Winter break is a strange time for an academic who lives apart with their family. It is the time that you have been waiting to relieve the sense of guilt that you have been accumulating during the academic year to your loved ones but then all the fun cool projects…

I use slack a lot: from a small-scale research lab to an entire academic community. I find it useful because of the nature of instant chat messenger. It is much more interactive than email: for example, we usually don’t write an email that says “Hey.” and wait for an answer…

The principle of no surprises applies to user interface and software design — stating that a UI should be something that users can predict (rather than be surprised at). However, I find this principle extremely useful in a professor-Ph.D. student relationship. This idea of applying the rule to advising context…

I just had a conversation about blogging research ideas (which are not published yet) and people, in general, were worried about being scooped — to get your research idea stolen. (e.g., Someone else picks up your ideas and write a paper before you.) This is a valid concern for sure…

Make the slides for a busy asshole. Think about a person that is not going to watch your presentation or not listen to your talk, busy answering an email from their work. The guy doesn’t want to read long text on a slide. They don’t have time for that. The…

The idea is to maintain a research catalog for the lab. Research ideas can come from a lot of different things: reading, writing, conversation, jokes, and trolling. Even if one can think of a cool idea, typically we (busy academics) can’t start the project immediately. Furthermore, we don’t have time…