Does it make sense to get a PhD if a person does not want to be in academia and prefers to stay in business? I am working in a highly technical field (quantitative finance/ statistical analysis) for a private company with a Master of Science degree in economics.

Does it make sense to get a PhD (in quantitative finance, math, statistics) if I do not want to be in academia and prefer to stay in business.

What I expect from PhD:

Structure and deepen my knowledge in the relevant fields through
high quality classes (where I sit and listen and learn and do
homework to make sure that I have learned).
Get the ability to read any scientific article in the related fields and without much pain understand 90% of it to the very last detail (and implement ideas from the article in my work).
Possibly acquire certain thinking and problem solving culture (so vague... and I guess after my Master I have a fair part of it already(?))

Also important:

PhD was never mentioned as a prerequisite for a promotion or a salary increase.
My colleges who have PhD are not visibly advantaged by the company (do not know about the rest of the industry, but the company being a big player is representative of it).
I enjoy learning new stuff on my own (not a problem to spend many nights with a math book), but hate the status of a student (little money, slave of professors and their peculiar exam requirements).

So should I go for a PhD or rather a specialized Master, or develop myself through separate university courses of my choice and professional programs + self-study?

Any pieces of advice from people used to be in my situation?

Ultimately no one else can make this decision for you. At best we can give our biased (after all many of us here will have taken the PhD/academic route) opinions.

First of all doing a PhD for financial or career reasons is not, in general, a good idea. Yes we all know the story of google, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't go into the PhD planning to make it big and it was their passion that produced google. A PhD is a long and sometimes painful process taken on because the individual gets a buzz from the challenge, the field and a desire to push it forward. There will be weeks if not months when nothing is working or making sense. I think it was Boot and Randall, after having developed the high-power magnetron for radar at Birmingham university and giving the allies a much needed early warning system, who attributed their success to something akin to "the one day in which all the equipment in the lab happen to work". Tongue and cheek and modesty no doubt, but it serves as a good antidote to research life - very few things, codes included, work first time! Its the burning passion that keeps you going time and time again until you get results.

Second, a PhD is not taught (Not sure where your from but the USA and some European PhD's do have a taught masters in the first year, but this is not the norm in Europe). Classes to a large extent are not an efficient use of time, they serve to give a broader overview of the field but will certainly not be anywhere near enough to get you through a PhD. If its being taught in a class its not research! And its certainly not going to be a novel idea for your thesis. At the end of the PhD you should be the world expert on the niche area of your field, there are no (or few) textbooks on the subject - because you have written them yet!

When reading papers, even the most experienced academics, are unlikely to understand everything first read, the specific technique maybe, the unique application? probably not. As a research you don’t want to waste time absorbing every little detail, just the bits relevant to your research. You simply don’t have time.

Research does teach you a certain set of skills, first is how to deal with failure and keep going - Persistence. Project management (3 year long project after all) skills and of course critical thinking and problem solving skills, particularly in the  technical areas.

Now, none of what I said should be taken as trying to put you off but rather help you make an informed decision. You could possibly look at a research masters, known as an MRes? This may be the best of both worlds. Good luck with whatever you choose to do and remember you don't need PhD's or degrees to continue learning, someone above mentioned online course and these open access avenues are a great way to expand your knowledge.

If you absolutely won't an academical carrier, then the price of the Phd is probably too big for you.

Yes, in this case it means 5-6 years of needless and low-paid hard work for you. If you want to research, it will be later the "golden age" of your life. Everything has its cost. I know many Phd owners thinking similarly to you, and I know also people who left the academy after MSc and they repent this in their entire life.

Working by that company isn't the only option for you.

Your market value will get higher, much higher, by your PhD - especially if you can find a job around your research area. On the nearer region I know better the wage difference between MSc and Phd is around 30-50%.

But you have your role by your current employer. This role doesn't change automatically. Your promotion depends not only on your degree, but on the possibilities which this company can give you.

Every hierarchy has its limits for you. Its limits, until them it allows you to advance. Over this limits you can't advance efficiently.

On my experience, it is a very common thing, that getting an academical degree results a workplace change in a year.


How should I avoid someone patenting technology in my paper/poster? I am working on a paper in the field of AI. I've developed a new technology that allows many state of the art benchmarks to be improved on. I want to make sure that when I publish the paper, anyone/company that wants to use the technology can do so free of charge with no strings attached. My fear is that someone will patent the work soon after I publish the paper and prevent this from happening. Should I patent the technology myself before publishing? Is there a better solution?

You need not patent your invention. The requirements of a patent are that it is new, useful and non-obvious. To another person your published work is considered prior art. If someone else tried to patent your work the patent office would reject it as anticipated.

Of course this assumes the patent office finds your work. The inventor could fail to disclose it and the patent office could fail to find it in search. In such a case you can typically submit your work to the relavent patent offices to have the patent/patent application invalidated/rejected.

File an application yourself.  Preferably both US and EU ("WO").  This is the best method.  Unless you genuinely think you've got lightning in a bottle, you're better off weedling your company or school (IP dept) into funding and writing it.  In all likelihood, you benefit more from the CV bullet and the plaque than from the commercial invention.
Publish it.  In a good, well read journal.

Note: Method 1 is preferable.  Method 2, or even just your poster, just "gives you an excuse to sue".  But likely won't stop someone else from getting awarded a patent.  (A lot of people have the wrong ideas about patents...the true test of patent commercial import comes during litigation.)  Method 1 is much more pre-emptive.


One of my student researchers is likely falsifying some results/data. What are the consequences? Relevant info and background:

I'm an engineering Post Doc at an American university.  One of my roles is to basically function as a 'project manager' for a couple projects that have a number of Graduate-level RAs working on them.   I have a good relationship with all the RAs and all are hard-working.

I'm convinced that one of the graduate RAs is falsifying computational results/data (also called "rigging data" by many) in some cases.  Note that the individual appears to be doing this for only some cases, not all.  I have many reasons to believe this, but here is a few: (1) inability to replicate various results, (2) finishing the work at a pace I think is not feasible, (3) finishing his work at home where he surely does not have the software environment to actually complete the work.  There are also other reasons I believe this to be the case, but you get the point.  I'm also convinced this has occurred for over 1 semester, so I probably need to report this since I am responsible for overseeing all the work.  However, the student in general is a good person and hard worker. He has passed the preliminary exams and is finished with all classes - I'd hate to see him expelled from the university since he's this far into the program.

I have some questions:

What do you think could be the maximum punishment for this grad student/researcher?  I'd feel terrible if it resulted in expulsion.  I would think that you would have to receive at least one warning from the university before an expulsion, except in very extreme cases.  I'd be fine if this resulted in suspension, and even losing funding, but for anything more I'd feel bad.  What is the standard maximum punishment for these cases?  Also, what is the most likely punishment?
What is the punishment for me if I don't  report this problem?  For instance, say I just pretended ignorance.  It is extremely unlikely I would do this, but it's worth asking.
How common is this?  I would think this happens once in a while - a grad student decides to be lazy and fabricate a small portion of the overall results to avoid working the weekend or something.  An experienced professional would know this is seriously wrong, but not necessarily a mid-level PhD student.

Any advice from people with experience in this, professors, grad students, principle investigators, etc would be great

You have suspicions, but the evidence, as you sketch it here, is circumstantial. You need hard proof. Then you can (and must) act.

Falsifying data is a capital crime in academia. It wastes time, possibly years of other people's work. Don't let it get through. This person, if they indeed falsified data and would come through with this, will taint anybody and anything they had to do with - you, your group, your department, your university. Their results will be worthless, and so will be the degree you bestow on them.

You would feel sorry for that person if expulsed; but how sorry would you feel for a person who for 2 years will try to reproduce this grad student's results and fail for no fault of their own? How about their life and career? An honest mistake is one thing, but faking data? You are feeling sorry for the wrong person here; you'll spare the guilty and will let the innocent being impaled? A grad student is sufficiently mature to know better than to produce "synthetic" data.

How about the person abetting such a fabrication? Frankly, if caught, depending on the power structure that person may get away with a milder penalty "for not knowing what was going on", but in principle they should get the same, if not a harsher penalty, because they certainly cannot claim they didn't know that this is wrong; and they know the repercussions.

How common is it? Hard to say, but there were a number of large scandals (Jan Hendrik Schoen comes to mind), there is probably a halo of minor such attempts. From my own anecdotal stock: I once heard the conspiracy theory that spectroscopists would intentionally introduce "innocent" wrong factors into published formulas that could be interpreted as honest mistakes to prevent competitors from progressing. I didn't believe it, however, once I had to use such a formula from a paper, and to be satisfied I rederived it and some of its "brothers" myself in a tortuous process taking several weeks; lo and behold: I found that one of them had an integer factor wrong. It goes without saying that I have no real reason to assume it was intentional, but the conspiracy theory still lodges in the back of the mind.

