
I'm a PhD student in physics in a European country. I'm about to have my PhD defence in about 6 weeks. I have 3 published papers and one manuscript ready for submission. My thesis is also finished (more or less). About 6 months ago I found several errors in one of my published papers. I should have spotted these errors much earlier because they were pretty obvious, but it took around one year after the article was published until I spotted the errors. Luckily, I was able to fix these errors and we submitted a corrigendum to the article which has now been published. I also included the correct data in my thesis.

I'm very worried that this will affect the outcome of my defence. My committee and my opponent will read my thesis, but also my publications. They will probably spot all the errors in the original article and ask me why I didn't spot these mistakes earlier. Even though we have published a corrigendum, it still took a long time after publication before I found these errors. I'm very worried that they will not give me my degree because of this. That would be a nightmare for me. My supervisor said that it should be fine, but I'm still very worried.


texts: My master thesis supervisor refused to recommend me for a PhD

texts: He reasoned that I lacked the understanding of the subject and so not competent enough for a PhD. I agree to his concerns, since I was studying this concept for the first time (for my thesis) and was a bit slow in my approach. On the other hand I'm very passionate about this particular subject and intend to pursue an academic career in this field. I did manage to get a decent score in my thesis and graduated with cum laude. The question is should I give up and take up some job since nothing will move forward without a recommendation.


texts: What is the difference between CS and Informatics degrees?

texts:
I am interested in pursuing a degree in Computer Science. Universities I've reviewed have "Major In Computer Science" , but give "Bachelor's in Informatics or Computing". There is no "Bachelors In CS", I simply couldn't find it. So are Informatics and Computing the same as CS ? or IT?

When I was looking for programming jobs, degree requirements were mostly CS. If I go to the university I mentioned above (Major in CS, but Bachelor's in Informatics), will I be able to write in my CV that I have CS knowledge?


texts: Author contributions include statements about experiment not conducted in study

texts:
I am a graduate student submitting a computational biology paper for peer review. It is intended to be a “methodology paper” for the journal. Our paper uses new methodology to analyze several public datasets and demonstrate the use and benefits of the new methodology. There were originally two authors (my advisor and I). We added a third author (Author C) for having shared one of the datasets (data #3) with us several years ago (and it became public recently). Author C had a few discussions with us about the results of our methodology applied to data #3 and provided a few interpretations. I recently asked Author C for how we should state author contributions and two of the sentences they added were along these lines:

“Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to identify results for data #3. All authors analyzed data #3.”

I was a bit concerned by both sentences.

Data #3 is open/public. I believe Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate data #3 for their own earlier paper, where they analyzed it using traditional methods. The current paper simply uses multiple public datasets (including theirs) to demonstrate the benefits of new computational tools. It is not about the collection of data #3. I feel they simply shared data #3 for the current paper and that we analyzed it with our own methods. If we state sentence #1, we may be expected to include a detailed methods section for the wet-lab collection process of data #3, which is really a part of their own previous paper and deflects from the focus of the current “methodology paper” (it would start to feel more like a “research paper”). At that point, it would be strange to not also include method sections for the collections of data #1, 2, 4, etc. (which are also public datasets).

Regarding sentence #2, I did not feel that Author C analyzed data #3 with us in the current paper, but simply provided interpretations based on their previous analyses of the data #3 for their own paper.

I do not plan to mention my concerns with sentence #2 as it is ambiguous, but I plan to propose to Author C that we remove sentence #1 or specify that it was for a previous paper. Is it reasonable for me to ask this? Or, when a wet-lab biologist like Author C generates data, can they add that they planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate that data as their contribution on multiple papers, without even including the details in the methods section of the papers themselves? Could this put them (or me as first author) at risk for appearing unethical?

