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How to prepare for being a TA (Teaching Assistant)?
I start my graduate program next week, which includes spending some of my time as a Teaching Assistant. It is my least favorite part of job, and I do not want to teach in my career after that. I don't want to become professor but get a job in a company.
Nobody told me how to teach and I don't even know what classes I have. I have little time to prepare, and probably don't know the professor (professors?) well. So what can I do to prepare, until I know what courses I have and can go over the material? I'm quite scared right now.

Being a TA gives you extremely valuable experience that you almost never otherwise get before your first job:  How to read other people's code.  Some students come up with very, shall we say, "interesting" constructs, and being able to decipher them will help immensely - especially for interviews that give you some code to start with.  (I was a lab TA, so I helped with their projects when they got stuck, but rarely did any teaching myself unless it was to clarify a point about the current project)

@Izkata code? While it may sometimes feel that everyone on Academia.SE is working in CS, it's not actually the case :)

@F'x Oh... yeah.  Yay "Hot Questions", I didn't realize which site I was on.  Okay, okay, reinterpret that as "other peoples' work", I'm sure it still applies in a lot of fields...  =P

Started being a CS TA my Sophomore year of college and ended my Senior year. Best thing I've ever done for myself and those I helped along the way.

Be prepared to be shocked when you find out that most students don't know what you thought all 14-year-olds know.

More generally, learning to teach means learning to communicate complex ideas to non-experts, which is an incredibly valuable skill in any profession.

Here is an answer, which you might find helpful, that I wrote about how to teach a class that you have never taken.  Much of that advice applies here too.  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3210/how-to-teach-a-class-that-ive-never-taken/3213#3213

I think it’s traditional not to prepare at all. ;-)

Be honest and be yourself. Students will latch on to your discomfort and will use it as an excuse for their performance. I have found that if you are honest with them with a statement along the lines of "I am new to teaching, so please be patient while I work out my teaching style and get more comfortable. If you have any concerns about how class is going, please speak to me as soon as possible." they are much more forgiving of your mistakes which you are bound to make. There is nothing worse than students who feel they cannot pass the class due to your teaching, so allowing them to voice their opinions early can both help in your teaching (i.e., "You stand in front of the board too often." or "It would be more helpful if you spent a little more time going over X.") and in your students attitudes towards you. But be careful on this front, make no instantaneous decisions. I always will say something like "I will think about it and get back to you next class if the policy X needs to change." Always get back to them about it, even if it is a no.
Additionally, talk to other grad students and faculty if you are finding you are having problems with teaching. I would be surprised if your department or university had people did not staffed just for training of instructors for teaching duties. Talk to them and voice your nervousness, they are there to help. Even think about all your classes and what the professor did that you hated or liked and try to emulate the best attributes as best you can. But don't try to be these people, just be yourself.
The key here is talk to everyone, do your best, and be yourself.
Since you're just starting out, I don't believe that they would throw you in cold into a classroom and say "teach" without any forewarning or even knowledge of which class, but they might depending on where you are (and talk to other people about what to do quickly if possible). You will probably start out grading and/or doing recitations/review sections a few times a week until you are more capable/comfortable with maintain your own class.
Good luck in teaching and studies! I always think being able to explain what you know to other people is a true sign that you know it yourself.
Addendum: The books that earthling suggested will always help. If you are in mathematics, I also suggest How to Teach Mathematics by Steven G. Krantz. Even though it is written for those teaching math, it is also a good read for almost any new instructor, particularly in the sciences.

I might add as a side note that it is easy to let teaching take over all of your time. Plan your time well and remember your number one priority is your own research/classes.

I don't believe that they would throw you in cold into a classroom and say "teach" without any forewarning or even knowledge of which class — Sadly, I do.

@JeffE why? do you want to teach something to your TA?

You are off to the right start - ask questions. Next step is read... a lot.
I have some books I've recommended here before. They will give you a good beginning.
Sadly, university teachers are rarely prized for their teaching abilities. Often they are just thrown in as long as they understand the subject(s). Tertiary teaching is, more often than not, learned on the job. So, read all the posts here about teaching. If you have a chance, practice. Usually a university teacher's first semester is the worst. It gets much better (and easier) as you go on.
One other course I would recommend is The Art of Teaching. It is really well done and covers so very many things you should be thinking about.

Accept that the first day, and probably a few days following that, are likely to feel a bit 'emotional'. It happens to everyone. It will get better from there quite quickly, though will probably take at least a term before you really get into the swing of things.
If you haven't done so yet, try going to the admin department and seeing if they know what courses you'll be doing. They're useful people to know in general, and I've found them often to be much more on top of things like this than the faculty. The same applies to lab technicians and other staff (who will absolutely know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than you do, so stay on their good side).
If you're not already, get familiar with the way things are generally 'done' at your uni. With undergrad courses and practicals there's quite possibly a standard way all work is assigned and graded. Look in the undergraduate prospectus and/or any webpages set up for them to get an idea what they're being told, and hence their expectations. Also look up any rules your department has on plagiarism, dealing with late work, dealing with sick days and religious holidays, what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviour towards them on your part, etc.
You will almost certainly need a calendar to keep track of when you're meant to be doing what. I've used a pocket book in the past, but these days would probably use my phone so I can sync it all online. Being organised, and knowing that you're organised, removes a lot of the stress.
Once you find out what course you're doing be sure to go through all of it. If there's a practical demonstration, do it yourself as soon as possible - and once you can do it, play with the equipment and find all the ways it can fail to work (your students will discover them all). If there's questions students will be expected to do, do them all yourself, no matter how easy they look - you need to know this material better than they do, so you can deal with the thousand and one bizarre errors they will make. This will be a bit of a time sink, but you've got to do it.
Be prepared to not be surprised if you start to find you're enjoying it. Even if teaching isn't your long term goal, seeing someone 'get' a problem thanks to your advice can be very rewarding.

Before every lecture I've taught, I hand out forms to the students.  The questions on the form are very simple:

What went well?
What could be improved?
Do you have any other suggestions?

I collect the forms at the end of the lecture.  The feedback I get may be tremendously helpful.

A good number of universities (or departments) have a TA Handbook, or another sort of documentation which contains both high-level stuff (e.g., policies), but also very practical advice on being a teaching assistant. Ask around if your institution has one (ask the more senior students, or ask the administrative staff). Also, have a look at those institutions that put theirs on the web:

University of Nebraska Lincoln
University of Pittsburgh
UC Santa Cruz
many others you can find with Google…

One part of your question I can offer very concrete advice for. You say you don't know what classes you have then go into the main office of your department and ask where to get trained on the course registration software. You say you don't know the professors that you are assisting well or at all, make appointments to go meet them and ask them what they want you to do. What they tell you will be the best starting point for your preparation.
When you go into industry you will occasionally be asked to complete tasks that may not be to your taste. For you it sounds like teaching while in grad school is the same situation and this is ok. Treat these two situations similarly, put in enough time and effort to do it well and it should work out fine for everybody.

This is a very broad question and the best answer may heavily depend on the field you are in. Nevertheless I feel there are some general principles one can try to adhere to, to be a decent TA.

Talk to the Professor of the course about the content. Furthermore try to schedule a weekly meeting with him or his assistants, where you can discuss problems and what happened in the course that week.
Find out if there are other TAs, who you can discuss problems with. They may have more experience than you, which they can share. If you need to grade some work, it is very good to have a joint session with other TAs, since then the grading for the course will become more uniform. This is especially important if you have to grade an exam at the end.
Prepare your sessions well, i.e. prepare some notes about what you think should be said and solve any exercises beforehand.
Be aware that you are now "on the other side", but are still not quite faculty yet. A TA is often a buffer between students and professors. Many students are too shy to directly talk to professors, so they may turn to you instead. Make it clear that you are open for concerns and forward these concerns to the professor, even if you do not agree. If you do agree with some concerns, you should also at least try to stand up to the professor on behalf of the students.
Stick to your scheduled time. Make it clear when your session starts and when it ends and do not go over time.
Try to build a friendly, but professional climate in your session, where people are comfortable posing questions and admitting mistakes, this also applies to you.
If you are faced with a difficult question you are not able to answer right away, write it down and prepare a good answer for the next session.
There may be students who are smarter or more knowledgeable than you and which might seem to pose a "threat" to your authority. Make it clear that you are in charge, but try to include them into your teaching by letting them talk or answer other peoples questions. Sometimes these people are not trying to challenge your authority, but just want to be recognized by their peers.