Bottom line: if he really fakes data, letting this happen is not an option; but the evidence must be carefully and (important for fairness to the accused) confidentially vetted to establish whether this is indeed the case.

Falsifying data is a big no-no. It's on par with (and possibly worse than) plagiarism. It can ruin careers, and can lead to a whole host of huge problems (we don't need any more Andrew Wakefields). So if the student is doing this, you absolutely must report it and cannot feel bad.

That said, from the information you provided, there really isn't strong evidence. If I were on that jury, I would acquit without a second thought.

1) Working from home: Can he connect to a network to access the needed software? Can he run the program in the lab, get the raw data (say in a text file, or spreadsheet) take it home and do post processing/analysis there?

2) Not replicating data: I've written programs and ran simulations that performed beautifully and satisfied all the tests. But when I get to the group meeting, it fails. Why? Because I changed something that "wouldn't affect the results or the existing tests" (Ha!) between the time I originally got it working and the meeting. Or maybe an initial guess was changed. It might only take a few minutes to fix on my own, but in a meeting/high pressure environment I can't fix it right there. To me, that seems like a plausible explanation. (And I'm assuming there's no randomization in the code, I've had Monte Carlo approaches give significantly different results depending on the seed used).

3) Working faster than you expect: I see two possible explanations for this: a) The student is better than you think. b) The student is worse than you think. For (a), perhaps the student is able to crank out code fast, when he hits his stride and has a good mental map of where to go and how things should fit together (this "gunslinger" approach can be effective, but also can let bugs show up that make data replication difficult). Or he has written scripts to run several computations simultaneously or overnight. For (b), perhaps the student "hacks" everything in the code. Hardcodes things that should not be hardcoded, for example. Messes with things that shouldn't be messed with. This can give the illusion of working fast, but results in unmaintainable or inconsistent code, essentially borrowing time from the future.

Obviously, you have access to more information than we do, so perhaps these explanations don't apply. I would suggest talking to the student about the results, though not in an accusing way. Ask him to explain the results, explain what he did, and how he did it. Look through the code that he uses with him, make sure you both understand it. Perhaps there's honest mistakes to be corrected. Maybe there isn't a problem. If he seems to have no idea what he did or can't explain the procedure, then you probably want to bring up your concerns with the PI. But, under no circumstances can you let data falsification continue.


How write an article when the "waterfall model" is not a good fit? Most scientific articles are written as if the research followed some kind of waterfall model. In other words, a typical paper proceeds pretty linearly from the idea to the results to the implications of the research, hiding the fact that one thing might have lead to another in a very non-linear way.

I guess the reason for the linear format is to attempt to make the research easy to digest for others, and to keep the paper as short as possible. However, what should one do when following the standard format becomes a too large burden (e.g. excessive cross-referencing), or hides a key insight about the research process itself, which could be valuable for others to know?

Whatever format you choose, you have to make sure that your audience can grasp what your paper is about within the first 4 sentences, that (s)he won't get "lost" while reading your article, and that it is easy to strategically skip much of the article and still get the main message. Remember that there is way too much being published, and that it is impossible to read it all. So most articles are only quickly glanced at and are only read if you convince the reader while (s)he is glancing at your article that it is interesting. This is the benefit of the standard format of articles.

While writing your article, you are obviously convinced that your article is worth reading, but keep that reader in mind for whom your article is just one of way too many and who won't read your article very attentively.

For example, the research process almost never follows the strick linear form in which it is presented in most articles. If that deviation is somehow relevant, then you can often use footnotes to discuss that without deviating from the standard form. For things that need more room, there are (web-)appendices.

Though most of the papers publish only  mention their liner approach, some do try to mention the multiple path summery (mostly psychological research), but that's where citing comes, an author conducts his/her research in a single path with controlled conditions, and opens door to other authors to take other path.

Even if you plan to include all the possibilities of your research outcomes, you should first follow waterfall model, and just jot down other possible outcomes for future, because reaching the destination is initially lots of trial and error process.

PS: it will mostly depend on your area of research and the approach you are taking


Are academics more tolerant of biological and philosophical differences? My internal model of academia is that (1) as a group we are one of the most tolerant of biological and philosophical differences (e.g., gender, sexual orientation, and religion) and (2) that we are likely to take extreme views on issues related to our research. I have no evidence for either of these and they seem potentially at odds in that it seems strange that people would be so passionate about their research and be blase about their religion (or any other philosophy). Is there any work that characterizes the level of tolerance of academics on various issues?

There is a recent study which generated quite a bit of noise and seems to indicate that racial and gender biases do indeed exist in academia (at least in the U.S.). The researchers sent e-mails to professors pretending to be a prospective graduate student, and response rates varied widely depending on the ethnic- and gender- markers in the purported student's name.

I think it might depend on the field. For example, if you are in a Biology department, you're likely to be labeled as "ignorant", "dumb", or "coward" if you are Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim or any religion that believes in a God who creates), regardless of whether you believe in evolution or not, and regardless of what your actual religious beliefs are. Generally, in natural sciences that's a pretty common trend I think. One could argue that this is more related to the second point you mentioned, rather than the first one, but given that this intolerance, as I said, is regardless of the opinion of the religious person about the origin of life and rules of physics, one could also argue that having this opinion that "any religious person is incapable of appreciating science" as an assumption, is a form of intolerance.

(There is a documentary about Christian professors in science (or biology) departments who were not tolerated by their colleagues and were discriminated against, but I couldn't find it now)

When it comes to ethnic and racial tolerance, in my experience, a level of racism and orientalism that would face condemnation in the US (but not necessarily in Europe) is not uncommon in academic communities in Europe. That being said, my impression is that they're still considerably more tolerant than an average person (or at least an average conservative) in that society.

But overall, I perceive academics to be more tolerant than the median member of the society.


How to react to some students who book an appointment and do not show up? I wonder what is the best strategy to follow to respond to students who book an appointment with you and do not show up. It is just so un-nice when this happens.
I do not want the student to be upset but at the same time to honour his/her bookings.

Back when this was something I had to deal with, I would:

Always have something to do if someone doesn't show up for their appointment, or if their question gets resolved very quickly.

Write brief emails to no-shows along the lines of

Dear X:
I'm following up on our appointment today at 14:00. I hope everything is OK with you.
Let me know if your question is still relevant and you would like to reschedule.
If you answered your own question, I'm glad, but next time I'd appreciate
a heads up for scheduling purposes. Ditto if something came up and you just couldn't
make it. See you in class tomorrow, I hope!

Get progressively more direct if people missed several appointments, to the extent of refusing to make further appointments (leaving the student the option to come for the office hour I had for appointment-free visits every week).

Note the tone of the email in point 2 is not demanding of an explanation (or indicating a desire to judge whether excuses provided are adequate), but is also openly asking for a change in behaviour, without pulling rank or going passive-aggressive. Generally I got belated apologies and improved future behaviour. And a couple of times the "I hope everything is OK", meant genuinely, surfaced that something pretty dire had happened (where a pure chastising email soliciting an apology would have been cringingly tone-deaf!), including a student on the verge of an emotional breakdown where we were able to get them help.
Now, a couple of decades later, I'd still do the same -- and suspect I've written stuff not too dissimilar in tone to peers and superiors too!
Basically: be frank about what you need to change, don't make an investigation of it, and open the door to empathy.
Editing to add: Comments/other answers have pointed out potential different cultural expectations, and/or that the tone is not optimal if there turns out to have been a real emergency. Regarding the first, agreed: needs to be tempered by cultural norms. But if student behaviour feels outside of local norms, do go ahead and address it. Regarding the 2nd, also true. At the risk of going very math/stats-nerdy, there is a Bayesian prior regarding what caused the missed appointment. My answer assumes the Bayesian prior is fairly flat between emergency, forgetfulness, student self-absorbtion/failure to consider from others' point of view, and overall excessive academic stress. The tone tries to be acceptable and hopefully effective in all these instances. If your Bayesian prior is more heavily weighted to one pole, your optimal tone will change. This includes repeat offenders (where the Bayesian prior weighs more heavily on self-absorbtion), reason to suspect emergencies, etc.

I would just brush it off. If they really need it, they will come back or email you


Should I review a paper that violates the maximum length limitation? I am reviewing a conference paper that violates the maximum number of pages by more than 10%. I believe that this is enough reason to outright reject the paper.

However, maybe the authors would welcome reviewer comments anyway. But I do not want to waste a day's work, in case nobody cares about my comments. What is customary and ethical in such a situation?

There is only one possible answer: Ask the Program Committee chair. It is an almost-one-line mail:

  Hello Jeffy,

  one of the papers I've got to review for the ABC Congress doesn't fit in the page limit given, it's: John Doe et al.: Study of DEF in context of XYZ, link:
  http://sciencesconf..../link-to-the-paper-in-the-review-system

  Should I still review it or is exceeding the length itself a reason for rejection?

