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How can I present the general conclusion of a research paper?
I want to present the conclusion of a foreign language research paper (english) in my masters thesis (french). I hesitate between two approaches :

Presenting the general conclusion of the paper while pointing to the paper in the reference list with [1].
Writing the full citation in a block quote, both in french and in its original version.

I feel like the full citation is not really needed to explain how the paper steered my project.
Is the first approach a common practice or should I do the latter ?

The correct answer depends on the field and local customs. In Computer Science, your first citation style [3] is used. In older papers, people used more informative abbreviations [LS94a]. In Germany in times of old, and still in the humanities, you could put the citation in a foot-note. Since the paper steered the project, you can give them full credit by mentioning them in the text. I think that is what you are proposing in your first point.

In 2001, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke reported the finding of an obelisk on the surface of the Moon. They found that strong gamma radiation prevented a closer examination, but that by applying a spray of a Borox-Cadmium solution, this problem could be overcome [4].

In the humanities, you would indeed cite a long passage by using block-quotes and give the original and a literal translation. This is because mis-interpretation of the author's message is more likely. I have not seen this in the Sciences and would only expect this style to be used when a conclusion is being disputed.
If you want to follow local customs, just look at samples of theses (including doctoral theses) in the Library or ask your guide for advise. That is what they are for. You might also be overthinking this and should just go with your gut-feeling. Presumably, you will receive feed-back before you submit the final version for the defense (if there is one.)

My field is in computer science, I will follow your advice and use the first approach. I think
I was overthinking it, seeing all the methods and style available.


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How to handle disagreements with supervisor on aspects of research?
I am in a research project roughly related to applying machine learning in a particular application,
and the supervisors (multiple) has decided the main research direction, because my role is basically part of an undergrad research course.
However, I have some disagreements about aspects of the project. Firstly, they suggested using a particular dataset,
and after I read a paper about this dataset, I thought that it was not very related to the particular research question
that we were looking at. This is mainly because of the context the dataset was collected from,
and that the approach that the supervisors suggested appears to be unsuitable for this data.
If we drew conclusions from the analysis, then I feel that it will not
properly answer the question.
The supervisor disagreed with my doubt, but did not exactly explain why.
Also, their supervision is hands-off, and I wonder if there is some misunderstanding between us.
How should I handle these disagreements?

I feel that you need to talk more with your supervisor. We can give our general advice, but ultimately you and your supervisor decide on the next step. Good luck!

Disagreements are unavoidable when people work together on a project. The solutions to disagreements depend a lot on the balance of power and on the ego of the parties involved and a lot less on who has the best idea. If you want to get your way, you need to take that into account.
If you are a supervisor, you can just force your way. If you are not in charge, you need to discuss with your supervisor, until the correct solution becomes clear to them, too, assuming you know what is that solution.
Generally, it's a bad idea to frame things as your way vs their way. Even if you can force the other person to adopt your approach, you still didn't convince them. Even if you can prove with references and examples that your approach is a lot better, you still need to make them admit to themselves that your way is better then theirs. That's where ego comes into play. Sometimes, more senior people won't be able to accept a sound argument simply because it comes from someone they perceive as their juniors. It also goes the other way around. The one who has the sound solution won't budge and won't explain why because their colleague is "an idiot".
Not knowing your supervisor, it is unlikely I can give you a very useful advise on how to handle the disagreements with them. You need to talk to them a lot and present data. You might even need to try things their way and your way and show them the results. It might be sufficient to write everything in a short an clear email.
But, you should be mindful of the principles: be clear and concise, be respectful, don't start with the premise that you know better, and be open yourself to changing your mind in case your supervisor seems to have useful ideas.

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Is there any way to reduce similarity in reference section/bibliography?
I am preparing my article to submit to a journal. The journal requires a maximum of 15% similarity including bibliography. My paper has 6% similarity without bibliography but 18% with bibliography according to Turnitin. I tried my best to reduce the similarity to 15% but it is now impossible. Because, except bibliography section, Turnitin only getting similarity in very few words scattered around the article, not even a complete sentence. After discussing it with some colleagues as well as some internet searches, the only solution is to exclude the bibliography while checking it in Turnitin. I contacted the journal but they said the bibliography must need to be included while generating the similarity. Please, have a look to the image below, do you think it's fair? I mean, I cannot paraphrase a reference and I have to use it as it is.
Please have a look
Is there any way to reduce similarity in the reference section/bibliography? Thank you.

Whoever is running that journal seems to be incompetent, so why not go for a more reasonable journal instead?

Since the rule is stupid they might just be willing to break it. Submit it if you think the journal is reputable, but signal the editor about the small discrepancy if possible. If you get a desk reject it should be quick. And they might use a different algorithm than turnitin in any case.

I would refuse to submit to a journal that requires me to submit to Turnitin. I'm not a freshman in a hundred-person lecture. It's childish.

Honestly, if they want to run a plagiarism check, sure, but we basically already do everything for a journal, and now they want us to send in clean plagiarism checks? Jesus.

How ironic that, judged by the bibliography, the paper seems to be about plagiarism detection.

@henning It's also very ironic that a plagiarism detection tool flags a bibliography as problematic: "you see, it'd be much better if you removed those citations"...

@henning: There is a significant likelihood that this is a joke...

@AzorAhai-him-: and that's very dumb too. For sure, the people that plagiarize will not cheat at the plagiarism check...

Took a look at the screenshot. So your paper is itself about plagiarism detection or author identification? That's pretty rich. (But then you must already know everything that's been written here in the answers, no?)

It's not April 1st in any time zone yet. This question was posted a few days too early. But if you're serious: the journal you're submitting to is not a journal anyone credible in the field would be publishing anything. I can assure you of that.