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Why is it so difficult to find a topic for my thesis research?
I've majored in computer science (BSc: close to MIS, MSc: advanced software engineering), I've worked on dissertations on totally different topics in every stage at college, now I'm planning to do a PhD and I've been looking at different topics from various sub-fields but I frankly can't pin one to use as a starting point. I would say that I like X topic or Y and when I look closer at the papers being published in the field they seem too obscure to me and I can barely comprehend their abstracts. For example, I was searching for starting point in solving concurrency problems in software or even advance such technique since I felt it's what I want to do and what I know that would keep me motivated but I frankly couldn't find anything, I've looked at publications that reference famous papers/book (things I've researched very briefly) like communicating sequential processes and cooperating sequential processes but there was nothing that could give me a good start.
My questions here, am I looking in the wrong sub-field? I know I'm highly motivated by the previously mentioned area but do I understand enough to enter such area? I've seen people jump from psychology to computer science at PhD level and I wonder how someone could do such thing. Also am I even a PhD material if I can't pass this stage?
Note: the topics of my past dissertations were on AI and online social communities

Although reading the classics is important, that's not the way to find research topics. You need to look in the most recent conferences in the relevant field. That will give you an impression of what is at the cutting edge.

If you don't already have funding, you can narrow your choices by restricting yourself only to projects that are funded.

@Moriarty oh funding is not an issue for me, I already have a sponsor for any program that is willing to sponsor any program I join, the issue is that I cannot find a decent starting point and since graduation I've lost contact with my supervisors (I emailed couple of times but haven't got any responses).

@DaveClarke oh I think I communicated the wrong idea, what I wanted to say is that I have looked at papers that referenced famous papers like the ones above but couldnt spot a decent starting point, some either look like hieroglyphics to me and some just feel vague or unclear in terms what could the future work be.

Short answer: Research is hard.

You have to ask yourself, what do you want? This is the question you should answer by yourself and which is crucial in all the following steps. So you want to do a Ph.D. Where do you want to do your Ph.D? What country? You want applied research or theoretical? After a few questions I assume the filed of research would become narrower and narrower.
If you have a vague imagination about what you want, just do a simple search about the areas. If you don't know what is this sub-field about, don't start reading scientific articles but rather start from the scratch, basic information. Don't get depressed if you don't understand the article stuff. It is a very narrow research and you have to work diligently in that narrow filed to start understanding it. Read the recent scientific news. For instance, I always read MIT news. Quite interesting researches.
If you already know the country and the subject (not exact), you start searching the university groups which are engages in a similar research. You check the articles and pay attention to the impact factors and number of articles. You check that your future supervisor has good recent articles. It means that he is working actively now.
You may contact the group supervisors to arrange a meeting or just to have a correspondence. It is always better to go and meet the team members and then they will provide some rudimentary information about all the studies they carry out.
When you narrowed down the number of choices to let's say to 5 groups, then start reading their articles. Always try to stay in touch with the groups. Ask questions, show your interest, because although you have funding, you still have to be accepted.
Of course, if you have some background in the field, it is always a bonus, but, if you don't, it is not detrimental. Everything depends on your diligence and intentions. If you are motivated, if you don't give up, after a few months of your Ph.D you would feel much progress.

Your supervisor or potential supervisors should be able to help - and I don't necessarily mean by talking to them.  First of all identify potential supervisors whose (recent) work you like and (mostly) understand. In the first instance look at their recent papers, and particularly concentrate on any points they raise in discussion or future work.  In particular do a SWOT analysis and note what are the best and worst features of the approaches, and whether you can see opportunities for different, even interdisciplinary, work to be brought to bear.
To the extent you don't understand anything, don't keep reading and rereading and struggling with it, go back to the earlier work and the citations.  Try go be back to the originators of the concepts you are lacking or find difficult, and the commentators who clarify the insights behind the formalisms.  Look for conference and workshop papers for these early developmental versions of work, rather than the erudite and impenetrable journal versions.

Any time you have difficulty understanding something written, you must consider that it is you or that it is the writer who cannot communicate clearly.
I skimmed the second paper you listed and it is certainly understandable (and I teach business but have a background in software development). However, I'm a native English speaker so my vocabulary is quite large.
The writer seems to be Dutch and from my experience, the Dutch have an excellent command of English. The English this author is using is a bit advanced so if your English is not as strong, you might not understand simply due to less vocabulary. Those who write with simpler English will be much easier for you to understand.
The first article you listed is written in simpler English.
I would say if you feel you cannot clearly understand the first article then you might want to consider another field of study or you should spend more time to develop your English reading skills (from your question, your English writing skills seem fine).
If you are considering a PhD, you might want to see if you could meet with an adviser for a few minutes and discuss this issue with them. They could more easily evaluate what would be reasonable for you.

Thank you for your response, I'm sorry I didn't explain this well but like I said to @DaveClack, I was looking at papers that referenced the ones in my original post and they were cited by many papers (11k to 2.4k citations) I've many of them and couldn't find what I can use to build my own path. I dont have problems understanding the linked publications and I already did couple of reports and a presentation on them. Sadly after graduation I've left the UK and lost contact with my supervisors, I've tried to get in touch with them through email but with no luck.

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Are the contents of discussion between a University and a student private or public?
I have the opportunity to reject an offer from a University in US. As a follow up email I was asked which university did I choose and what was the reason behind it. Can I simply ignore the follow up mail, or can I divulge the information as a good  gesture?
Personally, I do not like to reveal stuff, but is the information where I am going to study or whether or not I received funding from a particular university public? If I reveal it to staff of another university  will it not be a problem?

Or you can say directly, "I'd rather not tell you that."

Let's assume the discussion is private, but eventually the knowledge that you're at University X will be pretty public and discoverable (webpage, directory, publications etc). So is your concern keeping this secret until after you start, or longer than that (presumably impossible)?

I think the University (or more likely department or program) is asking for that information in order to improve themselves in the future.  You can ignore them, or you can help them improve themselves.  Your choice.

You're not obligated to tell them. Whether you tell them or not would be unlikely to have an impact on your future either.
They're probably not going to track you down and find you, and would mostly use the information to improve recruitment in the future.
Imagine if you told them you chose University X instead because you had family there and it was easier to secure housing. That's a sound reason, and unlikely to cause any sort of mark in the off chance they were tracking you.
I would try to avoid saying anything bad about the school, though.

For public universities in the US, the fact that you are employed at a University and what your salary is (assuming you are a TA or RA) is discoverable via most states' freedom of information laws. These laws run under various names, but they are what allows there to be newspaper sites listing all public employee salaries. However, your conversations with a university's staff members as part of your student application might be student records under FERPA and therefore not disclosable.
So I would say that the university you rejected could eventually discover that you were offered and took a job as a graduate research assistant or teaching assistant at the university you accepted, but they could not find out your reasoning without potential trouble. They are very unlikely to care, though.

Employment and salaries are only discoverable through FOIA if you're working for a public university in the US.  Salaries at Harvard and MIT are not discoverable.

Yes, of course, @JeffE. I assumed a public university due to the nature of the question, but that wasn't actually clear. I have updated my answer!

@JeffE at MIT you do not even need the FOIA.

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Do proofs count as post-prints for sharing purposes?
Some journals allow post-prints to be shared, but not the publisher's version. In these cases, can I share those proofs that are generated before the paper is published? They are not the final version that will show up on the publisher's website, but are formatted.

I'm not sure what is it that you are asking. To understand what you can and can't share after publication in a journal, you can refer to http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php Sometimes, archiving pre-print (ie pre-refereeing) is accepted, sometimes not.

@Clément The question seems perfectly clear to me, and it is not answered by Sherpa/Romeo. Are galley proofs considered a "post-print" or a "publisher version"?

I am pretty sure that Proofs of a paper are considered publisher's version. They are definitely not covered by the word "postprint", which excludes any action by the production team of the publisher (as opposed to the editorial team, including referees). Similar terms such as "Accepted Manuscript" (AM, used by e.g. CUP) have the same property: the AM is the paper as it as been accepted by the editors, thus before entering production (and thus proofs are not an AM).
So, unless specifically allowed beyond any ambiguity, you should expect green-OA compatible journals not to allow you to share the proofs on your web page or on repositories.