I am mostly hoping to better ascertain what the “norm” and ethics are in this area, and how I can handle this situation respectfully and fairly.


texts: Accepted post-doc and have subsequently received offers for full time faculty position - quandary

texts:
After my PhD (Mechanical engineering) in 2013, I have been employed as a "visiting assistant professor-TERM" for 2013-2014 at the same university (in the USA). In this time I have been applying for several post-doc and faculty positions all around the world. The following fortuitous situation has now developed:

I was interviewed for a post doc position at a famed lab in Europe and received a job offer. This job offer is contingent on me getting security clearance for this lab and getting a long term visa. One of the ground rules laid out was I would not accept other post-doc positions.
Prior to this post-doc interview, I had interviewed for faculty position at US universities. Fortuitously a few weeks after this post-doc job offer, I have been offered full time faculty position at two other universities in the USA.
Now the reason I did apply for post-doc jobs is that they would help me build my network, publish more and help with an eventual faculty position!
I am in some moral quandary now: I know that I have given the post-doc PI my word and I will not renege on it. However, the faculty positions are definitely more lucrative and long term.
I accepted the post-doc job because I was asked to make a decision soon and since I am a foreigner, timing is everything for me and a "job in hand is worth two in the bush" Groans at quotation.

The options (likely and unlikely) that present themselves to me are:

Unlikely: Postpone the faculty positions to Fall of 2015. I don't think these universities would want to do that.
Likely: Angle for better pay/better title at the post-doc jobs.

I am hoping that given the experience in this forum, people could throw some light on this situation.

Edit: Advantages and disadvantages of these positions

Advantages and Disadv. of Postdoc:

(+) Great change of work, reputable lab, exposure to different work culture, deadlines, work pressure, expanding professional network on both sides of atlantic
(-)1-2 years only, relatively poor pay

Adv. and Disadv. of faculty position

(+) Faculty position nuf' said. Much Better pay, "long" term
(-) Will miss out on once in a lifetime post doc at great lab


texts: Peer-reviewer asks the author for the manuscript to be reviewed by two other experts

texts: I have received a peer-reviewer's comment that states that my manuscript needs to be reviewed by experts on two different fields. Is it possible that I am being asked to find those two experts myself and ask them to review my manuscript, or is this probably a mistake/missunderstanding (that is, maybe that comment was not meant to be sent to the manuscript's author)?


texts: Is it reasonable to keep rejecting postdoc offers to honor your part of the agreement with a professor for another postdoc?

texts:
I met Professor X, during an interview at a high-ranking university in which I wasn't selected. Weeks later, the professor invited me for an informal video chat. He gave me a lot of feedback and told me that I wasn't selected after a split decision and want me to join his team at his university. He really liked my profile and said that he can help me in my career basically (in particular in developing the skills that I needed, which contributed to me not getting that job offer).
He invited me to apply for a postdoc that he's going to advertise and gave me articles to read. He didn't say "I'm definitely hiring you," but he sure gave me a lot of info about the project and really wanted me to apply. Also, at the time, I was really lost because I had 0 options and 0 interviews, and that chat gave me the first hope after months and months of looking.
Days after that chat I was invited for two interviews from two universities, A and B. I got a quick offer right after the first interview from university A, I emailed Professor X about my situation and he said you can accept and ask if a collaboration was an option. He also mentioned that his university is a lot better than University A, which is true. After some thinking, I decided to reject A's offer and wait for the X's postdoc to be advertised, which he said should be available in a few days.
Then, University B sent me an offer. Note that University B is a much better university than previous ones: top 5 in the world! I really don't know what to do! I can't keep emailing Professor X after every offer I get.
My gut tells me to honor my part of the agreement and wait for Professor X, especially that we've established that first personal contract and he has a good impression of me. Also, he also put extra effort (invited for chat, feedback, and opening a postdoc that I can apply for)
Another professor said that you don't say "no" to a high rank university, others are just surprised that I rejected an offer after months of stress and looking. Help! it's a moral dilemma. Am being unreasonable here?


texts: What does "DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr." in a professor's title mean?

texts:
I've got to cite the author of a text and her full title is

  Jeanne Brett, DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of
  Dispute Resolution and Organizations; Director of the Dispute
  Resolution Research Center

I'm at a loss, her name is Jeanne Brett so why is this person's name in her title? When I google  "dewitt w. buchanan" all I get is entries for DeWitt W. Buchanan or this professor. What does it mean in academia terms, is this a prize, the name of an institute, an honorific title, is it important to cite it when talking about the professor?

I could have posted it to ELU, but it seems something very idiomatic to academia. So...help ?


texts: Would having some flaws in a perfect English SOP be bad?

texts:
I have my native friend who is willing to check my SOP. I just have added a part to present the reasons why I want to pursue in department X. Unfortunately my friend is on their vacation and I don't want to bother them. The rest of the SOP is already written and proofread. Of course I will proofread it myself, but in case I cannot find any mistake, how would this be bad if I just submit this SOP?