You could:

Cite fewer references. That will make your bibliography shorter relative to the rest of the paper, and reduce the overall similarity. However, you've probably chosen the sources you have because they are relevant to your paper; reducing the number arbitrarily to meet this arbitrary threshold would then make your paper worse. Removing any citations that are key to the paper or leaving in citable content without a citation could be considered academic misconduct.

Make the rest of your paper longer. That will make your bibliography shorter relative to the rest of the paper, and reduce the overall similarity. You could make all your language less concise, or add further speculation and opinion that is entirely your own. Presumably, you've already included an appropriate amount of discussion, so this would probably be adding non-useful content or make your paper overall worse to read.

Cite references that no one else has cited before and remove ones that have been cited before, so that those references don't show up in the similarity check. Of course, leaving out important references could be considered academic misconduct or plagiarism, and presumably you've already chosen the references that fit your paper best, so this would make your paper worse.

Cite incorrectly. Use the wrong date, misspell the author names, use non-standard abbreviations for journals, wrong page numbers, arbitrary punctuation. These changes will make your bibliography look less like the bibliography of other papers that have cited the same sources. They will also make it difficult for people to follow your references and constitute academic misconduct for willfully citing incorrectly. This would make your paper worse.

Services like "Turnitin" are only appropriate to be used as "flags" for a human to check against, to alert them to the most blatant examples of plagiarism. There is no minimum percentage that means a work is not plagiarized; there is no maximum percentage above which all work is plagiarism. An automated tool like this is just a helper. If the journal is using "Turnitin" this way, they are misusing the service in an absolutely asinine fashion, and encouraging authors to make damaging changes to their manuscript in order to comply with this fatuous criterion. To me, this seems more than sufficient reason to submit somewhere else. You do not want your work associated with incompetence. This is not a normal requirement, so it is not something you need to tolerate.
If you have high confidence in this journal otherwise, it is possible you are corresponding with merely one person who does not have any idea what they are doing. You could consider escalating to someone else at the journal to let them know that this person is making them look silly, but if it were me I don't think I would bother.

In regards to the "cite incorrectly" option -- a competent journal will run a reference check when making the page proofs, and ask you to fix any errors. I would love the irony of passing the turnitin check by misspelling references, then have the journal ask you to make corrections which cause the plagiarism filter to go off. (I actually assume they wouldn't rerun the plagiarism check at the proof stage, so this strategy would actually work without setting off the filter, but if anything that's just another example of how absurd this measure is).

@Andrew Somehow, if this journal actually exists and isn't made up, I do not think they approach that level of competence.

Agreed, just couldn't resist commenting on the logical paradox.

I fully agree with the other answers that this demand is fully nonsensical.
That said, if you're still determined to submit to this journal, from the screenshot you provided, one possible "hack" could be to change your citation style (unless that too is reglemented). One which includes the first names of authors, for instance, could possibly dilute the matches a bit, possibly to be used in conjunction with the other techniques to whittle down those percentages.

I don't know how the algorithm works, but adding additional references might reduce similarity. Adding material to the paper with or without additional non-overlapping biblio material will almost certainly reduce it. Unfortunately it may not improve the paper, of course.
But also note that most such algorithms are pretty stupid. If you are quoting material extensively, similarity goes up. If you paraphrase (with citation, of course) it probably goes down. If you bring down overall similarity then the bibliography won't be an issue. But these tricks don't necessarily improve the paper either.
But if the journal is overly dependent on such superficial measures without human evaluation (review), then I question its reputability.
And, also give a thought to what you say in the paper itself. Does the similarity actually indicate a problem or not?

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How would you respond to these questions when you are applying for a faculty position?
Say you have just finished your PhD or you are a young post-doc researcher. You are applying for a faculty position at a university which is far from your hometown and far from where you currently live. After some years you will get your tenure-track. How would you respond to the following questions?

Why have you chose that university instead of a university close your hometown or to the place where you currently live? Say there is no big difference between both, except for their location.

How can you ensure that you will keep the same level of productivity in terms of research after you become a professor?

How would you deal with conflicts with people from other departments (for example, professors from other departments are deliberately sabotaging you and your students)?

How would you cope with adversities related to a professor career (low salary, lack of students to do research, busy solving tasks not related to teaching or research, etc)?

Wouldn't you prefer to be a professor at a low level university for a much higher salary but with no possibility of tenure-track? Why not?

These are five wildly different questions. Please ask one question per question.

May I asked how this list of questions arose? I had quite a few interviews for faculty positions and have never been asked anything like questions 2 - 4. Questions of the type "Why do you want to work here?" are common in my experience, but people usually won't frame it like 1. (But  which qiestions are typically asked can, of course, depend strongly on cultural aspects.)

I know it's a radical notion, but I would respond with  the truth.
What the truth is for you is not the same as it is for me, or anyone else who responds. They are all opinions and personal questions.
Except #2. No one can guarantee that.

Because you have an open position in my field, whereas my local university does not.
I cannot, but then nobody can.  Life happens.
Is this a situation common in your university?  If yes I withdraw my application.  If no I’ll deal with this if I ever have to.
If I accept the position, I accept the salary on offer and the other conditions of the job as well.
If I am offered such a position at the same time as I have your offer, I will evaluate both offers for what they are and choose in my best interest.

Good answers, if a bit flippant. I like 3, but it needs a lot of self-confidence.

@CaptainEmacs ... self-confidence, which is not a bad thing during an interview.  (Not to be confused with over-confidence.)

Ah yes, it borders on over-confidence. But, as I said, I think they are good, but not for everyone.