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Research Associate Layoff Advice
About two months ago, I started working at a university lab as a Research Associate. The application stated that 0-2 years of experience was necessary and that training would be provided, prior to this I had zero years of experience.  Now, this is a lab with only one other RA, who helped but had to split training time with their own responsibilities in the study, so I was understandably making mistakes under a lack of supervision. Last week, the PI walked in and told me that he didn't have the resources to properly train me and I'd be laid off in a few weeks, this despite telling me that training would happen on the job.
I was advised by the PI that I should spend the time before being laid off checking if any other of the PIs in the department had openings in their labs with more experienced mentors available, but that advice seems kind of sketchy. Has anybody heard of a transfer like this happening or was this just hollow advice meant to console me?

I think you would be wise to assume it is honest. It could result in a good outcome. Maybe better than your original job if you get to work with more experienced people.
Good luck.

As an administrator, I am privy to more of the behind the scenes reasoning for staffing decisions. They could have run out of money, it could be a bad fit, the PI could be inexperienced at running a lab, they could be overcommitted, have personal problems that is decreasing their capacity, hard to say. It's all speculation at this point. At my institution, a research associate is actually not a trainee position, it's more like a years 3+ postdoc.
As for your question, people shift labs without an issue. You just need to spend the time finding a new home.  See if you can find something else local, or maybe ask this PI if they have colleagues at other institutions you can be introduced to. Now is not a great time to look for a job (seasonally), but sometimes folks are needed at off-beat times and you could get lucky. Junior faculty with incoming NSF or NIH funding (starting this fall) may need someone to help get their project off the ground. You can look up recent awards in their respective awards databases.

I would take this at face value. There can be any number of things going on behind the scenes that might end in a lab "downsizing". But your PI has no real reason to lie to you.
I think the offer is probably well meaning - it doesn't sound like your PI blames you. Perhaps he/she had not trained someone from scratch before. Or maybe the other RA isn't up to the task but does good work in general. Who knows.
You admit you have been making mistakes and, honestly, that isn't really as normal as you are playing it off. You might need help (and obviously training) at the beginning but repeatedly messing up is going to get anyone fired - trainee or not.
It sounds like the PI just underestimated how much hand-holding you would need to get started. I would say they are being pretty reasonable. They're giving you a few weeks to sort things out and actively encouraged you to search around the department. They pretty much acknowledge that they can't properly train you right now, but obviously someone else might be able to. I would ask around and see what comes of it. Labs often like to hire from within the department so you've already got your foot in the door.

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PhD application to Austrian University
I have a master's degree and I would like to study for a doctorate in Austrian universities and among the questions that are in the application is "Where do you want to carry out your project ? (library, archive, institute)".
How can I answer this question?

What field are you studying?

You should answer the question accurately.

in filed pharmacology and toxicology and i have proposal in (antibiotic Resistance)

Maybe they just mean: "At which institute (or lab, if applicable) do you plan to implement the project?" And the answer could be "Institute of ... at the University of Vienna" or whatever?

I guess I'm as puzzled about the question as you are. In some fields it might make sense, but doesn't seem to for yours. Perhaps it is just a general question asked of everyone.
I think you need to get guidance on the question from the individual university. Pharmacology research would seem to be most likely carried out in an institute, but perhaps they have a specific meaning.


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Someone submitted my code as their code in an assignment; what should I do now?
I am second year student; one of my friends stole my code and then applied for an extension. I submitted my file on the deadline day and they submitted 10 days later using the same file as mine. Two days earlier someone told me they submitted my file. My mental health going down; what should I do now?

I am not sure why you are worried. The other student submitted the same code 10 days after you did. Your prof should be able to figure out what happened.

What do you mean by "stole"? Did they break into your notebook and took the code, or did you share it with them willingly? How close are you with this friend? Naturally, if they are indeed your friend, the best way would be to just convince them to admit that they copied your code.

Talk to the professor. Assure them that you wrote the code you submitted and that you didn't share it with anyone else. Say that you were told someone stole the code from you. Don't say who. You don't need to (and should not) accuse anyone.
Find better "friends".

This situation is most likely already resolved (given that it happened a year ago) so my comment here is more for posterity in case anyone have a similar situation happen.
For those who are saying "I'm not sure why you are worried", this is a very dangerous and (IMO) downright idiotic view to have. In most cases of plagiarism, both the "victim" and the perpetrator gets punished by default. Most Universities strongly reiterate this fact, which applies even under negligence (e.g if I left my laptop open and someone took my assignment). This is why on day 1 they would hammer home this point of keeping your work safe and secure.
Now, in this particular case, its hard to tell if it happened under negligence or malice. Negligence would be if you left your laptop open and he came and copied it off you. Malice would be more akin to him hacking into your laptop (or worse, use physical threats). Like I said, most Universities do not excuse negligence, but might offer you a lesser punishment (like a warning) if you can prove that it was truly negligence and not collusion (as in you and your friend didn't agree to copy each other). This is really hard unless you have some hard evidence (like chats of him asking for your assignment and you saying no).
Malice on the other hand should be much easier to prove, if that's the case. If you got hacked (which is the far more common case), then there are a multitude of ways that the University's IT department can provide proof on your behalf. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume someone that needs to copy people's assignment probably isn't the brightest mind and consequently would leave a huge breadcrumb of evidence. If there are threats involved (god forbid) then this really shouldn't be considered an academic misconduct, but much rather a police matter so your mind really shouldn't be on what the University would do to you.
TLDR: Never leave your laptop open and use strong passwords. Negligence is not an excuse for plagiarism.


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How much programming experience is needed before contacting a college professor for research/internship?
I'm currently a sophomore in high school looking to work with a college professor in the near future. I'm interested in the computer science field, and I was wondering how much programming I should have under my belt before contacting a professor for research/internship opportunities? I'm currently studying Java, but I know for a fact that it's not enough. I've gotten the fundamentals down (classes, methods, arrays, etc.) and I've just scratched the surface of GUI programming. At what level would you guys deem it appropriate to get into contact with a professor? Thanks for your help!

If you're answering an advertisement (say, on the professor's webpage), then the requirements should be spelled out there.  If you're just thinking of emailing people with whom you have not had previous contact, I suggest you rethink your plans; this is unlikely to lead to anything.

Experience with computer science is probably more important than experience with programming.  No, those are not the same thing.

There isn't any general rule about the level of programming required to work as a research assistant in computer science. There are many different subfields in computer science, and in many of them, doing research does not involve any programming at all. At the other extreme, some research projects might only be suitable for students with highly specialized knowledge in a particular kind of programming.
Even the same professor might have multiple projects, some of which require prior programming experience and some of which don't.
I am a researcher in the field of computer networks, and I work with high school students in the summer. I don't require any prior programming experience. Some of my students have prior experience, and some don't, but none of them have experience in the specifics of my research area, anyway. In general, for students with no research experience, I am looking for general qualities - learns quickly, responsible, punctual, good at taking feedback, good at writing notes and documenting their work - rather than any specific kind of technical expertise.
(P.S. I do not hire high school research students who contact me by themselves - I work with students who apply through a high school summer research program organized by my university. I encourage you to look for opportunities like that.)


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Pursuing a less exciting PhD research topic at a top-ranked university VS doing more interesting research at a lesser-known university?
I'm currently in the process of applying to different PhD Programs, and I have a very specific topic/theme in mind that I would like to work on and that resonates deeply with my personal mission, goals, and expertise.
However, in applying to certain PhD programs, I find that many potential supervisors already have predetermined topics for their researchers to pursue and that there's little flexibility to go beyond the predefined research themes.
Herein lies my dilemma: Is it better to pursue a less exciting topic at a top-ranked university or to pursue research that is more aligned with my research interests at a lesser-known university?
Should I be more open to other research areas/topics than the one I had in mind?

What country is this? What degrees will you hold when beginning doctoral study?

The universities are in Europe, and I would have a master's degree at the beginning of my doctoral study. I also do have 4 years of industry experience which have definitely helped inform the research direction I want to pursue.