  Cheers, Tom

It saves troubles in the thing I think. It may be fine in some conferences (when the page limit is taken loosely) and may be a problem elsewhere (when it's strict for instance because the proceedings publisher is strict about it, or for whatever reason). You can't know this, there's the PC chair to know this.

Ask them to re-write it properly or if they refuse reject the paper. Schools work on a basis of you teach this person and they adhere to you're  guidelines not vica versa. As they are opposing this is the basic contract of teaching discluding money and limitations such as not permenantly confiscating or prosecuting.


How can I carefully find out if a professor's work is well-respected within the department? I am a first-year PhD student interested in working with a professor at my university. I have had two nice meetings with him and liked the project ideas we discussed.

But a student told me that he thought the professor's work was derivative and mostly hyped. I asked my academic advisor (a professor who suggests courses to take, answers questions, etc.), who agreed. The thing that stood out from his answer was: "Yeah. Professors talk about other professors, and ..." Which suggested to me that this was not a solitary opinion. The advisor's point was, without being primed, essentially the same as the other student's: the work often seemed like a rebranding and slight modification of other people's work. FWIW, my academic advisor is the research advisor of the student who first warned me. I didn't tell them what they each said, but I can assume they have talked.

Anyway, now I am wary. How can I better judge for myself, given that I am too junior to honestly know if the work is derivative. The professor is quite young but has been publishing in the top journals/conferences in the field.

First of all, every academic has their own opinion of others' work. Just because a student (or your advisor) thought that someone else's work was not significant does not necessarily mean that it is the truth. Although your advisor cites "others" in relaying his opinions, maybe your advisor and the professor in question hate each other, maybe the department places little importance on the professor's work, etc. On the other hand, note that if the professor is publishing in the top journals, then there are some people who think that your professor's work is great also! The point here is that most of the time, opinions are subjective.

There are a couple of ways that you can judge someone's work, being junior.

The first is to see how their students do after graduation. Look at their recent students and postdocs, and see how many remain in academia. Did they manage to secure good positions? Are they productive with research? These are good indications of whether your professor's work is derivative or original.

Secondly, talk to the older grad students or postdocs. They have been around the field long enough to understand what work is important, but not long enough that they are straightforward with you. Talk to a lot of them, and see if there is a consensus, although it would be difficult to get a fair sample!

But most of all, do what interests you! It is good to have an influential advisor, but unless you really believe in your work, I don't think it matters too much whether your research is important or not.

How can I carefully find out if a professor's work is well-respected within the department?

Talk to the dean or director of graduate studies in your department.  Your department has a responsibility to guide you in choosing an advisor.


Buying a gift for my PhD student after his graduation All posts here on the "graduation gift" subject are about a gift from the PhD candidate to the professor (after the graduation of course). What about a gift for the student from the professor?
My student just graduated, and he really is an exquisite person, he worked more than he probably should have (extra hours, weekends) without me asking, and even with me saying he should not work that much. He was very nice with all the other lab members. I don't know if he will get me something and honestly I don't care. I would like to get him something, for sure a handwritten note to thank him. But I was also thinking to buy him a present, such as a bottle of wine from my country.
I am an Assistant Professor in the USA, but I was not born here. Do you think it will be appropriate to buy and attach a gift to the hand-written note?

I don't see any problem with this. Something from your own country would be appropriate, as would a book that is important in your field. Even a tourist souvenir from your country as something to remember you.
But not too expensive or elaborate.

tl;dr: Back pay for overtime work.

My student just graduated, and he really is an exquisite person, he worked more than he probably should have (extra hours, weekends) without me asking

What you're describing is the common situation in US academia where Ph.D. candidates - junior researchers - work more than a full-time position without any overtime pay. In most US universities they are not even recognized as employees! (but this may be changing). The base pay is also typically rather poor in the US, if I recall correctly. Also, surprisingly, many kinds of employees are not eligible for overtime pay even by law... how terrible!
Having said that, if the Ph.D.'s salary/stipend had come out of:

your personal research budget - your gift should be pay for the extra time he worked beyond a 40-hour work week. Seeing how you supposedly suggested he not work those hours, I suppose it might be fair to just pay the base hourly rate, not the 1.5x rate the law provides form.

a departmental/university budget - Offer to cover the legal expenses for a lawsuit in which he gets to sue the university for overtime pay owed to him.

(If he refuses to sue, get him some chocolate or personal-size confection or something, I don't know.)

For readers other than OP: I didn't just make a point for a single professor to get a different perspective on his former Ph.D. candidate. I call upon you, personally - if you are a junior researcher (Ph.D. candidate or otherwise), to try and form a union. And if you're senior faculty, and unionized - to become active in your union and try to get it to expand and admit junior researchers.


How to explain a life as a researcher to friends, family and partners who aren't? My friends, family, and partner often mention that they worry about my life as an researcher/academic mentioning how I work too much (I love my job!) am never satisfied (I want to go great work, and great work is hard to do!), and that I'm often distracted (I think about my research a lot!). I've tried to explain these facets of academic life to them, but I have trouble completely communicating each of these feelings.

Are there any good articles or stories that you have found particularly useful in helping others understand your lifestyle as an academic?

For people outside of academia who you feel understand your passion and drive, how did they come to do so?

[This response may be specific to my culture/situation, so take it for what it's worth.]

As a student in the health sciences, I find it helpful to explain my passion in terms of 'needing to know'. The human body--and it's response to disease--is so complex, with so many interactions that we don't fully understand, I find myself continually in a position of wonderment. "The more I learn, the less I know."

I am passionate about becoming the best healthcare professsional I can be, and the individuals who are important to me seem to be able to understand this. I know that I cannot expect them to totally understand the fascination of research, or the passion that drives me to devote all available time to learning, reading, writing, etc. Both they and I have come to accept this. I do not push my world onto them, nor do they demand that I be able to explain.

Perhaps the really crucial part of this is taking time to be really present with the non-academics in your life. Let them know that you care for them and accept their non-academic lifestyle as well. Understanding and acceptance is often a two-way street--be willing to give as well as get.

This really only answers your second question. Perhaps others may be more able to respond to the first query about stories/articles to help your loved ones understand the fascination of research.

Might not help you in communicating your thoughts, but will certainly help in understanding what it is you are engaged in.

Serres "The Troubadour of Knowledge"

Enjoy.


Workshop: What to put on CV when you had multiple roles? Part of my post-doc has involved organizing a series of workshops. At some of these workshops, I end up with many roles. As an example, for the most recent workshop I wrote the proposal to get the funding, served as organizer, gave a talk/tutorial related to my research, and gave a (teaching) tutorial on some general skills useful in the field. (These workshops are more like schools: teaching grad students and post-docs about best practices.)

My question is: What parts should end up on my CV, and where? It feels ridiculous if some workshops show up 3 or 4 times (under headings for funded proposals, workshop organization, and talks). On the other hand, it was all a lot of work.

In addition, there were some workshops where I only gave a talk, and some where I was an organizer, but didn't write the funding proposal. It seems weird to include a talk from the one where I wasn't an organizer, and not include a talk that served the same purpose when I was an organizer.

What's the standard/recommended practice in this case? For context, my work is at the border of chemistry and physics, so to the extent that a lot of CV stuff is domain-specific, those are the relevant domains.

Maybe you can create a heading for "Workshop Experience", "Workshop Facilitated" or something along these lines. Then include all your workshop experiences there. You may have responsibilities such as:

Wrote the proposal for the initial funding and organization of the workshop
Gave a talk on ... (if needed to include the talk's name)
Reviewing submissions
Serving on committees (or lead sessions)
Coordinating and organizing events and conferences
Making ...
...

You may also modify the format above and in front of each activity, name the workshops where you did that task.

Group funding and organizer into a single title, list them under the service section of your CV (which will also include reviewing activities, for instance), and describe your role there.
Whether you list research and tutorial talks depends on whether you have a presentations section. Both can be listed if so. Alternatively, both could be listed in the publications section, if they were accompanied by manuscripts that appeared in any workshop proceedings.
As careers progress, presentation sections get dropped and  invited talks sections get added. (If either or both of your talks were invited talks, then list them in such a section, they're considered prestigious.)


How can I know if there is any journal interested in my proposed topic? After doing research for a while, I figured out a topic (1) that nobody has done it before (2) and I think It's pretty cool and valuable (3) to the community in my field. So, I proposed the idea to my professor with some drafts. But, my professor told me to find out if there is any interest in the topic in the publishing industry (journals) If no one cares about that It's not worth it.

It's like I created a paradox. How can I find out the interests in the topic if nobody has done it before?

If you guys have any ideas or tips that can help me I would be really appreciated!

Thanks

(1) I'm working on Fault Management Framework for Network Function Virtualization.

(2) I cannot find any relevant paper that employs it. They're mostly about Fault Management for SDN or cloud or on a specific problem whereas I want to design a complete solution.

(3) I think it is valuable because It will save time for the deployer/implementor by including all the best practices.