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Could the credits for a course be revoked if it is discovered that a student had cheated in the course's prerequisite class?
I am a college student in the US.
Over a year ago, I took a course that moved online because of the pandemic. The course in question is a graduation requirement. The class's lack of exam proctoring made it easy to cheat and so I did. My cheating was never discovered but as time went on, I grew to deeply regret what I did. I've since sworn off cheating ever again. I felt and still feel incredibly guilty about it, so I tried to atone for what I've done by taking what was essentially a more difficult version of the course I cheated in and passed it without resorting to cheating. This course alone satisfies the same requirement that the previous course does, but the previous course is its prerequisite. Students who have not satisfied the course's prerequisites would not have been allowed to enroll in it.
My question is, would my credits for this higher level course be revoked if my cheating in its prerequisite course was ever discovered? I believe that the cheating I did in the prerequisite course would have been enough for me to fail it. If the cheating were to be discovered after I graduate, would it be grounds for degree revocation?

Please ask one question per post.  The second question is a duplicate.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54807/can-a-university-retract-a-degree-for-actions-taken-after-the-degree-is-awarded

Move on (as has everyone else by now who was involved in the course you cheated on). You learned your lesson -- a good one indeed! -- and so it's time to spend your energies on something productive, rather than past events.

This is good advice but it doesn't answer the question OP asked in any way.

My question is, would my credits for this higher level course be revoked if my cheating in its prerequisite course was ever discovered?

No.

Just writing 'no' is a little short for an answer. Can you provide a source or an explanation or something like that.

@quarague More detail is not justified here.


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Half done PhD - is there a way to finish it off at another University?
Sadly I stopped a PhD when halfway through. My Professor left the University, I had some family troubles and lost steam and the University terminated my registration.
I would like to finish this PhD off - the area still has not been researched, and it is likely to be of benefit to the specific groups I was researching.
How do I go about finding a University that allows this? I am Canadian, but was doing my PhD in Europe, where I live.
I am thinking of moving to Wales, so UK is where I am hoping to register to finish the PhD although I would consider any other options if you know of any.
When searching UK University research degree regulations I can't seem to find details of how to bring your project with you....are there specific UK search words I should use to find University regulations about bringing my half finished work with me
Many thanks for any suggestions of how to finish this off.

Finishing the PhD and finishing the research are two different things. Are you willing/able to separate them?

Yes, sure. Finishing the research would be doable on my own but really the only place to write it up as a whole is a thesis. Therefore I would love to 'put it all together' by finishing writing my thesis....in which case I want to submit that, have a Viva Voce and graduate with a PhD!

If you had to put off finishing the research for a few years would it still be valuable to the "specific group", or is it time dependent?

It isn't time dependent, no one else is researching in my area that I have identified after extensive searching to check.

I have no idea if this is possible in UK, but if you take a longer and wider view you can probably find success. However you might have to split your quest into two separate ones. As I noted in a comment, the PhD and the specific research are separate things and can be done independently.
My advice is to prioritize the PhD over the specific research topic at the current time.
The problem with starting a degree and bringing your research with you is that you need to find a compatible advisor as well. This makes the "gate" much narrower. If the research comes with funding then it might work, but putting conditions on an acceptance lessens the chance of success. It is uncommon enough to be a problem.
I think you might have been abused by your original institution, though. If your professor left some accommodation should have been made. The tag is expulsion, but I'm going to assume that termination is a better descriptive. Some programs are time limited, though, again, something should have been done if your professor left. I'm assuming, of course, that you weren't actually expelled for some unethical practice, but just that the clock ran out or you didn't pass some exams due to various issues, whether related or not.
Let me suggest that you first explore getting into a PhD program somewhere. The US might be a more understanding option for you if you can put together a good application. People here change institutions with some regularity and for various reasons. The main issue might be finding letters of recommendation, which are relatively important. Perhaps your old professor would vouch for you. Don't insist on continuing the research you've started, though you can suggest it, but get into a department in a closely aligned field. If you get accepted, perhaps you can work out the research issue, but if you insist on that as a condition, you have fewer chances.
If you complete the doctorate, with a dissertation in that related field, then you will be able to develop a career in which you have a safe space in which to return to the original research. Don't let that topic become a block on getting a degree, however. If the topic is not a "hot" one, as you suggest it isn't, then you are unlikely to get scooped in the meantime and your current situation isn't conducive to completing it in any case. Get to a better place in which you can make your own decisions.

Two additional thoughts, though neither might be possible. Your old professor really owes you something for abandoning you. It's a mistake to bring that up, but in some cases a student will move with the professor to the new institution. Maybe that is worth looking into. You probably need to contact them in any case for a letter.
The second thought is that the original institution probably also owes you and it might be worth exploring whether you can return there. Your situation (family...) has changed, and some things were out of your control at the time.

Alternatively, if the research is more important to you than a degree and career, then you can possibly do the research as an independent researcher and find a publisher. If you can leverage that into a doctoral program admission then you can wind up ok, but I think that is the (much) riskier path.

I'll start by describing two incidents that I saw first-hand. They were both in the U.S.
Incident 1. A PhD student was almost done (had the dissertation 90% ready for defense, finished all coursework and qualifying exams) when he got into an argument with his PhD advisor. The PhD advisor kicked him out of the program. The advisor was widely disliked by everyone in the field and had a reputation for unreasonable behavior. A PhD program in another university (no less reputable) picked up the student, funded him for 1 year that it took him to finish the disseration, did not require him to repeat any coursework or qualifiers. He defended in 1 year. Everybody involved was happy for the chance to make the widely disliked previous PhD advisor look bad.
Incident 2. Another PhD student was even furhter along - was told by his PhD advisor (different one from 1 above and not possessing a reputation of being mean and unreasonable) that he was ready to schedule the defense. So the student took a full-time job in the industry without asking the advisor. The advisor got very angry and kicked the student out of the program.  As above, nice people at another university heard about this and approached the student with the offer to try to repeat what was done in 1 above. But the student had a nervious breakdown, resigned the new job, moved to another city, and has not been heard from.
Based on these experiences, I agree with what @Buffy wrote. You should not limit your search for a PhD program to Europe, but definitely consider Canada and U.S., where schools are more likely to be flexible and not necessarily follow rigid procedures than in Europe. If you can re-use some of your prior PhD work in your new attempt, great, but even if you re-use nothing now, you can still publish something later.