@meraxes: Could you, maybe, be a bit more specific? In some parts of Europe, "top-ranked universities" are not really a thing, and "top-ranked" is more or less meaningless there because those rankings are mainly adapted to the higher education systems of English speaking countries (mainly US and UK).

The top-ranked universities I have in mind are TUM and EPFL. The lower-ranked universities are less known and I'd rather not name them, but I hope you get the idea.

Thanks for your response! Yepp, I get the idea, and it confirms what I was suspecting: You seem to be projecting the US-centred view that there are "top universities" and mediocre universities to other countries. I can't make a qualified comment regarding Lausanne, but concerning TU Munich, you seem to be misinterpretating the situation: at least from a German perspective, there is no significant "visibility" or "high-rank" bonus: if you apply for a job (in industry or in Academia) chances are that no one will care whether you did your PhD at TUM or at any other university in Germany.

@Roland: Yes indeed, things like funding and infrastructure might be a relevant factor that is related to the university. But then again, even small and completely unknown universities in Germany are likely to provide very reasonable infrastructure, and funding and equipment might in many (though not all) cases be more dependent on the specific research group, or at least on the department, than on the university.

No offence, but I'm not sure TUM is top-ranked :) EPFL is.

@JochenGlueck For what it's worth, the "US-centred view that there are "top universities" and mediocre universities" also doesn't apply to graduate study in the US to nearly the extent that people applying seem to think.

@Dilworth: Well, TUM is probably one of the highest ranked universities in Germany in some of these magic rankings, but certainly not one of the highest ranked in the world (I vaguely remember position 50 or so worldwide in, I think, the Times ranking some time ago). But as I said, the phrase "one of the highest ranked universities in Germany" contains close to zero useful information.

Evan an "exciting" PhD topic can be mind-numbing and soul-crushing if many things are not aligned properly.

I encourage you not to dwell over "rankings", but instead on your advisor, who should be someone you get along well with. As a rule of thumb, find a great advisor and an okay topic  rather than a great topic and an okay advisor.

@AndrewTawfeek, actually I think that the topic is more important than the advisor in many settings. Rankings are also very important for different reasons.

In my experience, students with industry experience require some (major) re-orientation.   Topics of interest to the industry may not be publishable or difficult to be published in top venues.  For example, in my area (engineering), the industry just gotten onto an idea in academia that was hot 10 years ago.

@meraxes I am just starting my PhD at EPFL this month. i was asking myself this exact question you're asking. I was even considering TUM as well :)  I think it's important to be aware that the general ranking of a university may not correspond with how good they are in the specific field you are interested in. for example, my field is remote sensing + ML. there are universities with quite low ranking which nevertheless have excellent remote sensing department that, within the remote sensing community, is well known and respected.

Keyword, advisor, find best and suitable supportive non toxic advisor

I like to think of pursuing a PhD as an apprenticeship with the goal of becoming a researcher.  As others have suggested, it can be quite difficult and having interest in a topic can help, particularly in those moments of great difficulty.  At the same, however, it can actually hurt your goals if you aren't pursuing research in an effective way -- even if the topic is the 'right one', so to speak.
From my own experience, I was very interested in a specific topic offered by almost no universities.  It was interdisciplinary and not well-defined.  While working in industry, I spent my free time "researching" independently.  After two years, I wrote about 300 pages of a book that, in retrospect, is very difficult to read and will likely have no audience (too technical for laypeople, not enough status for academics).
After considering my options, I eventually ended up in a PhD program in a field that can be applied usefully in almost any domain (think statistics or applied math).  My thesis research was not exactly aligned with my ideal research, but I learned many useful skills including perhaps the most important of all: how to conduct research suitable for publication in academic journals.
One day, I plan to return to my specific topic.  When I do, I am now much more confident in my research approach and ability to be taken seriously.  This is something I'd encourage you to consider.  I'd pick the school that enables you to become the best researcher (which may even be the 'lower-ranked' university anyway).  In other words, I'd much rather work on a less interesting topic with an excellent advisor than fascinating topic with an incompetent advisor.  The excellent advisor will train me so I can one day work on the fascinating topic, competently.

It's a very tricky question. It really depends on what you want a doctorate for. Is it to add "PhD" after your name on a business card? Is it to pursue a career in academia? In industry?
For an academic career, where your PhD is from will matter little, but what you have done as a grad student will matter a lot. Having good publications in a "hot field" plus some teaching experience will work wonder. In industry, brand name recognition is a little more important.

+1 I think it boils down to this! For academia, good publications are most important. For industry, it might vary, but the farther away the position is from research the more important is brand. In some top tier consultancies, HR departments even use university rankings to filter out candidates. The specific example provided by OP, "TUM", actually ranked very high on the lists that I have seen.

I agree that the university matters little, as long as it's a well-equipped university in the relevant area with a good supervisor. Where the title is from may not matter much, but you won't be getting good publications without the right mentorship. It just so happens that people that publish well, usually make their way to the big universities.

Far more important than the prestige of the institute, or even the topic, is the quality of the supervisor and the research team you'll be in. And by "quality" i don't mean intellectual quality, but personal quality. How good a supervisor are they? How much support will they give you? How much freedom within the topic agreed with the funder? Are they generally a nice person to work with? Will they have your best interests at heart? Will they allow you to go to conferences? What are their publication policies? Are they well connected and able to introduce you to others?
These are far more important questions than the prestige of the institution. Generally you can only find these things out by talking to current and former students in private one on one meetings.

I think what this comes down to is which advantages do the two options have - in general and for you.
While going to a top-ranked university might yield better/different job opportunities afterwards, the question is: do you need these better opportunities for what your future plans are?
Doing a PhD requires a lot of work and time, and in the end, this will be made much easier if the topic you are researching as part of your PhD will one that you like a lot. And, if you are researching something very specific, chances are that you will be become one of only a few experts on this topic, making which university you've been at less of a concern.
Furthermore, I think it also very much depends on where you are based. From my time on this site, I have gotten the feeling that being obsessed with going to a top tier university is much more of a thing in the US than in Europe for example.

Herein lies my dilemma: Is it better to pursue a less exciting topic at a top-ranked university or to pursue research that is more aligned with my research interests at a lesser-known university?

It's a matter of risk-management, that depends on the precise parameters, i.e., which universities you have in mind, what's your end career goal, and how passionate you are about your ideal research comparing to your indifference to the other research.
Based on these parameters, you formulate a formula (say, a linear inequality) that captures the threshold you need to decide in favour of the top-ranked university or not.
For instance, if the top-ranked university is MIT, and the low-ranked university is really "horrible", plugging in the numbers should end up in you going to MIT.
If it's TUM against Lausanne, probably not so much.

It is crucial that your rubric of a study and interest in a specific field parallels that of a scholar associated with a University.
Graduate departments are looking for graduate students that can actively contribute significantly pioneering work to a specific area under the supervision of a scholar completing research in that specific area.
Thus you are most likely to be admitted to the institution in which the scholar’s interests parallels yours more completely rather than selecting ahighly ranked institution in which the parallel doesn’t align as completely.
To conclude, it is better to pursue interest within an institution that parallels your research more passionately that one that may be higher ranked

Thanks for the response! Just wanted to point out though that the question isn't so much about which institution is more likely to admit a scholar; it's more about which option a student should choose given different PhD offers or opportunities

Thank you for your commentary.
You are correct. I did mention the importance of “interest parallel” and its influence on a student’s choice and outcome

An answer to this question will depend on your plans.

If you intend to get a degree and then to move to the corporate world, then, typically, the overall rank and prestige of a school will be of a major importance.

Each rule has exceptions. E.g. if an investment fund needs an expert on a specific topic of statistics, it may prefer a right person from a less known school to raw talent from a famous school. This, though, will not negate the general rule.

If you are aiming at a career in academia, you may consider changing your question, because a key parameter is missing from it: the potential supervisor and their record in terms of the former disciples' careers. This is a pivotal criterion.

