First two years

1
First two years

• (or, dont do what I did)

2
Topics

• Research agenda (what do I do now?)
• Grants (try, try, again)
• Collaboration (more than me)
• Students (getting, advising, ditching)
• Teaching

3
Negotiating first year

• Dont be trying to finish your degree
• Get out of a class
• Buy nice clothes (thanks, Bill)

4
Research agenda (do)

• Pick one (or two) areas
• Doesnt have to be thesis area
• Needs to be long-term
• 2-3 Phd theses
• Needs to have technical depth
• Mix of application, tools, theory
• Leads to grants

5
Research agenda (dont)

• Dead end papers/ideas
• One-offs, cute ideas
• Save for undergraduates
• Jump around
• Paper here, paper there

6
Research agenda (maybe)

• Switch areas
• It takes time to get expertise, code base, test
  beds, etc
• Can prove versitility
• Apply known techniques to new area
• Make sure your tools fit the problem

7
Grants

• Its very hard to write a good grant about an
  area you dont know well
• Dont know questions to ask, how to sound
  knowledgeable

8
Grants (dont)

• See a call and write a proposal for it
• Odds are not good anymore
• Usually comes out sloppy
• Takes a month (!) to write a decent grant
• Write a grant for every proposal you see
• Pick 3 at most

9
Grants (do)

• Take your ideas and shop them around
• Writing a grant can help focus your agenda
• Proposals can be tweaked/re-adjusted
• Get as many people to read as possible
• Identify the best fit
• Read proposals that were funded before
• Talk to program manager
• One page/small power point
• Find a senior person to write a grant with

10
Grants (successful)

• Part luck (panel members)
• Someone on the panel was excited
• Can describe proposal in 2-3 sentences
• Same for contributions
• Well-written
• Guidelines

11
Grants (CAREER)

• Dont write your career until youre ready
• Has to be more than list of Id like to
• Expect to spend a month or more
• Start early, early, early
• Can show other people
• Choice of program is crucial

12
Grants (industry)

• Beware of grants that
• Require lots of work that cant be published
• Lots of deliverables
• May need a staff person
• Lots of your time
• Make sure you get slush built-in

13
Collaboration

• Free papers!
• Within area
• Idea generation
• Outside area
• Hard to do

14
Collaboration (creating)

• You need to have a skill that someone wants
• Best if you can approach someone and say I can
  solve this problem
• No one has time. Dont expect collaborators to
  have students/resources, especially intially

15
Collaborating (outside field)

• Make sure youre not just a tool
• Publishable?
• Great source of problems

16
Students

• Finding a good graduate student
• Word of mouth, REU programs
• GRE/TOEFL/GPA
• Low scores are a bad sign
• GPA High scores in CS, low scores elsewhere
• You may need to sit on them to keep them focused
• Letters
• Look for specifics
• Statement
• Look for banalities (bad)

17
Students (PhD, Master)

• Guiding
• Student-defined project
• Increases enthusiasm
• May not be able to make progress
• You-defined project
• More likely to be do-able
• You need to be clear about what the student
  should do
• Student may not be enthusiastic

18
Students

• Undergraduates
• Very specific do this (think class assignment)
• Place on tangential/small projects

19
Students

• Ditching
• Dont be afraid to
• Evaluating
• Set specific goals/deadlines
• Dont nag can they finish on their own?
• Let student outline goals

20
Teaching

• Steal, steal, steal
• Assignments take a long time to write well/work
  out bugs
• Lectures are easier to change
• Youll want to teach more than the students can
  learn
• Preparation
• Over is as bad as under

21
Teaching (do)

• Teach same class(es) first couple years
• Less prep time

22
Teaching (dont)

• Dont try to change class (especially first
  semester teaching)
• Undergraduate classes especially
• Tweak/change some assignments, not all