@Trunk Student 1 knew lots of people in the field and was viewed as much better than an average PhD student. I still feel bad for student 2.


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Advice - Is a post-doc worth it if I do not want to stay in Academia long-term?
I am soon to be finishing a PhD in computer science and have started to receive job offers, one of which is a post-doc at a UK-based global top-10 University. Long-term I do not intend to stay in Academia, and would instead prefer to work in industry. In the short-term (12-18 months) however the project looks fun, the pay is good, and I would assume having the name of the University on my CV would add some clout to my future career.
Complicating the matter, I have also received a job offer from an organization I would like to work for long-term, but at a significant cut in pay compared to the post-doc (about 25%). This job would be set to start in about 8-9 months. There is the possibility that I could defer my acceptance of this job by a year, however this isn't a certainty and may be at the same rate in pay as I'm currently being offered.
Complicating things even further, I am older (36) than I believe is typical of a post-doc, and would like to kick-start my career ASAP after years spent on my PhD - I am therefore wary of spending time in academia if it is unlikely to carry much weight in my long-term aspirations.
I'm looking for any general advice on the merits of a post-doc if you do not intend on remaining in academia. Does the reputation of the University really matter that much in this case? As much as I can tell, the pros of going ahead with the post-doc are the increase in pay, the reputation of the University, and the chance to further develop my skills and publications in this area. However, it may be the case that its a year that would be better spent bedding into an organization I intend to remain with long-term.
It's a very good choice to have, don't get me wrong, but I'm struggling work out what the best option is. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

That organization you want to work for - why do they pay their PhD staff 25% less than a university pays their postdocs?

You say the goal is to work in industry. Is this an "academic" industry job, i.e., an R&D position? I ask because (a) such jobs will have very different considerations than other industry positions, and (b) if not, this might not be the right place to ask your question; it might be a better fit at [workplace.se] (though check their archives; they've doubtless had questions about post-docs before).

I would love to provide an answer, but can't since it would be based on my own value structure. This is too personal for a good answer here. Look to your own priorities and think long term, not just short.

From a career development point of view, a postdoc has zero benefits for a career in industry. The pay is much less than what you can get in the private sector, and you will be more attractive to employers, have more marketable skills and be able to command a higher salary after X years of working in industry than after X years of postdoc.
From a point of view of personal satisfaction, it’s certainly possible that you will find the postdoc more fun or personally rewarding. So if that’s the more compelling consideration, or if you still want to give a career in academia a chance, then go for it. I am sure things will turn out great no matter which choice you make.

Yet the job they are thinking of pays even less than a postdoc...

@JonCuster maybe so, but that job, assuming it is a typical industry job and not something super esoteric, will provide more valuable experience for an industry career, which could translate in the future to better paying jobs and better employability. And of course, if a high salary isn’t the main factor, then OP should follow whatever their passion is.

@JonCuster anyway, the main point of my answer is that industry employers simply do not value postdoc experience. Thus, the valid reasons to prefer the postdoc over the industry job OP is considering are: 1. Passion (for the job itself and/or the idea of living in the UK for a bit). 2. It pays more money (short term benefit, but at least a benefit of some sort). 3. The industry job is not a typical industry job and due to its unusual nature also offers no benefits for a career in industry. 4. Want to keep options open for an academic career.

What sector are you basing your advice on?

@mmeent software/tech industry seems like the relevant sector, since OP’s PhD is in computer science.

I used to head industry research group. I can assure you that we did value postdoc work. For that matter, much R&D work on academic projects in computer science - eg BSD UNIX - is very interesting to industry. Such academic project by engineers that have already graduated may not necessarily be called a post-doc, but is still in an academic environment, not industry. Big advantage: academic work can often be shown when next you look for a new job, industry work is often secret.

@KrazyGlew thanks, that’s a valuable perspective.

Another factor to consider is if the postdoc brings you closer to your dream job in terms of geography or topic and related opportunities to network.

Only do a post doc if it helps your career.
Ask yourself, does this post doc get me to where I want to go?
If not, take a different path.
In your case, the answer is probably not.

Go for the postdoc.
You are interested in the work, get good pay, you get a nice university on your CV, you make new colleagues, you experience a new work environment/team, and you get to explore methods/tools/etc you may not have the opportunity to do in industry. Having extra experience will always be beneficial for entering industry. It's also short term (12-18 months), and so you will not be 'set back' by much.

The post doc stands out to me, though granted I'm still in the midst of my PhD. You'll spend a year doing something you're interested in, which will make you more qualified to do the things you're interested in. You could end up working industry (on less pay bizarrely) getting better at things you don't care about, and digging yourself into a niche you don't want to be in. Not say it will happen, just expressing my own concerns about these kind of situations.


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When do you expect to hear back from NSF (DMS)?
It's nearing a six-month mark since I've submitted my proposal, and I haven't heard anything from them. Does this mean that I'm probably not getting the grant? When do people expect to hear back? There seems to be almost no resources online in this, which I find to be surprising.