There'are several reasons why this question is different than the one at How to select a journal for publishing? because of:

It's not about selecting a journal to publish, It's about whether the journals are interested in my topic. I've already known which ones I want to publish to. It's just that I'm not sure if they're interested in my idea.
The question in which mine was marked as duplicated with is much broader than mine I think.

You should

Make a list of journals that might be relevant to your research.
Look at the scope of each of these journals.
Decide the extent to which your result can fall within the scope of these journals.
Tailor the story of your paper to the journal whose scope best fits your result.

Just do it.  (Act like you are doing whatever.)  Bootleg science is the best.


Do academic journals check plagiarism against papers in student repositories? I was recently checking one of my paper for similarity. However, TURNITIN checked the similarity against the papers present in student repository in its database. Surprisingly, the paper which matched 72% from the student rep is the same one which I had checked few days back. Now, the similarity comes around 81%.

I wanted to know, whether the journals check plagiarism against such student papers? Because, if they do, it will check against the same paper present in the rep and results will come out to be higher SI.

Why would you care? The real issue is whether your paper contains plagiarism or not. Remember, by the way, that plagiarism is "presenting the words and/or ideas of other people as if they are your own". Turnitin and similar systems are advertised as "plagiarism checkers", but that's marketing. In reality they check for text overlaps, but overlaps do not necessarily constitute plagiarism. Overlaps can appear due to heavy use of cliche phrases or extensive but proper citing of others' works. Yes, universities sometimes take these "plagiarism scores" at face value and can reject your submission without looking further. It makes sense, unfortunately, as high plagiarism scores in case of student essays/term papers/etc. almost always appear due to blatant copying.

Scientific journals and conferences, on the other hand, are supposed to do a more rigorous job. They can (and sometimes they do) check incoming papers with automated systems (since blatant copying happens in this world, too), but they really then must look inside and uncover the real reason of this high score. If you indeed present the ideas of others as your own, that's bad. Otherwise the editors might complain about excessive quotations or lack of original content, but that's another issue, not directly related to your question.

If the question is whether academic journals compare submissions to plagiarism databases, I've never heard of that practice. It is not common in psychology.


How much would writing a thesis help for a person's career in industry(not in academia)? There are many people who pursue a thesis-based master's degree but do not want to pursue academia after graduation. If people just want to have a good job, is thesis writing helpful to them? My major is electrical engineering.

I can think of two reasons you might want to write a thesis.

If you would inherently enjoy the challenge.
If digging in and writing up specialized knowledge in a particular topic might be related to your future work on the job.

Either of these would be a good reason -- you don't need both.

Actually having a Ph.D. can be seen as a disadvantage in industry. I have met this attitude from a couple of employers / potential employers. They see you as an academic, and not wanting to do real work.

I think it would be less of an issue with big employers, but certainly smaller ones, at can be an issue. It may be worst in my case, as I spent a number of years as a post-doc at university.

If you don't want to do academic work after university, and just want a good job, I'd personally suggest the case for doing one is rather weak.

Others experience may be different, but I personally think the main thing you get out of a Ph.D. is the ability to do research properly. That is a transferable skill. My Ph.D is Medical Physics, but I work in a completely unrelated field (I'm director of Kirkby Microwave Ltd, developing vector network analyzer calibration kits) The skill of doing research I learned during the Ph.D. are very relevant to the products I develop, and hope to develop, despite they have nothing to do with what I actually did during my Ph.D.

If you go into industry after 3 years spent studying for a Ph.D, you will probably find your manager does not have one, and is earning more than you!

I can't recall where I read it, but there was an analysis somewhere of what it costs to do a Ph.D. If you consider a "good job" one where you gets lots of money, you will probably find the loss of income for those 3 years is significant and you may never make it up in your lifetime.


How do I know that I have truly lost interest in research and should drop out of a top CS PhD program? I am a second-year CS PhD pre-candidate in a top PhD program. During my first year, I published a first-author paper at the best conference in my area, which I know is a big accomplishment. My advisor is famous in his area and also very caring and supportive, and my labmates are great too.

The thing is my second project didn't go very well, which caused us to change the entire story right before the deadline. I worked more than 70 hours per week and gave all I could, but there was not enough time to get everything we need in a good shape, and my advisor was frustrated with the progress and pointed out problems that I hadn't seen everywhere. I continued to work, but found myself too frustrated and suddenly lost all interest in research, stopped caring about papers, did as best I could to avoid talking to anyone, and want to leave this place and never come back. I know most PhDs somehow have this feeling, but I notice that this time it's quite serious:

Forcing myself to work resulted in a breakdown every night with the feeling that all I did was nonsense and meaningless.
My first paper has now become a joke, laughing at me that I could never publish with my own efforts.
I have no intention to participate in lab communication and truly don't want to talk to anyone. I can't even bear to hear others typing due to the feeling that I am the only one who doesn't make progress.

How can I know if I truly have lost my interest in research (and should drop my Ph.D.), or if this is something that I can overcome? After all,  if this is the best I can do, why not go somewhere else and use my skills to actually contribute rather than wasting everybody's time? I am so tired of receiving new tasks at 4 am or 11 pm due the next day. I would highly appreciate your advice!

If available, I would immediately seek out the university counseling services (as mentioned in a comment by @Nate Eldredge ) The things you are mentioning could be symptoms of depression. Or, you may just need some strategies for coping with failure. Often people with your accomplishments haven't experienced much failure in their lives!

Taking advantage of the (usually low-cost or free, if you are in the U.S.) counselling services at the university will help you sort out which of these things it is. Your counselor can also help you come up with strategies to make well-reasoned life decisions for yourself (or with your committee). Regardless, don't make any rash decisions.

In the U.S., it is very common for PhD students to deal with these issues and to seek out counseling. An informal straw poll in my PhD cohort revealed that 90% of us had done so, and approximately 60% were on anti-anxiety medication or continued treatment regimes at any given time. The older students even began to organize a yearly workshop to talk about stress and how to get the help you need!

An update: This 2018 study finds that graduate students are 6x more likely to experience depression and anxiety, compared to the general population.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/06/new-study-says-graduate-students-mental-health-crisis

Just get your PhD and leave afterwards. Most published research is irrelevant anyway. The science community has a serious problem with their "accomplishment" metric: h-index / number of papers etc. They do not allow for failure or dead tracks which, however, are quite natural if you are doing real research at the brink of current knowledge.


Are all postdoc jobs advertised? I recently had a postdoc interview (at a research institution) in which I wasn't selected. After receiving the interview outcome, I decided to directly email the panel a few weeks later asking for a feedback. One of the professors replied and invited me for a chat the following week. He said that he has other opportunities that are a good fit for my profile. I know that he's talking about the university where he's working and not the research intuition where I met him (with the panel).
The issue, is that I checked the university's website and I didn't find any job postings. Can a PI hire a postdoctoral researcher without first advertising the job?

Many job postings are written after the candidate that will fill the position has been selected. This makes sense in academia - I usually want to hire people who were trained by people I know. University policies often require that postings are made for all positions though.
It's therefore very common to interview for a position that hasn't formally been posted. Especially if you have fellowship money coming with you.

In my experience in the US, it is not legally possible to hire a postdoc without advertising for the position, though as people point out, there is nothing to stop people from deciding before the position is advertised who they’d like to hire, and doing the advertisement in a pro forma way.  I was kind of shocked to discover when I moved to Canada that this is not the case here.  At least at my university, if you have the right grant funding to hire a postdoc, you can just do so without needing to provide any evidence to the university of having advertised the position or done any due diligence in your search.  My understanding is that this is because postdocs, as a temporary position, are treated differently under employment discrimination law here (postdocs at Canadian universities have a weird status where the university considers them more like students than employees, or at least in a weird gray zone).


Is having your hand in your pocket during a presentation bad? Someone I know has given a presentation at a American University.  He supposedly had his hand in his pocket while giving the presentation.  A foreign student attacked him for this.  The person supposedly said "how would you like it if I gave a presentation with my hand in my pocket."  At the end of the presentation, more people started ridiculing him

I am not sure if he was attacked for the content of the presentation, because unfortunately, I have heard this through the grapevine.

What is the proper way to give a presentation?  Did the students act appropriately?

If you want a short and binary answer, it is likely yes — keeping a hand in a pocket during the presentation is not the best habit, because:

You lose yourself a chance to use that hand for communicating with the audience via gestures.
Your body language and posture is more likely to be perceived as you can't be bothered with what you are doing.

Having said that, there may be examples of excellent use of almost anything which is normally not recommended in a presentation, if you plan for it and do it consciously. For example, if you ask your students the famous Bilbo's question: "What have I got in my pocket?" — and put your hand in your pocket, your gesture is playing nicely with your explicit voice communication to create an interesting and intriguing setting.

A binary answer to your second question is likely no — students acted inappropriately by interrupting the presenter and commenting on the presentation style, rather than topic of the presentation. Unless, of course, the whole aim of the exercise was to receive comments about the presentation skills and strategies. From your question, we cannot tell.

