• Advice

UTCS Graduate Student Research & Career Advice

Graduate Advising Day (GAD) 2009

Feb 6 @ ACES 2.402

• 9:00 am - We want you to succeed! J Strother Moore

• 9:15 am - Job and internship interview questions to ask and expect, Kathryn S McKinley GAD09-Kathryn.ppt

• 9:45 am - Practicum: Practice interviewing with your peers.

• 10:15 am - Break

• 10:30 am - Panel led discussion: What I wish I had done in graduate school and the best thing I did do, Mike Walfish & Brent Waters

• 11:30 am - Networking, Adam Klivans GAD09-Klivans.ppt

• 12:00 pm - Lunch & Practicum: Give an elevator talk. Come prepared to describe your research to a student outside your research area.

• 1:00 am - Looking back, peering ahead, Rama Kotla, Microsoft Research (UT PhD 2008) GAD09-Rama.pptx

• 1:30 pm - Practicum: Curriculum vitae swap. Bring your CV. You will exchange with a student outside your research area.

• 2:00 pm - I speak pretty now, Kristen Grauman GAD09-Kristen.ppt

• 2:30 pm - Break

• 3:00 pm - Interdisciplinary research, Luay Nakhleh, Assistant Professor, Rice University (UT PhD 2004) GAD09-Luay.pdf

• 3:30 pm - On writing well, William Cook GAD09-Cook.pdf

• 4:00 pm - Practicum: writing swap. Bring a one to two page writing sample, such as the abstract and introduction of a work in progress, your research statement, or a paper critique. You will exchange with a student outside your research area.

• 4:45 pm - Evaluation: Fill out web evaluation form.

Graduate Advising Day (GAD) info from previous years

• GAD-all-2007.ppt - UTCS Graduate Advice Day Slides, Feb 23, 2007

  • Overview & What we are doing to help you succeed, J Moore, Department Chair

  • Communication Skills, Adam Klivans
  • Panel: What Will I Do When I Graduate? (Praveen Yalagandula, HP; Dave Moriarty, Apple; Seth Pettie, University of Michigan -- all UT PhD grads)
  • Managing Your Advisor, Keshav Pingali

  • Panel: Tools and Advice for AI, Systems, & Theory Research (Ned Dimitrov, Mike Bond, Shimon Whiteson -- all UT PhD students)

  • Advice on Applying and Interviewing for Jobs, Steve Keckler

  • Panel: Work-Life Balance (Adam Brown, PhD student; Emmett Witchell, assistant prof; Kathryn McKinley, prof)

  UTCS Graduate Student Advice Day Slides, May 11, 2006

  • Overview & What we are doing to help you succeed, J Moore, Department Chair

  • Starting a research career & picking an advisor, Emery Berger, Assistant Prof at UMass (UT graduate)

  • What your advisor can do for you & managing your advisor, Doug Burger, Associate Professor

  • Communication skills - I speek pretty now, Mike Dahlin, Associate Professor
  • Networking, Pete Manolios, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech (UT graduate)

  • What it takes to land academic interviews & how to create it, - Kathryn McKinley, Professor

  • Preparing for an academic interview, Karu Sankaralingam, Graduate Student

  • What I did right, what I would change, & other general advice, Long Huang, Graduate Student

  • What I did right, what I would change, & other general advice, JP Martin, Graduate Student

Career Advice

Links to a variety of professional development materials. Originally collected & edited by Mike Dahlin, Kathryn McKinley, and Risto Mikkulainen, among others.

• Advice on Research, Dr. R.W. Hamming

  How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia, David Patterson

  Pithy advice for researchers, Mike Dahlin

  Pithy advice for graduate school, Rachel Pottinger & Kathryn McKinley (June 2005)

  Accreted wisdom related to computer science, Armando Fox

Big thoughts

• As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, Atlantic Monthly (July 1945)

  There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Richard Feynman

Writing Papers and Giving Talks

• How to give a bad talk, Mike Dahlin

  How to give a good talk, Mike Dahlin

  The Task of the Referee Alan Jay Smith

  Hints on writing technical papers, Armando Fox

  Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, Joseph M. Williams

  The Elements of Style, Strunk and White

General Advice

Pending

Other Wiki's

• The Neural Networks research page is a useful and thorough collection of UTCS info, including lots of advice about classes, working on a dissertation, etc. Especially interesting are the sections about "General Research Tools" information, including guides for LaTeX, LyX, CVS, SSH, and system security. [Accessible from UT network only]

Women in Computing

• CRA (Computing Research Association), Graduate Student Information guide, and lots of other great career advice