My TOEFL writing score is 23 btw.


texts: How to assess the proportion of post docs in a lab that go on to become PIs?

texts:
Is there any good resource to figure out the track record of academic success of research lab’s alumni (e.g. how many of postdocs became a PI)?

I'm a grad student in the US who will finish PhD next spring, and I've just started to find a postdoc position. I realized it's crucial to find an postdoc advisor who has a good track record of alumni's getting job in academia, since I want to be a PI in the future.

It looks like many famous labs with big papers actually have too many postdocs and grad students so that not many of them have successful career. Productivity per person is diluted too much in those labs. I also doubt one's publication record is the only factor for success in getting a PI position as far as I hear from people around me. (Of course, I know that if you have a big paper in a big lab, that is the best way to get a position)

I am open to go to any country for work if the working environment is good. My field is biophysics with some flavor of materials science.


texts: Is it realistic to deal with a huge undocumented code base for master's project?

texts:
I'm currently pursuing a Master's degree in a STEM field and working on a thesis. For my master's thesis, my advisor suggested I expand the code of the group's  software and add new features to it. However, is very large (some files are thousands of lines long) and hard to read. It consists of many different files  and there are hardly any comments that explain what the functions do,  the meaning of the variables, etc. There's no documentation that  explains what the functions/classes do. It seems like whenever I am focusing on  what a function does, there's multiple functions/variables in it that  are defined in another file and those functions/classes themselves are hundreds  of lines long

While my advisor has mentioned he is open to helping me with whatever  questions I have, most of the problems I'm having are related to the  code, since it's so gigantic and I don't even know where to begin to ask questions. But the prof doesn't know much about the  code, so I have to ask the postdoc whenever I have questions about the  code. However, the postdoc doesn't even know alot of the code (he knows c++, but most of the code was written by a former postdoc), and  told me I should email that former postdoc to  answer my questions about the code.

I've spoken to some people about this, and they've said this is a very bad situation. Should I leave this group and join a new one, even if it means I  have to delay my graduation by an extra semester(assuming that I will graduate on-time if I  continue with this current group)?

It's been a month since I joined this group and I hope to finish by next spring, but I don't know how realistic that goal is.


texts: How should the CV for the application of a pure math PhD applicant be structured?

texts:
I currently have four sections:

Education
Academic and research experiences
Honors and Awards
Work and Volunteer Experience

I have the following questions:

Should I include a section which gives a detailed account for the advanced math courses I have taken?
Should I elaborate on 3 and 4, or do I just list my awards and experience in those sections without explaining anything?
Should I include my research interest and standardized test scores in my CV?


texts: General structure of Research Statement (applying for faculty position)

texts:
I'm going to apply for assistant professor positions (in theoretical computer science) soon, and I'm trying to get a feeling for how to write a good research statement.

Should it contain a detailed overview of my (recent?) publications?
If the answer to 1 is yes, should I highlight my specific contributions in multi-author papers - as opposed to "we proved this and that..." ?
If the answer to 1 is yes, I must list the references here that I'm mentioning, which are also stated (in the full list of publications) in my CV, right?
Assuming there's no page limit, what's an appropriate length for a research statement?

My current plan is to group my work into topics and then, for each topic, provide a short overview of the respective papers ("What I've done so far") and some outlook on some future work ("What I would like to do").


texts: Is there a website that lists the journals that are actually scams?

texts:
I constantly receive emails from editors asking me to submit papers for their journals.

However, only a handful of them originate from a trustworthy source. The vast majority are just scams — journals with no reputation at all, willing to publish an(y) article for a fee.

My biggest problem with that is that I lost one or two real good opportunities to publish because I dismissed the email, thinking it was a scam.

Is there a list that I can use to easily check the reputation of a journal, in order to avoid this to happen?


texts:
A while ago I got a job as a theoretical interdisciplinary modeler in a purely experimental lab of a different field from my own. It was an experiment for the lab and a big change for myself.  It was risky for both, but also potentially a great opportunity.