Iff you care about making a good presentation, it's crucial to NEVER put your hands in your pockets during presentations. It's also crucial to EMPTY YOUR POCKETS before delivering a presentation.

It communicates low-confidence, low social status, and low effort/energy/caring for the topic and audience!

Why empty your pockets before delivering a presentation? Because so many presentations are ruined by hands going into pockets, jingling keys, jingling change, cell phones going off, etc. Items in pockets will become distractions, and you don't want to be distracted (again iff you care about making a good presentation).

Default hand position during a presentation should be arms at side with elbows bent 90 degrees, hands outstretched. To communicate friendliness, warmth, enthusiasm, and confidence, use expansive gestures by going wider from the default hand position and making overhead gestures occasionally, smile, tilt your head, and don't be stiff or robotic. A relaxed but upright posture. NEVER cross your arms, put them in your pockets, put them behind your back, cover your crotch (the Adam and Eve pose). Don't point with a finger, point with a hand. Use palms-up (assertive/submissive/friendly) gestures whenever possible, and avoid palms-down (dominant/unfriendly). Sometimes, you can emphasize or punctuate a critical point with a dominant body language, and it shows tremendous confidence. But don't overdo it, or you seem unfriendly.

Watch good presenters and politicians. You will notice they never put their hands in their pockets while speaking/presenting. Maybe they pull something out of a pocket dramatically to demonstrate something. They never have anything in their pockets for their fingers to wander off and jingle.

I abstain from comment on what you heard "through the grapevine", and you shouldn't care about gossip and rumors, either.


Is it okay that my supervisor insists for me to work from my room at night? I am a female PhD student in the end of my second year, and my supervisor has been acting weird lately. He asks me to run the experiments from my laptop and not from my PC in the lab (it does not affect the test), and he does that when it's 11 or 12 at night.
We usually do a voice call to discuss work, but very recently he asked for a video call and it was late at night… and just today he insisted that I work from my room and not from the lab.

I just want to know what you guys think. I don't know if it's a culture difference thing or that I should really be careful. I think it's really weird considering that I've been working with him for two years and he wasn't even nice to me.

This sets off all kind of red flags. In the absence of an extremely good rationale, this is very strange and entirely unacceptable. I would recommend that you make an appointment with your graduate program director and discuss the situation ASAP. That person will have more background about the situation and more perspective, and can offer you better advice than we can here.

Relevant Facts:

You've worked for your advisor for around two years.

He recently asked you telecommute/Skype instead of use a lab PC for a task.

You have phone meetings late at night.

I just want to know what you guys think.

My thoughts are if any of these working conditions make you uncomfortable, you simply bring them up to him in person.
The information you've provided gives no basis for the insinuation that he is trying to see after-hours video of you for unscrupulous purposes.  If he is a good advisor, after a brief conversation he will modify group conduct to suit you.


Someone misrepresented my work in a published paper Its a conference paper that broadly says:

"There is X, Y, Z, Biguri et al, articles out there, but here is a table with each of the works and their limitations, and why ours is better"

And then lists a bunch of things on my published article (about a software tool) claiming it does not contain several features. The problem is, the tool has and always had most of the features they say it hasn't. They are published and clearly demoed and showcased in the webpage.

Their paper has some credit, it is still good work and its not invalid because of their mistakes. But it is seriously misrepresenting my work.

What should one do in this case?

I was thinking on politely emailing them to let them know about their mistakes, I assume its not a malicious mistake, but more the fact that they did not take the time to properly do research. Is there anything else I can/should do?

While nothing much may come of it, I think you should write them pointing out that they have missed some things about your work. Ask them for a correction, though don't expect one to occur. If you want to smooth the waters, congratulate them, also, for the good things they have done in their own work.

But letting it lie without comment serves no one well and might lead to a repeat in the future.

If you want to be a bit more aggressive, copy the conference chair on your email, but think hard about the consequences of that.

I'll assume that the errors were unintentional, in which case you should expect a good result.

What should one do in this case?

Nothing.

  Is there anything else I can/should do?

Some journals will publish comments.  You could submit a comment pointing out the error.  If the paper was published by a conference, this might not be an option.  In any case, it is not a good option unless the error is somehow interesting.  This sounds like a boring error or misrepresentation.


Apple or Thinkpads, buying for department I'm asking this anonymously. Our department of computer science just received a donation to buy laptops for students. Major activity will be programming and languages used will be C/C++/Python/Perl/Java/R. We will be instituting a lending scheme for students who can't afford them.

As a committee, we now need to decide whether we should be buying Apple Macbook Pro(13") or Thinkpad (T420) both with more or less similar specifications and price. The Apple will run it's OS and Thinkpad will run Debian Linux.

My question is : We are training the students for research and we wish to provide them with an environment close to how it is in the real world. Should we choosing one over the other considering all students have an inclination for research/academia?

This is not meant to be a flame war but rather a question of whether Academia has hidden liking towards Apple and if yes, why?

I think that in most conferences/project meetings I attend, there isn't an overwhelming preference on one side or the other (I'm working in computer science, in case that matters). In other words, there are many academics happily working with linux, and many academics happily working with mac (some are even working with both), so in your case, there is no real wrong choice.

From what I've experienced, in some places, there could be a preference for apple computers because of the way some universities order their hardware: if you ask for a PC, you might not be able to choose which one exactly, and you might end up with a low quality, cheap product, whereas if you ask for a mac, the quality is better (at least, that was true a while ago). But  I don't think it can explain why the proportion of apple laptops in the academic world is higher than that of the general population.

In any case, I don't think that working within on environment will prevent the students to switch to another one later one if they need to.

Debian or Ubuntu is much better for dev work than a Mac

There's open source software available for Linux that's not always available for Mac.

(I often see people running Linux in a virtual machine when programming in a Mac.)

Apple keyboard is no good for development

The ctrl key is not on the expected location, i.e. lower left corner;
There are no explicit PageUp and PageDown keys, and no RightCtrl;
The shortcut to close an application is cmd - Q; and
Touch bar in the case of MacBook Pro.

These are not minor details since during development shortcuts are heavily used in browsers as well as code editors.

(1) Anyone that has used a traditional keyboard knows the left ctrl to be in a particular position. Among other things you use it for copy/paste/move, select all, locate text, moving lines around in some editors, etc. Apple has decided to put the Fn key there instead. This leads to invoking the wrong shortcut and can be frustraing beyond words.

It is particularly terrible if you regularly use standard keyboards mixed with Apple keyboards; sticking to Apple-only stuff would probably help imprint the Apple locations for Fn and Ctrl in your brain.

Apple allows you to remap Fn to Ctrl but not the other way around; it is possible, though, with third-party software. But I have found this doesn't always work smoothly (in my case when dealing with virtual machines).

(2a) When we have multiple tabs opened in a browser or code editor we can use ctrl - PageUp and ctrl - PageDown to navigate the tabs. This is done a lot.

The Home and End keys are useful to navigate the browser editor screen and text.

Turns out Apple decided not to have explicit PageUp and PageDown keys. My iMac keyboard also doesn't have the Home and End keys. These can be simulated with the Fn plus arrow keys.

In a standard keyboard I can navigate tabs with a single hand using RightCtrl - PageUp and RightCtrl - PageDown without even thinking about it. In a Mac you have to twist yourself to press the function key with the left ctrl and then use the other hand to press the arrows. Makes me wonder whether Apple designers are Emacs users.

(2b) I mentioned at the beginning Mac users often use Linux in a virtual machine when they need it; or dual boot.

Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions, uses the GNOME desktop environment. To change workspaces we use WinKey - PageUp and WinKey - PageDown; or the equivalent version with the Command key in an Apple keyboard. As you can imagine the easy task of changing workspaces with a standard keyboard turns into a nightmare with the Apple keyboard layout because there are no explicit PageUp and PageDown keys.

The fallback shortcuts in this case are Ctrl - Alt - Up and Ctrl - Alt - Down which also change workspace.

(3) The shortcut to close the browser and all its tabs is Command - Q. This closes all your tabs. The shortcut to close a single tab is Command - W. Do you see a problem here?

The problem is Q and W are right next to each other. Closing a tab is something one does regularly. A single misstep and there go all your tabs. This is annoying to say the least when you have hundreds of tabs opened.

This is more of a problem with macOS and not with the keyboard. In Linux you use the more sane Alt - F4 and Ctrl - W shortcuts to respectively quit the application and close a tab.

(4) Touch bar is pretty and perhaps it's alright for most Mac users. When developing in Android Studio, for example, the symbols can turn into a little green hammer for building, etc. Fantastic. Thing is, we can already do this with F10; and, most importantly, without looking at the keyboard.

Pressing the F1 to F12 keys is problematic with the Touch Bar. Normal keys give you physical feedback. Not only can you feel where the key is, but you know when it has been pressed. This tactile feedback is gone with the Touch Bar.