Two examples from real life.
(1) At a state university in Midwest, which is highly respected but not elite, a professor is renown for his care for his students and postdocs, and for the efforts he always undertakes to help them in their further career. All his postdocs get faculty position, and all his PhD students get postdoctoral fellowships (and permanent jobs soon thereafter).
(2) A late colleague from the most celebrated university was notorious for his neglect of his students' interests. He never went an extra mile to fix postdoctoral positions for them. At times, he deliberately wrote very reserved reference letters. This case being extraordinary, I know less extreme cases of supervisors caring little for their students and postdocs.  My son wasted several years under a supervisor who never had time or desire to work hand-to-hand with his group members. He gave them tasks -- and wanted to see completed manuscripts several months later. Eschew such supervisors, no matter how celebrated scholars they are.
To conclude:
you are not simply choosing a school, but are also choosing a supervisor. Doing this, try to learn if (s)he has the habit of working hand-to-hand with students and posdocs. Also, check their former students' and postdocs' career paths. This is at least as important as the prestige of the school. Possibly, more important.

If this is the only difference, go to the top university.
The reason is that what is "exciting" to you right now can very easily turn out to not be exciting once you start working on it. An example from last century is the search for Planet X. This hypothetical planet beyond Neptune had been predicted from theory, and now "all that's left" is to actually find it. Given that Neptune had been found a few decades ago from similar theoretical considerations, this can very easily sound exciting. After all there were at the time only 8 known planets in the Solar System. Finding the ninth would permanently etch your name into history. If you find it, you would also be looking at something nobody has ever done before, treading new ground, writing new chapters in humanity's knowledge from a blank slate.
But what if I were to tell you that finding new planets involves looking at millions of otherwise-unremarkable images of the sky using a blink comparator? It's boring, manual work that still has to be done because there's no better way to do it, and you need to do it for years.
Something similar could easily apply to your case. The end goal might be exciting, but the process to get there is what you'll be dealing with every day, and that might not be exciting. It's not easy to predict from the outside (or even from the inside) what the process will be like - a modern example might be you discover that your calculations work for simple cases but for the more interesting cases they are too slow, so you need to find ways to improve the speed. If you dislike figuring out how to make code more efficient, then you are not going to like the process even though the end result is still exciting.
This neglects the other advantages of going to the top university: more/better colleagues, visitors, library access, brand name for post-PhD job searches, etc.
This doesn't mean never go to the lesser-known university, but you need more/better reasons before doing so, e.g. they offer better funding, your supervisor there is well-known even though they're based at a lesser-known university, your current supervisors recommend you go there, etc.


text:
How to contact a foreign professor and ask him to cooperate in a research work?
I have completed my Msc. degree and I proposed an invention based on my thesis subject before I had defended my thesis but I have not registered it till now. My professor offered me to fabricate the device that I had proposed, both with him and a professor at a foreign university. He told me that I needed to form a research group consists of 4 people, we two and a professor and a student at a foreign university. I am required to do the half of the job along with my professor and the other half at the foreign university which I am going to find. The whole process is supposed to take 1 year and is fully funded. At the time I am planning to apply for a Ph.D. position at a foreign university too. Can I apply to the same professor for a Ph.D. position who I am going to work with him on this project? Is it constructive and has a positive effect on my application process? If yes, could you please tell me how can I explain the situation to a professor to persuade him to work with me. I mean let me know how can I take the advantage of this project on my application process. Any advice or possible email content would be welcome.
Thanks in advance

It's odd that your prof would put this on you. Your professor is going to have better luck than you contacting other professors. Most profs receive so many e-mails from unknown prospective students that they just delete them without even reading properly.

@nengel  It's over to me to find a lab and of course a professor

Can you provide some details on what field you're in and what kind of invention/project this would be? Application processes and collaborations can work differently depending on your field.

How could it affect the application process? The field is optics and photonics, and it would be a nanoscale optical device. @Dandan

In some fields, grad students are accepted to a general graduate program and find advisors after doing lab rotations, taking courses, etc. In others, while there's technically an application process for the graduate program, you're really getting accepted by a specific faculty member who wants you as their student. In both cases, having a project in mind with a specific faculty advisor might be an advantage, but in the latter, it would be especially helpful to get in touch with the prof to discuss the project in advance. I'm not sure about optics/photonics, so you might want to ask your prof.

Can I apply to the same professor for a Ph.D. position who I am going to work with him on this project?

Yes, at least at US institutions this would not be a problem. I don't know of any reason why it might be problematic anywhere else.

Is it constructive and has a positive effect on my application process? If yes, could you please tell me how can I explain the situation to a professor to persuade him to work with me. I mean let me know how can I take the advantage of this project on my application process.

As I mentioned in my comment above, it's often an advantage to have previously contacted a potential advisor and discussed working with them. Many prospective graduate students "cold email" professors to express interest in working with them, discuss potential research projects and--usually the primary reason for emailing--to make sure the professor recognizes their name and remembers them when actually reviewing applications.
Having a particular topic or project in mind tends to be a positive--as long as it's something the department or professor you're applying to work with is interested in. The only downside to having a specific project in mind is that it might be limiting if the professor isn't interested in it and you haven't expressed any interest in things they DO want a student to work on. That seems unlikely if you're selecting them as a potential collaborator because their work aligns with your project, but I'd make sure to explicitly state that while you want to work on this project, you are also interested in ___ (things that they study that you would be interested in doing for your PhD--read their webpage to get an idea of their broader research interests and ongoing projects).
In general, when emailing potential advisors/collaborators, keep the following rules in mind:

Be polite and respectful! Don't ever come off as arrogant/demanding/expectant.
Mention who you've worked with--you'll gain credibility if they know your advisor, respect your institution, etc..
Demonstrate that you've done some background research into what they do--mention work they've done that interests you, papers you particularly liked, etc.
What can you offer to them or their lab? Describe your background, strengths, interests, etc... show them (without being arrogant!) why you think working with you/taking you on as a student would be worth their time.
Show your enthusiasm!
Try to keep it as brief as possible while still including all relevant information--be succinct. Professor are extremely busy and get about a zillion emails a day. He/she will probably not bother reading your email if it's super long. Also on this note, make sure you include enough info to snag their attention in the first few lines, since that may be all they read if they aren't hooked by then.

An example email would be something like the following (reorganized/worded as needed):

Hi Professor ___,
I'm currently finishing my Msc. degree at [institution] with [your current Professor], and am planning to pursue a PhD in [field] this coming [whenever you'll be applying]. My thesis work has been on [describe your research].
I'm contacting you for two reasons: first, I'm considering applying to [institution], and was wondering if you are currently accepting new PhD students. I'm especially excited about your work in [topics], and [describe any particular topics where your interests intersect with his/her research, strengths you have that would be particularly helpful in pursuing this/these avenues of research, etc.--e.g., I think my background/experience in __ would be an asset in studying __].
Second, one of the outcomes of my thesis work is [describe your ongoing project], which I would like to work on as a [side project/chapter/Phd project/etc. depending on the scope of what you have in mind]. We have 1 year of funding to complete this [maybe include more details--mentioning the funding is very important since it means you come with support!], and are currently looking for collaborators to [describe what you need them to help with]. [Explain why you think he/she would be the perfect collaborator].
I'd love to discuss potential PhD research topics and collaborating on our __ work if you have time in the next [give them a reasonable but discrete timeframe--few weeks is usually good].
Thank you for your time,
Arash


text:
Would giving a talk in a colloquium aid my application?
I'll probably give a review talk about current discoveries in applications of mathematics (not my autorship) on the colloquium series of my school soon (small school, accepts undergrads for giving talks). Would this help in any way my application for PhD programs in applied mathematics?

I can't see how it would hurt.

That depends on the graduate school, and the competition. So it is hard to say. However, giving talks is part of the day to day life in academia. So getting practice early won't hurt once you are in the graduate school.

Besides a direct aid, would it be worth just including it somewhere in the application?