I asked my postdoc advisor the same question today -- also waiting on DMS, for the Algebra & Number Theory grant.  He says he is pretty sure both some acceptances and some rejections have gone out already this year.  If you haven't heard, you're in the middle-ranked category, and how many more are approved depends on funding levels at the NSF.  Sometimes the decisions come as late as July. (Posting as comment, not answer since this is all second-hand, and it's my first time applying.)

Unfortunately I'm not in the same category, but I guess things work pretty much the same. Did you by any chance ask your advisor how many people get put in the middle category, and what the rate of success might be, if you're in the middle?

Asked, but didn't get anything much more specific, I fear.

This probably isn't what happened, but you should check your spam folders. NSF servers are set up strangely, and the content of grant award letters is similar to certain scams, so they get sent to spam disproportionately often. I went 5 months without learning that my grant proposal had been successful, because the emails from DMS kept going to spam. (I suggest that everyone set up a whitelist filter so that e-mails from nsf.gov are never sent to spam.)

Nothing in the spam folder. I logged onto fastlane and my proposal still appears as "pending" as well.

As a general rule with NSF, no news is good news.

I've heard of decisions from NSF-DMS coming as late as August in recent years.

Two months later and still no news -- any idea how things look this year?

I found this blog post to be extremely helpful when applying for my first NSF grant: https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/applying-for-an-nsf-grant/ it specifically addresses the timeframe for a response.

@AruRay The blog talks about January/May time-frame, but doesn't mention what is the submission date. Do you know what submission deadline is he talking about ?

@mystupid_acct I believe mid-October.

The time to hear back on an NSF application is highly variable, both by grant vehicle and for individual applications.  Since most NSF grants are peer reviewed by a panel of academics who also have to meet in person, there's a significant length of time naturally built into the system.
Another part of the delay is that for most programs there are very few applications funded.  As such, even though there may be many clear rejections with relatively fast responses, program managers may end up having a long fight to find sufficient money to accept a project that is right on the boundary of getting accepted.
Still, if you're looking for a number, I have personally never heard of a NSF grant response taking less than 3 months or more than 12 months.

As others have said, there is variability, but here is an old internal document from NSF that sets the time at 6 months post submission:

You can also make a good guess of when your panel met by:

Looking up the PO for your proposal in FastLane
Going to http://www.nsf.gov/events/advisory.jsp to find their name and associated panel dates. You may need to use the Wayback Machine to search an earlier version of this page as old panels are periodically pushed off

It occurs to me that an individual with a lot of submissions or an interested group could calculate some useful statistics on this. Just for fun I've created a Google Form for this. You can edit after submission and see summary charts, etc. It does not collect email addresses or limit to 1 response, so you can use it over and over.

Oh my god why are you passively living in torment? Get to know the project directors for your grants!!! Rather than being a whiny beggar hoping they fund you, be a human, talking to another human, make a new colleague!
In late August, when the grant agency buildings are so still and quiet you can hear your nerves firing in the stillness, make some appointments by email and go visit relevant project directors.  It will cost you $400 for a plane ticket, a cheap motel, and a few Uber rides.  Sell some plasma as necessary.
Connect by e-mail afterward, and stay memorable. They can help you know up front if your ideas match what is being looked for in the RFP, and their outlook on your general approach is valuable because directors have some veto power over reviewers.  It's okay to approach as a grad student, the granting agencies love fostering student involvement.
I can call and email both my current project directors and they write back same day, one is funded, one is pending. I have spent at least 2 hours in person with each of them. I appreciate their talents and have carefully read their resumes and some of their publishings.
If the delay is driving you mad, then you haven't plugged yourself into the system so you can have a better sense of what's going on and how the schedule work.  Agency project directors are really generally awesome so they are worth getting to know whether or not have a submission that will get funded, and the insights can help make you a better writer for the next round and their journeys to their current role are usually super inspiring!!

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I am the joint recipient of an award (along with an unrelated person). Should I name them on my resume?
I recently received a prestigious award from my university for my undergraduate research (of which I am quite proud!). The award is always awarded jointly to two people. I have no professional relationship to the other winner (the award was not shared between us because of work we did together or anything of the sort), although she works in a field not very distant from mine, and we are polite acquaintances.
How should I list this on my academic CV? Should I include her name and state that the award was jointly given to the both of us? If so, should I link to her website/include more identifying information about her?
I worry that if I don't include her name it'll seem dishonest (as I will make myself seem like the sole recipient of the award by default, making it seem more prestigious than it is). It simply feels like leaving out information (the description of the award itself makes note more than once that it is always to be given to two people). However, including her name might seem a bit weird since we aren't colleagues in any sense, and it could also give the impression that I'm hoping her achievements will make me look better (she is much more well-known and accomplished than I, as would be immediately obvious to anyone who looks her up---I don't say this out of humility).
I am in the US, although I would rather not specify in which field we both work. Any advice for what is standard would be appreciated!

Couldn't you just write something along the lines of "Co-Recipient of XY award", that way you acknowlegde that you haven't been the only one to receive it, but don't have to disclose anything about the unrelate second winner?

It sounds like you received the award. Just because there are two awards, doesn't mean it was a joint award. There are normally four Fields Medals awarded at a time, but each person is a Fields' Medallist, not a joint one.

@Sursula-they- I think you could turn that into an answer.

@Anyon It feels to simple and basic to merit being an answer

@Sursula-they- Fair enough. I often feel the same way.