Using vim, for instance, becomes rather complicated when you are unable to feel the Esc.

Computer ports

Apple has a serious issue with computer ports. They like to be different. And, I imagine, they like to sell adaptors.

Will the students use those laptops for presentations in class?
Will the students use those laptops for mobile development?
Will the students need to connect the laptop to a network using the ubiquitous RJ45?
Are there other peripherals the students might need to connect to the laptops, say a standard USB thumb drive?

If so, keep in mind the need to acquire a truckload of adaptors.


Is it fine to cancel class on days before national holidays, due to low attendance? So, thanksgiving break is coming up. On my campus, a large portion of the students leave early Wednesday to get back home. The break doesn't officially start until Thursday, but since that is the holiday the students (understandably) leave earlier.

I teach on Wednesdays (among other days). I had forgotten about this poor attendance when I planned my syllabus and am currently planning to teach new material next Wednesday.

Now, I anticipate about 75% of the class (50 total students) will be absent. They knew I would be teaching new material that day, since it was on the syllabus.

Do I cancel class so that the majority of students don't miss a lecture? Do I hold class but post my lecture notes so that the students who missed could (theoretically, at least) make up the work they missed on their own?

If I cancel class, I could shift around material so that nothing is lost (by moving a review day). However, something feels "wrong" about cancelling a class that the university has scheduled to occur because the students decided they wanted to start their vacation early.

Is it fine to cancel a class because you don't expect many students to attend?

I have known a number of professors who took a third approach: on an expected low-attendance class day such as the day before Thanksgiving, they held a lecture, but did not make it part of the "standard" curriculum.  Instead, they would schedule some sort of fun and exciting "bonus material," like a notable guest speaker or a cool demonstration.  That way, those students who showed up got something out of coming, but the ones whose plans prevented them from being there didn't have any missed "core" material to make up.

My attendance policy is if you miss more than 20% of the class FOR ANY REASON, you fail.  That ends up being 3 classes in a 15 week semester. Everyone gets the same three classes.  If you miss that Wednesday and no more than one other class during the semester, no problem!  If you have missed two other classes and then you miss that Wednesday, you fail the class.  Everyone can plan accordingly.  You should probably not teach new material but you've put the decision to make or miss that class squarely in your students' hands without unfairly rewarding or penalizing anyone for their travel plans.


Ignored Requests Open-Source Software from a Research Group For more than 6 weeks now, I have been attempting to contact a post-doc or their (former?) PI to request access to either the source code or software of a tool that was published in BMC Bioinformatics. The authors did not provide the source as a supplemental file, but assure the reader in the article that it will be made available upon request. This is the first time requesting source code of a research group, but I have yet to receive any kind of reply to my polite requests.

I am unsure how to proceed. Pursuant to the guidelines for publication in the journal, "[i]f published, software applications/tools must be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without restrictions such as the need for a material transfer agreement." This group is located in Europe, and it is highly likely that they should have a working knowledge of English, after all, the publication and their websites are in English, so I don't think there a language barrier exists.

Possible actions that I am considering:

Contacting the managing editor for the publication to explain the situation, and see if his/her email attracts more of a response.
Contacting any granting agencies who have provided supporting funding for the project to determine whether they have stipulations about providing source code.
A phone call to the corresponding author.

I think contacting the editor of the journal is your best bet. Contacting grant agencies will most likely not warrant a reply, and I don't imagine many of them have stipulations for sharing code (yet).

That said, I have been in a similar position numerous times, and I have had very little luck every obtaining the code. The editor will most likely not be willing to retract a paper because the author's won't share, and they have little incentive to do so, since it will at most garner a single citation, but could lead to more problems down the road (e.g., the code is buggy and you can't reproduce their results, etc.)

Another tip would be that senior people (i.e., PIs) usually have more luck at this kind of thing because they are harder to ignore and/or have contacts, but it can be harder to get the to actually do it, because it can become political.

I think you need to forget about how you do things on the internet and remember how you do them in the real world. The fact that you do not think they have treated you with the courtesy and respect you believe you deserve does not justify you treating them any worse then you would hope to be treated.

You have asked for something, you didn't get it. Move on.


Instructor listening in secretly in simulated intake assignment -- allowed? Ethical? I am in an online, accredited, public, post-baccalaureate degree program.  I think it's the first time my instructor is teaching a university course -- at least at this institution.

The instructor said he had found someone to play the part of a potential client.  We were supposed to have a simulated phone intake call with this person.  She would give us her basic demographic information and the reason she was seeking legal and advocacy services, and we were supposed to probe for more information about the problem she was seeking help with, because the pretend client had been instructed not to volunteer all the important information on her own.  We were to fill out an Excel template and then write a letter to the client.

The instructor provided feedback for my homework. When I read his response, I eventually came to understand that he had listened in secretly to the phone intake call.  He had not made clear in the instructions that he would be listening in.

This made me uncomfortable.  But I don't know if my reaction is reasonable.  Are there any typical institutional guidelines, or ethical considerations, that would help me figure this out?  I'm not sure whether this is something to let the program chair know about, or whether I need to adjust my own expectations.

I did let the instructor know a polite version of how I felt: "I hope that for future semesters you'll make clear that you'll be listening in on the call.  I, for one, would be more comfortable knowing this ahead of time."  The response: "I don't find this necessary.  It should be presumed I am listening in on the assignment I provided so I can accurately grade."  Note, I don't know why he didn't just play the part of the potential client himself....

Further clarification:

The school is in New York State (part of the SUNY system).  From the exchange we had, I'm confident he only listened, and didn't record.
I thought we would be evaluated and graded on the written submission (spreadsheet plus letter) only.
I am asking about what's generally allowed or considered ethical by university policy or relevant professional organizations. Less interested in quasi-legal advice.
I checked with a classmate.  He didn't realize the instructor would be listening in either.  He himself wasn't bothered but understood why I was.

I have to side with your professor here. You did not have a private phone conversation. You had a simulated conversation with a person you knew to be a fake client with the purpose of evaluating your skill. If the professor listens in to the conversation that means he will evaluate you himself instead of relying on the person he got to play the potential client. This is good for you.

I honestly don't see what the problem is, you did something that you knew to be a test, so your professor gets to see/hear it to evaluate you. If instead of doing this over the phone this would have been a live interview, would you feel different about your professor listining in?

It doesn't surprise me.  This was a simulation where the professor is evaluating you.  How would you expect them to evaluate you if they weren't listening in?

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in college.  The school I went to has access to everything.  Your school calendar/email.  They use the InterviewStream system and administrators can access everything you do on there.  When you apply for a job through them they can see that.  When you scan your student id to enter a building they can see that.  Even the software you download from them is connected to their systems.  They spy on everything you do.

They control every process.  They're always testing and evaluating you.  They determine who succeeds and who fails.  They control the registration process.  If you're deemed unworthy and someone wants you to fail they can ensure your failure by giving you an 'impossible task' or in this case an impossible course load.  It's not just about grades.

You're gonna have a hard time when you get into the workforce because employers pull tricks like this all the time.  If you work in a call center environment there's always somebody listening in or recording the calls for 'quality assurance'.  Even before they hire you they'll spy on you using electronic resources, applicant tracking, social media, spyware, hacking or they'll send someone into your current place of employment.  That's the 'background check' especially when nothing shows up in a records check.  It feels sketchy but hiring is risky business and the company has a reputation to uphold.  They gotta protect themselves and make sure everyone they hire is on their best behavior.

Wouldn't you do the same if that were your company or you were managing the department?  The most successful companies and managers do.  If you want to be successful you gotta be ruthless and unforgiving.  Drain the swamp.  Get rid of the people who are yelling, picking fights, arguing with customers, being rude and providing extremely poor customer service and replace them with better people.


How to avoid being blamed on cheating? A lecturer of the programming course said: "In this course you can't use Google. If we find you are cheated, you will fail the course".

What kind of rights there are if I accidentally write something that is already published on the internet and I don't know it? The problems seems to be so basic level that there is a positive probability that if you have done programming before, you can find similar or even identical code from the Internet.

I doubt that this would be a problem, provided that you don't cheat. But your work will probably be put through a plagiarism checker and get a score. How that is handled is up to the instructor.

But if you really need assurance, then do the work under the eye of a mutually trusted individual who will attest to your following the rules. A proctor, in other words.

Some people need such assurance, I think, perhaps because they aren't naturally trusted for some reasons. But for most people it isn't needed. Paranoia isn't essential in normal relationships. Cheating, when caught, is usually pretty obvious.

It's not clear what you are asking.

You can use  duck duck go or yahoo.com or any other search engine on a browser like Vivaldi or Opera, or IE and keep your log to prove you  didn't use google.

Doing that you are following the directive of not using Google. ¿Is that it? otherwise please reword your question to be more specific, please.


How does a suspended student deal with an unprofessional university counselor? I am a suspended student and I have been getting counseling for three months. During those three months, I have noticed extremely unprofessional behavior from my counselor.