Maybe in the CV. It probably won't hurt, and maybe it helps.


text:
What is the procedure with regard to unfinished thesis if I am terminated from the program?
I am an international student and was enrolled in a PhD program for the last 4 years. My GPA is above 3.8.
I was recently given a termination letter(without any warnings) from my department regarding my PhD program. Apparently my termination is because I missed a deadline for an article submission. I am surprised as I was not given probation for even one semester before termination. It could be because in the last 6 months my progress on my thesis was slow because I was busy with a few personal commitments.
i was getting married and had a couple of unexpected deaths in the family.
EDIT: "The deadline I missed first was a mutually set one to review the final draft of an article to publish. I missed it by more than 10 days as I had a death in the family. I sent the final edition of the draft 5 days before actual submission date for the journal. But got no response. I missed the submission date as I had no feedback from him."
I am in the last year and finishing my data analysis. I was outside the US for my research and my I-20 expired last week and now I am stranded outside the US.
As it is the summer vacation, the staff and my adviser are unavailable on the phone.
I got a reply to my emails as follows:
For the i-20, since you are currently no longer in the program. I cannot complete a graduate student program extension form for you.
I wish it had turned out better for you. I am available at any time to talk.
But the office line is still under answered. I don't have any other number. I have emailed him asking for a time and number I can contact him.
Weirdly got an email today saying let's talk on 17th June. The other members havnt responded.
An old student of the my advisor told me something similar has happened before where a student was told to look for another advisor by my advisor. But she was in her first year. It was because he felt the performance wasn't up to the mark. It was also very unexpected as he was always very cordial with her too in team meetings and department meeting. The girl took up another professor and completed her PhD.
What options do I have?
Should I wait to get back in contact with my department or should I look for other universities and programs?
What happens to the data I have collected? As I was outside the USA during the data collection, I was not given any stipend while I collected the data. Do I have rights on my data or does my adviser or does the department? The data is in audio format collected by me using a set of guidelines created by me but approved by my adviser.
I might be getting ahead of myself, but I am, to say the least, feeling panicked right now.
UPDATE Jan 2020: The advisor never explained properly, but 5 years down the line I understand what happened. My advisor wanted to leave the institute. I believe his contract/commitment made it impossible to do so while I was a student there. He did write me glowing recommendation and helped me secure a good institute in my own country. Due to the setback and credits not transferring, I had to "sit" through some courses but I will be defending my PhD this year. In the mean time I have written chapters and articles with my new and my old advisor. The old advisor runs his own research institute. The data is mine to use without issue.
I do not like being in the dark and my life partner helped me live through those times. What I will say is that power dynamics for an international student make the advisor more powerful than should be. And without an option I had to spend more time than I should have to complete an already long PhD.
Thanks for all the responses. As you can tell I opened this account and have worded everything to ensure that there is anonymity for all involved. The advisor is highly regarded in my field and his willingness to work with me is a disincentive to reveal/smear his name. Now that he has a private research institute without any international students, I hope the same will not be repeated with others.

What field are you in? How is your relationship with your supervisor? Have you signed anything regarding the data and research you have already done? Unless you work with very expensive equipment/large projects (I am thinking astrophysics or particle physics) or sensitive proprietary info (say some bioscience project with an eye toward commercialisation), I can't imagine you would not be able to retain the benefit of your work or that your former university would bother to go after you.

It won't be easy to find another university/advisor but I know a couple of people who were able to do that and successfully complete and defend their thesis elsewhere after running into various issues in their initial program.

Are these all the details? It is very unlikely for an institution to just terminate someone with a letter like this. One exception is that the student cannot be reached and his/her academic standing has not progressed. Did you commit any misconduct? Have you ever ignored their attempts to communicate with you? Notice that I am not doubting you, I simply think our advices will be more useful if we know any facts that you have not disclosed.

I think what the two gentlemen above have pointed at, are details which are absolutely necessary for an appropriate answer to your post (i.e. one that's not diving into the hyperbole which ain't relevant to you). Please consider editing your post to include all these details, and welcome to Academia.SE BTW. Cheers :)

@Penguin_Knight I have been writing to my advisor for the last 3 weeks asking her for comments on the article. Could'nt get any reply from the advisor.

@Relaxed I used to think my relationship with the advisor was good, but after no reply for a few weeks i am not sure anymore. I do not have the advisor's home or cell number and no one is picking up the office number. I do not want to ask my friends to go looking for my advisor as that might rub the advisor the wrong way. I am trying to keep this anonymous here as well.

@Relaxed My data is basically audio files on my hard drive.

Yes, your advisor is in this. It's very unlikely that they sent the termination letter without her knowledge.

If you're stranded outside the US, you should consider returning to the US first. I assume travel.SE would be more knowledgeable about it, but I think the logical first step is to contact the American Embassy to try and get back to the States, then figure out the PhD problem.

@Compass I am not a US citizen so I can stay in my home country without an issue, but if getting back helps me with my PhD, I will look into it

That changes the situation a bit. I'm surprised no one is answering state-side though. You should be able to reach at least someone.

@Compass the department is closed for summer break. I have only tried calling my advisor, the head of the department and the administrative head. I have emailed my advisor and CCed the others about the same. I am awaiting any response. Did that yesterday and will do it today too. The time difference is such that I have to pace myself.

Just in case: are you positive the termination letter you received is genuine, and not a horrible prank? Sure, the fact that the advisor isn't answering is an evidence for this being real, but maybe he's really in vacation with everything turned off…

I missed a deadline for an article submission — There are many aspects of this story that I find difficult to wrap my head around.  Are you sure that wasn't the deadline for your thesis submission? Or perhaps the submission deadline for some visa paperwork?  Were you communicating regularly (at least once a month) with your advisor before the termination letter arrived?

@OP: Here is a silly question: Is is possible that you have a pidgeon hole/postbox somewhere in your department, and nobody was checking the postbox for 6 months while you were away? The department have have sent you multiple letters with warnings, announcements, ect., and you didn't react to those. In bigger organizations, such problems may go unnoticed. To give a personal anecdote: when I started my Master's degree, I was sent a letter that I should start one week earlier, and the letter was sent to my "future" pidgeon hole at the Uni at which I hadn't started yet.So I arrived one week late.

Are you sure you were attending a real university and not some foreign student tution farming scam?  http://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agents-raid-schools-in-los-angeles-catering-to-foreign-students-1426105401

While I'm not sure we're hearing the whole story here, I suggest contacting your Dean of Graduate Studies, and the University Ombudsman, if there is one.

@ScottSeidman gives good advice, if your department is not answer, contact  Dean of Graduate Studies, and the University Ombudsman.

@PhDinperil: Do you have any updates? Were you able to talk to your advisor?

+1 for updating your story. Thanks for the news and congrats for finishing your phd despite all these additional difficulties.

In general, I've never heard of a student who was dismissed from a PhD program without sufficient warning and advance notice to make necessary alternate arrangements (for instance, write up and leave with a terminal master's instead of a PhD). The fact that you've been summarily terminated from a PhD program comes as a complete shock to me—you should have been given some knowledge and warning that this was coming.
However, the silence from your advisor is quite unusual. Even if your advisor were not supposed to converse with you about your situation, a short email saying "You need to address all of your concerns to [person X]" would not violate any such issues. So, it's not clear why your advisor is ignoring you—but it does seem rather obvious that your advisor has consented to your termination. (In my experience, if the advisor is willing to fight for a student, then only very serious issues such as plagiarism or sabotage will lead to termination.)

and if the advisor is willing to go to bat for a student, then he/she would not ignore the student.

I have the distinct feeling that there is more going on than is included in the original question.  Being busy for 6 months on personal issues rather than the PhD and being outside the US - if not in close communication with the adviser, it could easily look like job abandonment. I suspect that multiple communications have been missed. Yes, the termination could be a surprise to the student, but not to the (likely very frustrated) adviser.

Departments generally do not terminate PhD students without letting the student's advisor know in advance. The fact that your advisor has not responded to you for 3 weeks, suggests the possibility that he/she is ignoring you. This is reasonable behaviour, if in fact your advisor was behind your termination.
As you are not currently in the US, you need to call your department chair and/or the chair of graduate studies and figure out what is going on. In my opinion, it is too soon to look for a new program or to start really worrying about your data.

that's what i am telling myself, just wanted to hear it from someone else too. The shock of this is what brought me to ask on the group.

@PhDinperil If your adviser was really the one that caused your termination and is intentionally ignoring your attempts to contact, my only word is this: childish. I can't imagine that you've done anything so wrong that your PhD adviser would act in this manner to get rid of you. One would hope that academics were more mature and had a better moral compass than say, a thirteen-year-old.

@ChrisCirefice unless university policy prevents direct communication at this point to prevent them from getting sued.

@StrongBad Aha, that makes more sense. Still, it's unsettling that a PhD student was terminated without warning and doesn't know why. That's a lot of time and effort spent.

