Advice to My Students

First, obtaining a PhD is not necessary the best choice to your future career. You have to make sure you know what research is and enjoy doing research; otherwise, there is no point to waste our times. If you have determined to obtain a PhD, you have to work hard to earn it. To better prepare yourself for PhD study, here are something you have to learn. I will add more here as time goes .....

Writing Technical Papers

Mathematical Writing by Don Knuth: Before you write your first research paper, read this first. 

You have to know both Tex/LaTex and Word in preparing your papers.

Preparing Technical Reports Using MS Word  While many people claim they know Word, most people really do not know the power of Word. This is based on an old version of MS Word that I prepared in 2003. The document is outdated, but will give you some idea.

Making Technical Presentations

Prof. Baochun Li of University of Toronto gave a very good presentation on “The Art of Presentations”. Please read it. It also covers Prof. Li’s view on “A Roadmap to Good Research”.

What you should do when your paper is accepted by a prestigious conference?

Congratulations! Your work is recognized by the peers and you have to prepare the final paper and to prepare your trip to attend the conference and to make a fine presentation.

Preparing the final paper

Ask me and Molly (molly.t.chen@gmail.com) for the grants/contracts to be acknowledged. Here is an example.  “This research was supported in part by Hong Kong CERG Grant HKUST617908, National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant No. 61027009, and Huawei Corp. under Contract YBCB2009041-27.”

For the affiliations of authors in my research group, you have to add 1 and 2 below.

¹Department of Computer Science and Engineering

²HKUST Fok Ying Tung Research Institute

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Send the final version of the paper to me and Molly.

Attending the conference

You may have to apply the visa first and this may take more time than you expect.

Apply the university RTG grant.

If the RTG grant is insufficient, I will pay the difference. You have to ask me first to find out the grant to be used. If the grant is managed by FYTRI, you have to contact Molly for the proper title to be used in the receipt. You have to keep all receipts for reimbursement.

Before the trip, you have to rehearse your presentation in our group meeting.

Have a safe and enjoyable trip.