When I started counseling, he was late each time. The first time he was late 10 minutes, the next 20 minutes and the third time 30 minutes.

Last week I had a counseling appointment and I drove 35 minutes to get on campus only to find out that the counselor was absent. He didn't email me or tell me not to come, nothing.

After my suspension period ends, the counselor has to decide whether I am fit to come back to the university or not, and many times I get literally threatened with not coming back - if for example I do this or that behavior. I literally get told "then, you're not coming back to the university".

Often, I see the counselor is eating while with me and he has no respect for the appointments for other students as well. Phone calls aren't answered. Emails aren't often answered except some few after three or four days.

There was couple of times when our counseling session was about literally 5 minutes. I came in, he asked me what I did in the week, then he said "Okay, I'll see you next time". And, he went on to work on the computer.

Additional Information: My counseling session was in the morning around 9:00AM every Tuesday. Suddenly, once day, without even taking my opinion, he says that someone else took the appointment at 9:00AM. He switched my appointment till 5:00PM. I objected. He said he had an emergency and it was more important than me. He said he had no other time than this time, at 5:00PM. I found out later that the person who took my appoitment was a customer for him, who is not a student.

What should I do? On one side, I can't ditch the counselor since that would jeopardize my coming to the university. On another side, I do not want a counselor to help me deal with another counselor.

For those who are asking, my suspension is behavioral suspension and not academic suspension, and the counselor stated that I suffer from depression based on tests that I took.

I suggest getting another counselor, not to help you cope with the first one, but to help you with the issues that got you suspended in the first place.

The combination of counselor and gatekeeper for your return to the university seems to me to be an inherent problem. It would be difficult to be really frank with the gatekeeper.

You got suspended for a reason, you need to focus on that and make adjustments to never put yourself in this situation.

It is your responsibility to keep yourself out of trouble, take it as a life lesson and avoid this type of situation.

He's unprofessional with you but you are dealing with a suspension so it is not in your favor.

You put yourself in this situation.

They have lost some respect for you.

To earn respect you have to give respect.

If you have to be angry, be angry at yourself.

Take this anger and turn it into positivity.

Be accountable and just focus on making positive changes.


How to deal with professors who don't follow the text I'm a first year math grad student. As an undergrad, all my professors followed the given text book closely, making lecture easy to prepare for and very predictable. As a grad student, my professors seem to cover material mostly in the book, but in a different order, with different notation, or different content entirely.
The result is that I have essentially no way to prepare for classes. I can only show up to lecture and hope I can keep up. If I want to review, I can only read their handwritten notes. My understanding is really suffering because I can't reinforce the content by seeing it repeatedly and clearly. I know it's unreasonable to expect professors to merely regurgitate a textbook, but this is how I'm accustomed to learning. What can I do to learn material better in these situations?
Edit: Thank you for the replies. The consensus seems to be that lectures shouldn't reinforce the text. They should provide a bigger picture, a linking of ideas from the expert's point of view, and understanding details is the job of the student on their own time. This makes total sense.
I think my issue comes from spending valuable time studying the book, then having the professor totally skip that topic and go to another, never to mention the thing I spent hours studying. My effort is wasted, and I have to expend double the effort to understand what is covered. It seems like the answer is to just learn what I can and not see that effort as wasted.

If your undergraduate lectures were perfectly predictable, following the book exactly, and you showed up perfectly prepared to each one, then they were actually completely useless. You could have just stayed home and read the book yourself!
At the graduate level, the best practice is to ask the professor for good references, both at the start of the course, and whenever unfamiliar topics come up. You shouldn't expect immediate full understanding from going to lecture; graduate subjects are too deep for that. Treat lecture as an informal invitation to the subject. It's your job to turn that into understanding, by reading from references, doing problems, and asking questions.
Of course, this isn't an excuse for lazy or disorganized teaching. When a professor doesn't follow a book, they could be doing you a great service, by presenting a carefully thought out, alternative view of the subject which will complement existing books. (That's where many textbooks come from in the first place!) But in other cases, they could simply not care much about teaching, and not have any direction in mind.
I've been in classes of both types, and if you're stuck in the latter, it's absolutely essential to get good references to solidify your understanding. In these cases, don't count on the professor to supply them -- if they aren't paying much attention, they're likely to recommend books they used decades ago which are well out of date, or subpar books that they've only heard of, not read. Ask other students, and try resources like StackExchange. You can find good resources for any graduate course in any subject in this way.

I think my issue comes from spending valuable time studying the book, then having the professor totally skip that topic and go to another, never to mention the thing I spent hours studying. My effort is wasted, and I have to expend double the effort to understand what is covered.

If you're planning on doing research later, then effort spent learning core material in standard graduate-level books is never wasted. You can't know in advance what's going to be useful for your research, and often it will turn out to be the core material -- which is why it's the core in the first place. Many times, I've been stuck on a research problem only to find that the right way of thinking about it was in a book chapter I skipped long ago.

In my opinion, lecture is not the proper vehicle for providing direct answers or application of formulae – the kinds of things that you'd find in the textbook, and thus a "regurgitation"; rather, this would best be achieved at some recitation or office hours with TAs (who are often extremely helpful in helping students understand course content!). Rather, the purpose of the lecture sessions is to explore important ideas in the subject and link them to profound implications for society, institutions (such as public policy, law, and financial systems), technology, and the natural universe, as well as the human condition. In this way, you may find yourself mired in quite some degree of abstraction, formal proofs, and derivations of central theories, which can seem disorienting without tangible practice; this is normal. Everything may seem strangely uncorrelated or not coalescing correctly in your mind upon first sight, but most of the time there are relevant and meaningful connections that you'll discover after, say, repeated exposure from various places (the lecture, the textbook, the academic literature, slides from other university programs).
As an aside, why should we spend significant moneys or get into unreasonable levels of un-bankruptcy-able debt to hear a lecturer spout the same thing as the textbook? JUST BUY THE TEXTBOOK INSTEAD AND CALL IT A DAY, THEN! (unless your goal is to enter industry, that is, in which case the piece of paper that says you know some such stuff may be prized).
Notably, courses usually indicate how many hours you should be spending outside of lecture by the number of "units" or "course credits" in which they are advertised. Of course, this is only a suggestion. These hours should be spent, ideally, in optimized fashion reinforcing the key takeaways from lecture, and then identifying connections between these and the detailed computations and material particulars contained within the texts. This is the stage in which you should be playing around by making hypothesis about what the fundamental theorems say the output should be given certain use cases and input conditions, including edge cases or otherwise interesting or unusual scenarios, and conducting the analysis to verify that the results match your expectation. If not, what was your faulty reasoning? This practice will prepare you for any upcoming assignment.
As a personal test, determine if you can finish an assignment with little to no notes or other references. After seeing the concept multiple times at this point, it should be easier to compute answers or solve related proofs. It may take time and thought, but shouldn't require the textbook if you understand it "to a reasonable level". You don't need to know everything deeply yet, but rather a moderate comprehension, which is enough at this stage.
In going one step further than expected by the professor, you may locate the most influential publications in the field and other primary source content and read those to achieve an even deeper contextual understanding of the field. They are often free and accessible when using your .edu account, or found in the library. This isn't required, if you have time constraints, but it demonstrates initiative and you learn directly from the originators of the theories in question.
Lastly, there's often a project component, typically towards the end. This is an opportunity for you to see the content in application, and it might be the most important part, allowing you to bring together everything you've learned and use it to build something or conduct an experiment, expressing your creativity in the process. This is when I found that I learned the most, as long as I put forward significant time; if you half-ass it you won't learn anything additional, but if you focus, you may actually come away from the course realizing that you understand the core of that area much more than how well you "know" or "learned" information from a textbook for your previous classes. You'll also find that you have a new-found appreciation for the topic, beyond your initial interest during the first lecture.


How to express an ongoing PhD degree in suffix Is it correct to express PhD in brackets "(PhD)" as suffix to express the ongoing degree?

No, you cannot use a title or degree that you haven't earned yet.

A Phd Student is a research Scholar . I propose he can write .

Phd(Sch).. Where SCh is a suffix , same is recommended in a smaller font.


List of approved Competency-Based Education schools Does the US department of education publish a list of universities that they've approved for Competency-Based Education?  I've only discovered articles where they've approved a couple schools at a time.  I'd love to find a complete list so that i can do a thorough comparison prior to choosing a program.

Competency-Based Education can be generically described with these bullet points:

Classes do not have a set end date.  They end as soon as you're able to pass the necessary assessment test(s) for that subject.  This could be in as little as 2 days if you're already knowledgeable on the topic.
You don't pay per class.  Rather, you pay a flat fee for a block of time (typically 3 or 6 months).
You're able to take as many classes as you want within the 'subscription' timeframe.  The only requirement is that you pass the assessment of class1 before starting class2.
Competency-based programs are typically in an online-only setting and do not require any time to be spent on a campus.