Echoing DavidA.Craven's comment, this does not appear to be something I would describe as a joint award, rather there are two separate awards. "Joint" implies some shared contribution, like if projects were done in pairs and awards were given by the project. In that case, you might reasonably feel compelled to disclose that the award is to a joint project of which you are a member (whether there are 2 contributors or 100) to acknowledge that someone else contributed to you winning the award.
In this case, it seems like an award of the same title is given to two different people, but your work is your own. Nothing that the other person did is relevant to the work that you were awarded for; if they were erased from history, you'd still have the award (and presumably some additional, third person would also have the award).
I would just list the award. If someone is curious enough to search the web for it, they'll possibly see you were one of two people that received it that year (assuming this is the sort of thing that is posted on a department/university web site somewhere); I don't think that will put them off.
Certainly I would not list the other person. You may want to describe what the award is for depending on how it is named; e.g. "Best Undergraduate Research Award" is probably fine as it is, but "Pedro Award" in honor of some emeritus professor Pedro could probably use a note indicating the meaning. If you wanted to be completely transparent you could note "one of two recipients" in parentheses.
Congratulations on your achievement!


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Is it unethical to download a pirated copy of a textbook to evaluate its content, then buy if worth it?
Textbooks are expensive. If I want to buy one, I want to make sure that the content will be worth it. The sample chapters on Amazon might not be enough to make a careful evaluation. Some websites offer pirated copies of textbooks for download. Is it unethical to use such services just to evaluate the contents of a textbook, and then buy an original copy if the content is deemed worthy (and of course, deleting the pirated copy after evaluation)?

The full text of Flajolet and Sedgewick's Analytic Combinatorics is available free online for individual use. http://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/AnaCombi/anacombi.html I wish more publishers of expensive (math) texts would follow suit.

I kindly request moderators to consider re-opening this question. Textbooks are a big part of higher education and the ethics surrounding it are equally important. I think this question could fall under academic publishing, which is listed as one of the relevant topics mentioned in the help center. Furthermore, the answers this question has received so far show that the users (two of which have 150k+ reputation) have deemed this question worthy of discussion. Thank you for your consideration in advance and looking forward to a reopening.

Lots of nuance required here and these sorts of questions are triggering for some. What you suggest is possibly a violation of copyright law in the technical sense, but, assuming you delete the downloaded copy after a reasonable period it isn't likely unethical. Or not seriously so. Note that law and ethics don't always conform perfectly.
After all, for a physical textbook you can browse it in the bookstore or library. You can also purchase it online and return it (soon) if it isn't suitable. Both of those have the same overall effect as what you suggest and neither is unethical.
There are some, I'm sure that will disagree with me in both directions, either seeing it as inherently unethical or not having any problem at all with pirated content.
Another ethical consideration, however, is whether such a practice supports piracy in some way. Likely not here, but something to consider generally.

This is a tough question. I'm not sure. I think there are some clear-cut subcases:

If you intend to pirate it but then find it on, say, amazon's "look inside" feature, review it there, and decide based on that - no, that's fully ethical. The author (or publisher or other designated person) intended you to have access to this material for the purpose of making a purchase decision, and that's exactly what you did. Whether or not you intended to commit an unethical act, something (outside of your will) affected you and led you to a different course of action fully in line with your obligations towards the creators and purveyors of the content.

If you download it off some sketchy website, start reading it, and decide against buying it but end up reading the entire thing anyway "while you're at it" and get the same impact you would have from a purchase, then, no, that's not ethical. Similarly, if you decide not to buy it but keep it and reference it later anyway, it's unethical. Other people have created something for the purpose of providing it to people like you for compensation, and you have both made use of their product in the fashion intended and have deprived them of said compensation, which is in violation of the social contract we have: that wasn't your material to use in that way.

Of course most situations would lie in the middle. I think we can ask a few more questions about the details:
Have you fulfilled your obligations to the author? Ie, did the author receive compensation from your activity, whether directly or from a friend's or library's purchase?
Have you fulfilled your obligations towards the publishing system and therefore towards all those who rely upon it for access to material? Whether or not publishers are sometimes or always evil, there's very real value in the work they do, from basic copy-editing to content revision to the kind of marketing and curation which connect you to the books you may actually be interested in and insulate you from the chaff. Are your actions consistent with the publishing community's continued health? From a Kantian point of view, if everyone acted as you do, would you all still be able to read good books?
Did the author or other responsible persons intend you to have access to the book in this fashion? There's some level of expected access here; are you "pirating" in name only because the laws haven't caught up to the times to cover the kind of e-purchasing you do, or are you doing something that a reasonable author or publisher would feel is inappropriate? In the physical world, would you be picking up a book at a bookstore and flipping through it, or would you be sneaking it out the door under your coat?
Assuming no further more complicating details, it sounds like you're quickly reviewing the materials for the purpose of purchase, so you're probably clear on the last question, and that you do often purchase books, so you're probably clear on the first few. Of course there are still some interesting questions here... Are you purchasing books from publishers which treat their authors appropriately and provide them appropriate compensation? Does your use of "pirating" mean that you're in violation of enough laws that you're contributing to a general disregard for law in your society, and does that in itself have a deleterious effect on the health of your community by encouraging others to disregard laws which may be more essential?
What an interesting question! Thanks for starting this conversation.