Another possible group to contact are the other members of your thesis committee. (I'm assuming you already have a thesis committee assembled, as you're in the last year of your Ph.D.) In many programs, the thesis committee is there to be faculty champions of the student when the advisor and student have a falling out. For example, they can provide independent assessment if the advisor is being reasonable about "lack of progress". Just be aware that involving your committee may put additional strain on the advisor/student relationship, if it isn't already broken.

"This is reasonable behaviour, if in fact your advisor was behind your termination." REASONABLE?!??? In the US this is really a thing? Rudely ignoring emails "to prevent them from getting sued"??? Utterly ludicrous. Whatever happened to basic common decency?!

Out of curiosity, can you explain the significance of the article submission deadline? I finished my PhD in the life sciences, years ago.  Having peer-reviewed publications certainly helped me complete in a reasonable amount of time, but the ‘deadlines’ to have these submitted were not true deadlines, but moving ones I decided upon with my advisor to push our projects along. I’m certain I missed more than a few of these.
In any case, my guess would be that your advisor is solely responsible for having you terminated for what they deem as lack of progress, and is presenting this as a decision made by the department. I’d agree with the others that this does seem very childish on their part, and if the only criticism they have is that you missed a paper submission, then you definitely deserve more of an explanation that that. I'm not sure exactly what your options are - but if I were you I would first want to know why I'd been terminated, and I wouldn't be satisfied with the reason you've been given.

The deadline I missed first was a mutually set one to review the final draft of an article to publish. I missed it by more than 10 days as I had a death in the family. I sent the final edition of the draft 5 days before actual submission date for the journal. But got no response. I missed the submission date as I had no feedback from him.


text:
Graphing a paper's number of citations by year
The specific paper I'm interested in is Galton (1907), and one approach I worked out is to go to Galton's Google Scholar profile and then click on the paper in question, after which I can see the following histogram:

This is the kind of thing I want to create, but one problem is that it cuts off in 2005.
If I click on the article itself and look within citing articles I can see there are several citations before 2005, but it wasn't apparent to me that there was a way to count them without manually going through each page.
Is there a way for me to obtain data for the number of citations by year (including pre-2005) without manually going through the citing articles?
Galton, F. (1907). Vox populi. Nature, 75(7), 450-451.

So is it a problem with the data or graphing it?

Data.  (He said, he lacks the cite count pre 2005.)

If you have access to Scopus (Web of Science also works, I presume) you can show the publications citing this paper in search format. Using the filters on that search page, you can retrieve the data you're looking for quite easily (year filter > show more > show all). In this case, that shows the following:

Problem with this, of course, is that Scopus only shows the citations it has in its database (410 documents).

You can use the "custom range" setting (left side of Google Scholar) to get specific ranges, but I would be wary of that.
A.  I only see one between 1900 and 1960, which seems very low. So I suspect the database is flawed.
B.  Also, I get different numbers of citations when I sort Google Scholar results by date or by relevance.  Should be same number of papers but in a different order.  But for some reason it is not.  So I am just wary.
Other ideas (weak ones).
A.  Talk to a research librarian at a major university.  Ideally this community should be able to answer also.  And I feel bad sending you elsewhere.  But maybe...
B.  Perhaps some search in math or statistical abstracts?
P.s.  Just a caveat on the study you are doing.  Be careful about conclusions that the paper got more interest lately.  It may have.  But you should also consider to normalize (e.g. by overall growth in number of statistics papers).  After all the whole literature got bigger.

Wikidata records Vox Populi at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q56873889 as well as a few of its citations. With the Wikidata Query Service at https://query.wikidata.org/ you can formulate SPARQL queries that will plot the citation distribution per year. In Scholia, we do this automatically and a citation distribution per year for Vox Populi is available at https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/work/Q56873889 (see the bottom of the page). Note that the citation information for the paper in Wikidata is certainly not complete. Currently, I see only 80 citations, while I see a count of 927 in Google Scholar.


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How to handle team member who is unable/unwilling to collaborate
Okay, this is a problem I am really scared of lately. I am always willing to learn something exciting whenever I do any coursework. However, this adventurous mind of mine is risky and can often put my grades in jeopardy. Now, the problem is, there are "unfortunate" times where I have to collaborate with other students. It then becomes a serious issue of ego clash, when my classmate wants an easy way out, while I want to be all out conqueror (which I think should be the goal, since I am spending my time at college to learn something new, not to respect and elongate my comfort zone). So, it often happens that this internal squabble is very detrimental to the overall group performance and at the end of the semester the overall outcome results in a hodgepodge. Moreover, I end up having a bitter relationship with my classmates.
So, my question is how can I motivate my project partners to do something interesting and challenging, without distracting them to think that the project is hard(which it ultimately can be).
P.S: Thanks  for pointing out my mistakes, I will be more careful with my attitude.

From your story, one gets the feeling that you are the team member unwilling to collaborate.

May be true, I will better next time.

all out conqueror I would normally interpret this as meaning you wanted to beat your classmates (which is possibly the basis of @user11596's comment), but the rest of your post makes me want to interpret this line as you wanting to conquer the material. Would you mind clarifying?

'all out conqueror' means I want to master the whole lenght of the subject, which is quite impossible given the time length of the semester. Yeah, I think I need to be defensive in my approach.

"the overall outcome results in a hodgepodge" -- So, just like in the working world? :)

My answer to a slightly related question.

I am always willing to learn something exciting whenever I do any coursework

Great.

However, this adventurous mind of mine is risky and can often put my grades in jeopardy.

Less great.  I am concerned that you are setting up a false dichotomy.  Being ambitious in coursework does not have to involve risk of poor grades.  It is part of being a mature student and researcher to learn how to reach for the stars in such a way that not attaining your full expectations does not result in complete failure but in work which is itself still valuable.  (This is admittedly an "advanced lesson": I have known people who have made it to the tenure-track without learning it...sometimes with grave consequences.)
It sounds like you are getting an assignment -- let's say a coding assignment since I see you are a computer science student -- and planning something much more ambitious than is actually asked of you, even to the degree that the chance that you will not be able to pull it off gives you a bit of a thrill.  But you don't need to work in this way.  With planning -- and applying some insight early on; it's not all grunt work -- you can design a project in which you first complete what is asked of you and then move on to the more ambitious aspects that you are (happily) more interested in.  Coding work in particular is best done incrementally.  If you work on code over a long period of time, it is much more useful for everyone if some of the code that you write can be used (and tested, responded to...) right away than if you write things in a way so that you have nothing that works until the very end.
So far this advice is just for your own work.  In collaborative work I think you should be clear about (i) what you are definitely going to do -- i.e., what your collaborators can count on you doing -- and (ii) what you would like to aim for in your remaining time (which if you are talented and hardworking, you will almost certainly have).  Also, if you are actually more talented/quicker/have more time to put in, then it is reasonable to use at least some of your leftover time to try to help your collaborators with their projects.  That will certainly go a long way to getting your collaborators on your side and avoiding bitterness.
In general, when you are working with other people you should stop every so often and really try to view things from their perspective.  This sounds almost condescending, but it is not meant to be and it is really a skill: some people are good at putting themselves in others' shoes and others just can't let go of their own perspective; the former are much more valuable team players.  One tip here: would your classmates describe themselves as wanting "an easy way out"?  Or do they have goals which are just different from yours in some way?  Moreover, do they see your flirtation with failure that, in your own words, can often put your grades in jeopardy and think, "Gosh, I wonder whether whoknows is going to come through with what we agreed he would do or come back proud of the fact that he bit off more than he could chew?"

+1 for "...much more useful for everyone if some of the code that you write can be used (and tested, responded to...) right away then if you write things in a way so that you have nothing that works until the very end".

Yes, need to reign my rage. Great answer, I will be more cautious.