One benefit of this style of program is that efficient students can acquire a degree in a much shorter timespan than if they enrolled in a typical structured program.  The end cost also has a high probability of being significantly cheaper than a structured program.  Competency programs are commonly between $6000-$9000 per year.

There's a preliminary list here of experimental sites with programs participating in the DoE's Competency-Based Education experiment. (Via this page about current DoE experimental initiatives.)

The list is watermarked "Preliminary" and is dated 4/16/15, so keep this in mind in how you use it - it may not be completely reliable or up to date.

Currently, there are over 200 universities in the US that offered Competency Based Education. The challenge is that the majority of these programs are not approved by the Dept of Ed, which means that students cannot apply for financial aid through many of these programs.

The main obstacles to approval involves

Receiving credit for life experiences
little interaction with faculty
Issues with credit hours

Therefore, as of now, you have many choices in terms of where to study but you would probably have to pay yourself until the Dept of begins approving these programs.


Group-work course, part of the group failing This question is based around a hypothetical, but realistic, scenario.

The situation revolves around a group-based course in which the main deliverable is a report. Every group member is responsible for the report. The report is graded as a whole and counts for the entire group but individual adjustments in grade can be made by the supervisor based on peer reviews and other considerations by the supervisor.
The issue arises when part of the group fails (due to the report grade) and another part passes the course. Let's assume the failing students did their part, just not enough to pass.

I am particularly wondering about the fairness or ethics of part of the group passing on contributions by the failing of the group.
I have taken part in many such courses and luckily the issue never arose in any of the groups I was part of. Thinking about it, I have mixed feelings about the situation the failing students (in this scenario) find themselves in.
On the one hand, you could say the failing students did not contribute enough to the report for them to pass the course. On the other hand, placing yourself in the failing students' shoes, their contributions are used to pass the other part of the group.
Concrete questions:

From a supervisor's point of view, should only those parts written by the passing students be considered to grade them so they don't fare on the work of the failing students?

This is almost impossible, you would first have to consider all the work (how else do your know some students won't pass?) then unconsider (if that's even a thing) part of it.
One option would be to either pass or fail the entire group, but that might be unfair on the hard-working group members (who do enough to pass if they were in a group of people who as hard as them).

From the failing students' points of view, it might seem unfair because their work is used to pass the others. Should those having received a failing grade be entitled to any compensation on the grounds that they did some work?

I'd compare it with starting a company, suppose three people build a company, two people do 40% of the work each, the other does the remaining 20%. While any two people in this case do over 50% of the work, I don't think they can just decide to dump the other person (this might depend on how the company was founded, but it seems unethical).
How this type of assignment works in my experience
A group of students is assigned a problem for which they need to write a report. The students get a list of requirements and it is up to them to divide the work and make sure everyone does their part.
If a student does very little work, the others can report that so a solution can be found (student has to make up for lack of work or quits the course). It's mostly encouraged to report bad group dynamics early so something can be done about it (that becomes harder as the project progresses).
The projects often have a tutor assigned to them, sometimes academic staff, sometimes a (more) senior student. Students also review their peers on how they felt the others participated. The tutor advises the one(s) responsible for grading the reports. Based on the report, the tutor's advice and the report itself, each student gets a grade (according to some rubric).
The courses I have in mind are mainly aimed at this report. The report will be the main deliverable and make up over 50% of the course's grade. The remaining part of the grade is made up by a combination of individual work and other group deliverables (e.g. presentations or computer code).

I assume you're asking about a situation where different members of a group are given different amounts of credit for a report that they all worked on. (For a different assumption, see the next paragraph.) The only way I can see this happening is if the professor has, in addition to the report itself, some information about the individual students' contributions to the report, information that forms the basis of the variation in the grades. In such a case , the students who pass are not doing so on the basis of the work done by the failing students but rather on the basis of what the professor knows about their individual work.

Another possible (though less likely) interpretation of the question is that all the students in the group got the same grade on this report but their other work (other assignments, exams, class participation) were different, so that some passed the course and others failed. In this case the ones who passed didn't benefit any more from the failing students' work than the failing students benefited from the passing students' work. The difference would be only that this work was, for some but not all students, enough to bring their overall grade for the course up to the passing level.

(Contrary to what you might infer from this answer, I'm not a fan of group work, except insofar as it makes grading easier. But my concern about its fairness is not the concern raised in this question.)

I run, with 5 other colleagues, a group project across 6 subjects.

The grading is part written project and part presentation with common parts such as introduction, quality of slides, effectiveness etc and subject specific parts such as referencing, tasks etc. The presentation is graded individually, looking for eye contact, professional language, delivery, enthusiasm, as well as individual questions.

There is also a peer evaluation element to get feedback from the group for each individual.

This works very well, as we have between 120 to 220 students depending on the semester and groups of 5 (we don't do groups of 6 as then the students do 1 student / subject and this does not contribute to all their subjects - they need all 6 subjects).

Some groups that do poorly on the written element, who then do poorly on the presentation as well can be borderline where some pass and some fail. This is influenced by the individual's personal performance in terms of peer, presentation and answering questions. The peer mark (as some will decry peer marking) is only 10% based on 3 contributing parts : the workshop, the hand-in and the presentation.


Conflict of interest statement for Elsevier I want to submit a research paper to an Elsevier Journal. There is also an invention disclosure associated with this work. I have got the approval of the Technology Transfer Office to submit the paper. Do I need to report anything in the Conflict of Interest statement?

If you intend to license a patent, this might be a conflict of interest.  For example, the interest in getting accurate data might conflict with the interest in getting money from a license.
I recommend disclosure if there is any possibility someone might perceive a conflict of interest.

I have made a quick research about this point and I can now say that the conflict of interest exists if you received any financial support, used resources of a certain association, hold shares, or work for a company that may be influenced by your paper.
If the situation is one of the above-mentioned scenarios, you should state it clearly in the conflict of interest section.
resources:
http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/
http://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/declaration-of-conflicting-interests-policy
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22937/
http://www.rasayely.com/what-is-conflict-of-interest-how-to-declare-it-and-why/


What to do with what I've learned when writing my research proposal? During the time to prepare for my application to applying to grad school, I have learned a lot of new knowledge. They are from various sources: scientific papers from insiders in the field, blog posts from them or other individuals, articles explaining the ideas for popular audience, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. While they help me a lot to understand what the field is so that I can write a good research proposal, after having one I have basically nothing to do with them, except to answer my friends' question: "So, what do you do?", which I can only provide a small fraction of what I really know and want to say.

I think the knowledge has a better potential to help me go further in my career, so I am thinking to turn it into a real article/paper. There will be an international conference in my country in which my field is one topic of it and my furthest goal is to write the article good enough so that I can submit a poster in there. The deadline to submit is before I starting grad school so I guess that I will have to write it by myself. Although I always want to put my best effort to every product I make, I don't want to spend more than one month on writing this in order to move on to my next project. Popular readers will be my audience of course.

Q: The first and foremost question is: is this worth? Are there other alternative ways to do with what I've learned? If making it as an article is indeed worth to do, I still don't know how to maximize the benefit that it will bring to me. I have some more things to consider:

Language: What language should I use? If I write it in English, I can reach more readers and hope that I will find grant easier. However if I write in my native language, I would be the first one to write detailly about this and therefore having an advantage of being the first one, though I admit I don't know what to do next with this advantage in this stage of my career.
Place to publish: Where should I publish this article? Of course I can always post it in my blog, but can it be published elsewhere? If I should write in English, can you suggest some journals/magazines that will accept my work? If it's in my native language, I have two options of where to submit and I don't know which one is better. The first one is an old reputable magazine among researchers in my country. It's a kind of dicussion board where topic can range from introducing new discovery or science news to critics about government policy in science. The other one is a new young but promising science journal that available in both languages, founded by a young researcher. Its focus is narrower, only introduction of actual research of my country researchers in hard science/technology.

Thank you so much for your time to reading this far.

Having learnt something new does not mean that you can publish a research article. You need some new research to publish. So my answer to the question in the title is:

Use your new knowledge to do research.

If you still hold on to the idea of publishing something, you need to think hard about 1. a venue to publish and 2. what is it that makes your text publishable. If you can write a really good overview for some audience and can find a venue that may fit, you may try (but in fact, it is pretty hard and next to impossible to write a good overview when you just entered a field, this is something for more senior people).

Research is always precious. Never ask a question like "Is this research useful?" ... You never know what you might hit upon in future. So, always maintain the copies of the journal articles and book chapters you read during the development of your dissertation or research paper. These days, inter-disciplinary research is becoming more and more popular. You may need to reckon or revisit your works anytime, anywhere. So, don't be disheartened. Instead, get yourself a cabinet where you can keep the hard copies of all the materials you read and analysis. You can also store electronic copies of relevant readings in a Cloud-based folder. One of the easiest ways is perhaps to cite and save all the articles you read on Google Scholar.