Hmm, interesting and nonobvious question. I’d say it’s mostly ethical.
My reasoning is as follows: if the publisher’s business model relies on a significant number of sales of their textbooks going to readers who buy the book but end up disappointed that it didn’t fit their needs and wishing they could undo the purchase, then that business model is itself somewhat unethical. Your evaluate-before-you-buy strategy simply neutralizes the harmful effects of such a business practice, and therefore increases the pressure on publishers to offer high quality products and better (legal) pre-purchase evaluation options for their potential customers. The only legal right you’ve taken away from someone is the publisher’s right to dupe you into buying a product you don’t need. While they may have that right legally, I don’t think they have it as an ethical right.
Now, there are also several arguments going the other way, which is why I said it’s mostly ethical. For example, violating copyright law encourages disrespect for the law in general, which makes our society less law-abiding and can therefore be seen as unethical in a way. (And one can again counter that by saying that it’s really lawmakers who pass unjust laws that lead people to disrespect the law in such a way, so it’s them who are acting unethically. And then one can further put the blame on the voters who elected the lawmakers. This sort of logic is a bottomless pit…)
Maybe the most compelling argument against your proposed strategy is that it creates a considerable temptation to conveniently “change your mind” after you downloaded the pirated copy or end up “forgetting” to purchase the legal copy, after you skimmed enough material from the downloaded copy during your “evaluation” to gain some particular knowledge you were after. Basically humans have a strong tendency to rationalize much of what they’re doing as ethical even when that’s not unequivocally the case, so that’s a pitfall to be mindful of. But if you are a person of strong enough character and moral fiber to resist such temptations, then we go back to my original conclusion that your evaluation method, if implemented faithfully and literally as you described it, seems mostly ethical.


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How would a master's degree from a very low ranked insitution be viewed for phd applications in STEM?
I mean schools that do not offer doctoral programs in that field and are ranked bottom quartile in usnews. Could this actively harm an application? Are there any mitigation measures one could take if so.

It will depend on a lot of things. Of course it is not going to be a big jet assist to your getting in to a big-name school. But it's not impossible.
Sometimes the less prestigious schools are not bad, they just don't shine quite as brightly. In Canada, for example, if you do very well in an undergrad physics degree from nearly any school you can usually get into a good graduate school. The profs all know eachother in their area and can recognize talent even if they are not quite up to the level of the more prestigious schools. Sometimes they are very good at the routine stuff but not up to speed on newer research topics. So if somebody comes through who "blows the doors off" in undergrad they can push him forward.
If the prof you did your masters under is quite good, then a recomondation from them may carry a lot of weight. This is especially true if that prof has discovered some strong talent in the past. And if their PhD supervisor is a prof in one of the big-name schools.
If you did unusually well in the degree and impressed a lot of people, it may also have weight. Finishing first in your class has "oomf" even if it's not a particularly prestigious school. Of course it means more from the top ranked school, but it's not nothing.
Most masters programs have some kind of project or report, maybe not a full thesis but at least a review kind of task. If you have such and it's in a topic that a prof at the big-name school is interested in, that will help. Search around the net to find out who does research in your topic.
Another thing that can put some shine on you is extra curricular activities. Especially when those activities relate to your chosen path in some way. I got some attention by writing computer programs in my own time and so being able to say I knew FORTRAN, C, assembly language for a PDP 11, and a couple others. Though those helped more with summer jobs than getting accepted for theoretical physics. If you were doing an experimental science degree of some kind then being able to work in a lab and not set the place on fire will give you some points.
Doing TA work can be a help. If you have some teaching skill it may be attractive to profs who hope to unload some of their undergrad teaching duties.


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Can I use a researchgate article on my websites resource page?
I am involved with Vinpro's Gen-Z viticulture project and we are busy establishing a website to document our demo results and findings.
I am just wondering if it is possible to use a researchgate article on our resource page? If so, how do you reference or is there any contact email address where I could direct this question to?

Define "researchgate article", is there such a thing?

ResearchGate is usually not the original source of the article. It should be clear from the paper where it was published. Use that as the source.


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What is the General Policy of Leaving a Position for Another During Sabbatical?
I am currently on sabbatical after receiving tenure and a position at another university opened up that I am interested in and they are interested in me as well. I'm wondering what is the general policy if a tenured professor were to leave during their sabbatical? Is it expected/required that they return for another semester or another year? Is there anything legally binding them to return or pay some part of their salary back? To provide more context, I am a tenured Associate Professor in the United States.

This strongly depends on your institution's policies, but it is quite common to have a contractual obligation to return to your home institution after the sabbatical for some length of time that might be a semester, a year, or more.  If you quit, you could be required to pay back salary you received during the sabbatical leave.  You should check your faculty handbook or other policy documents.

I suspect that you have a contract that spells this out. Accepting a sabbatical (with pay) often/normally requires that you agree to spend an additional year if the sabbatical lasts a year.
But every university (system) is different in the US. Explore it with your department head (or HR) if you can't check otherwise.
Unpaid sabbaticals and shorter ones may be different, but it is unlikely that you didn't make some formal agreement when you accepted the leave.
And, there may be an option to pay back the funds you accepted in order to free yourself. Hard to manage, of course.

where I work you need to spend the same amount of time back “home” as you spent on the paid sabbatical.  It’s never been tested and I remember one Dean saying “would we really want this person staying?”.  Presumably some compromise could be reached.


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How to express my unwillingness to contribute to military projects
I recently enrolled in a Master's program in electrical engineering at a public research university in the midwestern United States. I am currently focusing on power distribution and transmission, as it seems like there are only a small number of well-defined channels between such things and militarism (compared to, say, controls engineering).
Unexpectedly, I was approached about a PhD opportunity by a mechanical engineering professor, and will be discussing the matter with him further.
However, I am not really sure how to make known the sorts of projects and actors I will not work with. It is only fair to him that I be upfront about these things, but for a variety of reasons I am not really sure how to articulate my boundaries (a pre-condition for even considering his offer).
In my mind, it would be quite reasonable to tell someone "I would not like to be involved in any project directly benefiting Defense, Aerospace, Surveillance, Autonomous Vehicles; those kinds of things" (adding "that stuff makes me uncomfortable", if necessary; I have no desire to discuss the matter or proselytize). This is somewhat euphemistic in that I try to avoid explicit "-isms", but paints a pretty clear picture of behavior I will not support, when presented together.
That being said:

It's a pretty plainly political declaration, even if I try to be somewhat euphemistic and non-confrontational about it. Such things have a chance of offending the other party, but I don't think there's a real way to mitigate this.