Unfortunately I ended up feeling professionally isolated.  Most people here know little math, some very little.  There isn't anyone I can discuss the details of my work with, only the "big picture" and results.  It turns out that I am the kind of person for whom discussions and interaction is essential.  Without them my thought seem to gradually slow down and stop.  When trying to solve a mathematical problem, I find myself unable to see obvious things and can barely make any progress.  Yet when I get the opportunity to discuss it with others, suddenly everything becomes obvious.  It's often not even necessary to get feedback from someone, it's sufficient to explain what I am doing, to put it into clear terms, and the solution just pops out.

The big question: How can I work efficiently and maintain my creativity and productivity when working in isolation?

I have tried several things.  I tried to maintain contact with former colleagues through VOIP, though this is not too practical.  Then I noticed that sometimes it is sufficient to just think about how to explain a question to someone, and the solution comes to me before even calling them.  Purely imaginary discussions help too.  I think this is where the solution to my difficulties should lie, but after realizing this, I am still struggling.  I also tried writing down the problem to force myself to articulate it better, but this turned out to be ineffective and extremely time consuming.

Has anyone else encountered similar difficulties?  Is it a common problem?  There are famous scientists like Ramanujan who are said to have worked as hermits and still made great leaps.  I imagine that what works best differs from individual to individual.  I suspect that I am particularly susceptible to grinding to a halt once I find myself in isolation, despite being an introvert.  But I do believe that there should be a way to improve the situation.

I have already decided that in the future I must avoid such situations. But until then I must find a way to be more productive while working alone.


texts: Student essay feedback for a large class

texts:
I am teaching a large Humanities class (150+ students) in the US this semester and am in the process of grading midterm essays. This is my first time teaching a class this large and I'm not sure how to handle feedback.

With smaller classes, I always liked to give students very detailed feedback, so that they could understand why they got the grade they got and so that they could improve their writing in the future. This is very time consuming and therefore unpractical with that many students. I also do not want to burden the TA helping me grade either.

I'm wondering what the best course of action is?
Should I just give them their grades and tell them to come to office hours if they want to have more detailed feedback ?


texts: Bachelors thesis supervisor headed for emeritus; professorship won't be restaffed

texts:
First off, I'd like to acknowledge that I am not sure whether this post fits here, as most discussions on here revolve around higher levels of academic life. Let me know/remove this post if it does not belong.
I am in my final year of studying computer science in Germany. I also study some maths on the side, and intend to complete my maths degree after obtaining my bachelors in CS.
I have found a broad field I'd like to write my thesis on (programming language theory in general or type theory in particular). There currently is 1 professor at our institute who has been doing research on type theory in a programming languages context for a long time, but they are headed for emeritus, which I've learned from talking to current and former students of theirs.
When I asked them about a thesis, their response was rather brief, and could be summed up as

If you can see yourself doing this more or less on your own, it would be possible. I'd recommend a review-style thesis, you don't need to come up with new results. Please look for articles yourself, I am currently ill.

While I know their health situation is none of my concern, I am wondering what would happen if they passed away while I'm working on the thesis (I suspect they might be chronically ill, for reasons I will not go into). Also, I don't know whether I want to put the burden of having to supervise me on them when they're headed for emeritus and possibly not feeling well overall anyways.
This situation I deem is much more common on higher levels of education, such as grad school, so I wanted to ask whether anyone here has had any experiences in similar situations.
I know their professorship won't be restaffed, so there won't be a new professor of programming language theory/type theory following their footsteps. This makes me somewhat sad, since that field interests me the most. There is also the option of external advisory (e.g. professor at a different university), but that doesn't seem practical, as I would need to find a professor (not just any faculty but a full professor) at my institute for assessment of the thesis (which there won't be any of once the current professor officially retires), and this would put a lot of extra work on every involved party (external professor, local professor, examination office, me); on top of that it's probably rather unlikely a professor from another university would supervise me, as I have gathered from other posts on this SE instance, and as I of course don't have any special research experience in the field to offer to them.
Also, I would like to ask whether you have a method of figuring out what to do. I know the basic questions to ask myself are

do I see myself coming up with a thesis topic and finding relevant literature on my own?
would I be fine with writing a thesis in a field I am less interested in but would have safe supervision?
should I even care this much, given it is just a bachelors thesis?

I should probably mention they have 1 PhD student who seems to be in the process of finishing up their thesis, but they don't seem to be willing to supervise students right now, at least that is the impression I got from a past correspondence.
Thank you.