Towards and Enjoyable Career in Scientific Research
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This document summarizes the key points from a talk on enjoying a career in scientific research. The talk focused on tips for scientific writing and socio-political aspects of being a researcher. For scientific writing, tips included reading a variety of authors to simplify complex topics, taking a creative writing course, motivating the reader, using an active voice and conversational style, and being honest in reporting results. For socio-political aspects, tips were to adapt to local customs, learn the local language, socialize with diverse people, express ideas rationally, and embrace art, travel, and teamwork. The overall message was to develop a broad and flexible approach to further an enjoyable career in research.
Towards and Enjoyable Career in Scientific Research
- 1. Towards an Enjoyable Career in Scientific Research Sagar Sen ’99 Batch Dr. AIT Currently: Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo
- 2. Dr. AIT in my Life 1999-‐‑ 2003
- 3. Why Dr. AIT? My father (prof. at I.I.Sc.) had two students from Dr. AIT who did a project with him several years ago (‘80s). They settled in the USA and have been sending x-mas and new years greetings to our home for years expressing their gratitude. Humble and grateful students from Dr. AIT my father told me.
- 4. It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.’ Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
- 5. Going down memory lane
- 6. Talk Outline 1. Introduction to Scientific Writing 2. Socio-‐‑political aspects of being a researcher
- 7. Scientific Writing Tip#1 : Read articles by power authors (not just scientists) who simplify/linearize complex and garbled subjects! Herbert Simon Djikstra Swami Vivekananda
- 8. Scientific Writing Tip #2 : Take a creative writing course!
- 9. Scientific Writing Tip #3 : Motivate and create emotion!
- 10. Scientific Writing Tip #4 : Write in active voice! Take the reader on a live ride. Use a conversationalist style of writing
- 11. Scientific Writing Tip #5 : A sentence should have a maximum of 18 words! Minimize redundancies in details but emphasize on the closeness to main goal several times. Short titles have higher impact!
- 12. Scientific Writing Tip #6 : Draw virtual boundaries. Go deep and contribute rigorously within these boundaries.
- 13. Scientific Writing Tip #7 : One paper must answer to one principal question. However, we may have many sides to the same question.
- 14. Scientific Writing Tip #8 : Do incremental research and look back from the top of the mountain!
- 15. Scientific Writing Tip #9 : Be honest and report truth. Validate your results multiple times with respect to ground truth. 20 15 10 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31
- 16. Scientific Writing Tip #10 : Don’t use adjectives based on feeling/impression. Use them parsimoniusly if you have proof. Eg.: Proof with rigorous experiments
- 17. Is it a good abstract? The Structure of Ill-‐‑Structured Problems, Herbert Simon, Artificial Intelligence Journal (1973) The boundary between well structured and ill structured problems is vague, fluid and not susceptible to formalization. Any problem solving process will appear ill structured if the problem solver is a serial machine that has access to a very large long-‐‑term memory of potentially relevant information, and/or access to a very large external memory that provides information about the actual real-‐‑world consequences of problem-‐‑solving actions. There is no reason to suppose that new and hitherto unknown concepts or techniques are needed to enable artificial intelligence systems to operate successfully in domains that have these characteristics.
- 18. Headache? Recognizable languages in concurrency monoids Theoret. Comp. Science 150, 1995, 77 -‐‑ 108. Automata with concurrency relations A are labelled transition systems with a collection of binary relations indicating when two actions, in a given state of the automaton, are concurrent. We investigate concurrency monoids M(A) comprising all finite computation sequences of A, modulo a canonical congruence induced by the concurrency relations, with composition as monoid operation. Under suitable assumptions on A, we obtain a Kleene-‐‑type characterization of the recognizable languages of M(A). This generalizes results of Cori, Métivier, Perrin and Ochmanski in trace theory.
- 19. Bonus Tip The writer should work hard to not give the reader a headache.
- 20. Talk Outline 1. Introduction to Scientific Writing 2. Socio-‐‑political aspects of being a researcher
- 21. Socio-‐‑political Tip #1 When in Rome do as the Romans do!
- 22. Socio-‐‑political Tip #2 Learn the local language!
- 23. Socio-‐‑political Tip #3 Socialize with people from everywhere! Get out of the comfort zone. Learn to listen and exchange ideas
- 24. Socio-‐‑political Tip #4 Express yourself rationally!
- 25. Last tip! First accept all then select! Embrace art! Travel! Go crazy! Skill! Embrace cold climates! Team work! Develop free-‐‑shifting aBention! It is an important prop of vital activity! Dr. J.E. Barmack
- 26. Thank you.