I think you are doing things the wrong way. Although university is a place to learn new things, it is also a place to learn how to allocate proper resources for solving particular problems within certain timeframes. This is a valuable lesson for all careers (inside academia or in industry). In that sense, your co-students are right (which makes you wrong). If a certain assignment requires 10 hours of work to deliver almost perfect results, allocating another 10 hours for a mere 1% improvement is (in most of the cases) a waste of time. Time is not free. You think it is (you are in university after all) but it is not. This extra 10 hours, may be spent better elsewhere in another assignment, in a preparation for an exam and so-on. This will follow you in you future life. If you work in a company that needs something done in a month, it is enough / encouraged to deliver "almost perfect" results within a month than perfect results in three months. After all, aiming for 100% perfection is a dead-end. All things may be improved one way or another and someone must learn where to stop and move-on to greater  problems.
So, I think it is you that needs to change his mindset. You must always find the best way to be productive and deliver requested results but with minimum effort. Do not get me wrong. I do not mean slacking or doing the minimum to pass courses. I mean doing the best to conserve effort and still deliver almost perfect results. You can always strive for absolute perfection but only in your free time (not in expense of your co-students time). If you still do not want to do that, then take assignments on your own. We cannot change other people. Only ourselves.

Some tips from personal experience:

Ambition is good, and as a student, the consequences of failure at this point in your life are lower than they will ever be again for as long as you live. Take risks if you can learn from them: the most important thing is to really think hard about why a project failed or succeeded.
If you have a drive to stretch the limits of your capabilities, take advantage of them now while you have a chance. Even though I have a fantastic employer, I wish every day that I could go back to high school and college so I could work on whatever projects strike my fancy.
Be conservative when you hold someone else's livelihood in your hands. If what the other students want is so much smaller than what you want, deliver the "easy" version fast. Change the challenge from creating something big to creating something small, but quickly. It's important to learn the limits of how quickly you can do things. Programmers are notorious for pushing deadlines.
It's one thing to have a personal failure, it's quite another to be responsible for the failure of an entire team. You want to be the guy who gets stuff done, the guy who everyone wants on their project, not the guy who only dreams and never ships.
Force yourself to make solid commitments and then deliver on them. Cut out a portion of the project and take responsibility for it. Then you can handle that part as you please, so long as you get it done when you're supposed to and it is what you promised. This isn't optional when you have an employer, so it's a good idea to get used to it.

All of that said, the difference between a good developer and a great one is not their ability to write software, but their ability to manage time. Great developers are able to consistently deliver quality products in the established time-frames. Perhaps when you face a group that wants to "play it safe," you can use it as an opportunity to show that you have both programming skill as well as the pragmatism to manage your time effectively.

If you want to learn something exciting about your coursework and do something risky, it does not have to be in the context of a graded project.
You can do the collaborative work in a "normal" way, so as to be considerate to your classmates and their needs. Then do your "risky" project related to the course material on your own, just for the fun (and for the sake of learning).
I think if you ask nicely, the professor would even be happy to look at your independent project and give you feedback on it :)

Now, the problem is, there are "unfortunate" times where I have to collaborate with other students. It then becomes a serious issue of ego clash, when my classmate wants an easy way out, while I want to be all out conqueror

I have been in both sides of this situation. I believe that the seriousness of the member depends on how useful or interesting they find the course or their personality (apathetic or enthusiastic). Everybody does not have to share your passion for a course.
For example, in an engineering program, there may be some business courses. People who simply want to be well-rounded or want to create their own company might be highly interested in those courses, which is fine. Then, some members might only be interested in technical courses. These guys might know the importance of business, but might not find it interesting. Also, there may be some courses which are truly fluff or of little value.
If you can justify the need for a course, then you can try to convince the others. If you cannot justify it, then perhaps you need to rethink why you took the course. If some are not interested in the course, then you don't have to penalize them for it. Try to see where they can be of help.
I suggest that you gauge the interest levels of the members in the beginning itself and agree upon the bare minimum effort (within reason) that is expected of each member. If you like the course far more than the others, then you can put the extra effort if need be. But, make it clear that the scores should be distributed according to the work and results. Also, I suggest that you don't try to be perfect all the time. When your income is in millions, why bother about tracking the pennies ?


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How and what do I present at my PhD coursework
I am a PhD Student & started my research few months ago. My research involves creating a predictive model for protein-drug interaction using soft computing techniques .The topic was given to me by my supervisor and was not my choice.
The problem is, I am a computer science student and have no idea about drugs or proteins or their interaction. My knowledge about the topic is completely zero. While I have read literature, I find the concept very difficult to understand. I find it difficult to search for technical papers of my interest. I would also like to mention that I have absolutely NO help from my supervisor, who also has no idea about the topic, despite being the one who told me to work on the topic.
Now I need to start with my coursework and it includes topics like drug-protein interaction and soft computing techniques. And, I have seriously no clue to how to go about my coursework. I don't know what topics should be included in the course work. My supervisor has just left me with the names of the coursework that's it. I do not know from where to start, exactly what to start and how to start. The days are just passing by and I have time constraints to present the same at the institute level. I am just going crazy thinking about it day by day and don't know where will I land up at the end. I don't want to leave PhD to whatever happens. My sincere request to you is to suggest something and help me out with it or anybody please suggest to me how to proceed.

Could you clarify what, exactly, you are asking for? If it is references; books, papers, the like, then Academia.SE is not the right place, try the Stack Exchange for Computational Science, Biology, Physics or something along those lines, instead. If you want tips on how to tell your adviser that you want to change topics then the current forum is the right place for the question. If you want information about stuff specific to your institution (courses, their start dates etc.), there is little an internet community can do. Ask someone responsible for course planning at your institute.

In terms of help ,I mean to say like books or good journal papers or suggest anybody who is currently in to research with respect to my topic so at least I can approach them.

Have you asked your supervisor why he gave you that topic? Is there anybody in your school (not necessarily the CS department) know protein-drug interaction? Do you have biology department in your school?

This is why you have an advisor.

I'm going to be a bit more harsh than the current answers, and ask whether you knew what you were getting yourself into when you signed up for a multidisciplinary graduate program. What you describe is very common in such programs; you enter with significant knowledge in one field (e.g., comp sci), almost no knowledge in another (e.g., biology), and your task is to familiarize yourself with both to the extent that you can perform academic-level research that straddles both fields. Anecdotally, I went through a biomedical engineering PhD program, and every single student who went through the program experienced some degree of what you are describing. Without knowing specifics, your advisor is likely not responding because they take it for granted that you will learn to cope the same way that all his other students do.
The solution is simply to start at the beginning and take it from there. Clearly, you won't find help from your advisor, but there are many other resources. Find other students in a similar situation and create a study group. Talk to the TA. Use online materials and forums. If the course is simply too advanced, drop it for now and take (audit?) a lower-level (undergraduate?) course first. I know many students who did this. They ended up fine.
You will likely encounter a similar situation many times, where you need to familiarize yourself with a brand-new field, and this is a fine time to figure out how to do it.

It is completely normal to be floundering early on in your research, and to feel panicked. You wouldn't have chosen this topic, but ask yourself this: If I woke up tomorrow knowing what I needed to know to do this research, would the topic interest me? If not, perhaps you should change topics. For what it's worth, I think it sounds like a very interesting topic. You don't need to become a biochemist; you only need to learn enough to write a simulation of some aspect of the problem.
When I need to learn the basics of a completely unfamiliar topic, I don't start with journal articles. I search the web for educational materials, something targeted toward undergraduates.  At this point I'm trying to learn the basic terminology and concepts. I also look for online discussion forums where I might ask questions. I then read Wikipedia (which will have links to useful journal articles) and Scholarpedia. Once I start to understand some basic concepts, then I try to read journal articles. I'll probably discover more gaps in my knowledge; I go back to the web for basic info in those areas.
Your supervisor isn't helping you. That's something to be concerned about. Could it be that he or she is leaving you alone temporarily to see what you can accomplish on your own, pushing you to become more self-reliant? Or do you think your supervisor tends to ignore her PhD students? Talk to her other students, especially those who are a little further along in their research, to get an idea of her style. If you don't think you are compatible, a change of advisors is probably best.

I think it is reasonable that your coursework follows your research. As I see it, the issue is that you are not interested in your present topic, to that I would suggest to talk to your advisor, especially if he seems so uninterested as you claim. In the extreme case you could try and switch advisors.
I find it hard to believe that you are "forced" to research a specific topic, i.e. there are very few situations I can think of that possibility (e.g. a industry pays your PhD to research something of their interest).
As a personal opinion, and off-topic to this site, I find that protein modeling is a very broad and useful topic in CS with a great future. So, if you could manage to beat the learning curve, I imagine that your career would benefit.

Why did you apply for a scholarship if you didn't want this? Surely that's your choice.