I am worried about even mentioning these things, particularly over email, with foreign-born professors--especially Middle Eastern or Chinese professors (see, for example, this NYT article on the "hunt"(!) for Chinese spies from Nov 2021. And it is not exactly a secret that various sectors of the US state keep close tabs on Middle Eastern groups/individuals).

This latter point is of particular importance. There are a significant number of Middle Eastern and Chinese professors in the department. There's also plainly a well-exercised apparatus for surveilling and harassing ambiguously-defined "national enemies". So this is an essential consideration, since there are certainly people who will find my position to be radical. Consequently, it would be quite irresponsible for me to say such things if there is even a nonzero chance they would cause anyone else to receive undue attention.

My concern applies more broadly than this particular PhD offer; there are a small number of other situations in which this information about myself is relevant: looking for research to contribute to, or trying to learn about employment prospects. It would also be untrue to say that I am only interested in electrical power, because I would be happy to contribute to any number of productive projects.
It's conceivable that the conditions in the US simply aren't right at the moment for such things to be mentioned in these settings, and that my best course of action may just be to keep my nose down and focus solely on the electrical power industry. But after being approached specifically for my math background as a potentially-ideal PhD candidate for this professor's needs, I am tempted to see whether my horizon can be at all broadened.

I don't quite understand why you perceive this to a potential issue (but I'm not in Engineering nor in the US). To me your stance seems like a perfectly normal preference, on par with being vegitarian. Yes, rarely someone might take offense, but those people don't merit consideration.

It's ok to distance yourself from sensitive projects.  However, if the USA government  wants to come after you, they will even when you are not doing anything illegal.  For example, you may be running an application or emailed a 'friend' in a non-friendly country.  That may be sufficient to place in you a jam for some time.  Further, I'm sure with some creativity, any STEM research  can serve some purpose in the military.  Hence, they can accuse you of carrying out research for the military.

Probably a duplicate: How do I refuse to work on military-focused contracts?

"Defense, Aerospace, Surveillance, Autonomous Vehicles:" Just out of curiosity: how did autonomous vehicles make it into this list?

@JochenGlueck Think drones rather than automobiles

@mkennedy: Yes sure - but why does this disqualify autonomous vehicles in general rather than only autonomous drones? (As a comparison, refusal to work on tanks probably doesn't imply refusal to work on heavy vehicles, in general.)

I can't quite tell why you mention the presence of foreign professors in your department. Are you against working on all military technologies (as your username would imply), or only against cooperating with certain governments? In the former case, why does the professor's nationality matter? (And, are you sure the professors are truly "foreign"? Foreign-born professors can become US citizens and may even be allowed to work on sensitive projects).

@cag51 The point is that (by my reading of history) the US routinely exercises a surveillance network which includes communication monitoring, they act especially aggressive against individuals with certain characteristics (which includes even perceived foreignness), that there is a history of US intelligence being particularly attuned to student movements, and that such movements have often pushed anti-war themes as a component of their beliefs. Taken together, I feel obligated realistically assess the potential consequences of my actions; we are living through history.

But the general consensus seems to be that my fears (jeopardizing someone with "guilt by association") are totally unrealistic.

Sorry, that really wasn't my question; I'd rather not open the debate about whether your beliefs are reasonable. Rather, I'm just trying to clarify your sixth paragraph: why do you believe having this conversation with an American-born professor requires different considerations than a Chinese-born professor?

If you don't want to do military-related research, just say "I don't want to do military-related research." The basic reason will be obvious to anyone, and there are probably plenty of academics who feel the same way.
If you think that even saying that phrase to a foreign-born professor will cause them some problem, I think you are probably worrying too much.

"I would not like to be involved in any project directly benefiting Defense, Aerospace, Surveillance, Autonomous Vehicles; those kinds of things"

This is too long and confusing. Aerospace and autonomous vehicles research can be completely non-military.

I think this misses the rasism/xenophobia aspect of the question.

@Anonymous Physicist  For that aspect of the question, the only part I could understand was "I am worried about even mentioning these things, particularly over email, with foreign-born professors," and I commented on that

If you have the freedom to choose the mode of conversation, let it be verbal. This would reduce the chances of your statements being misrepresented/used against you, especially at a later stage.
It would also be nice to seek permission to express your (non) preference of topic before you actually state it. Doing so is both safe and courteous; you've allowed the professor the opportunity to deny it. If it's permitted, I would suggest being direct about the militarism aspect rather than couching it within sub-fields (the ones you mentioned are non-exclusive, and there could be non-military work within them).
There is a finite chance that your preference would be considered naive; if probed, you should have a reasonably sound argument. I would suggest thinking along the lines of (a) whether non-military work that could be misused to be exploitative is more acceptable than any military work, and, (b) if you do obtain ground breaking results and realise their potential military use, how willing would you be to give up on them?

Your stance is not particularly radical.  Academics often have preferences for the types of work they want to do, and in some cases this also consists of an aversion to particular types of projects.  It is perfectly fine for you to tell people that you don't want to work on military projects (or other related projects).  It is unlikely that you would need to explain your stance, but even if you did, it ought to be simple to set out your aversion to those projects without being seen as a political "radical".
As to your concern that your stance could lead to surveillance, etc., using mechanisms designed for dealing with spies, I would think it would be the opposite --- an actual spy would want to be put on as many secret military projects as possible.  There is nothing suspicious or unusual about an academic deciding that military projects are not the type of thing they want to work on.

While it would limit your choice of advisors, it is good that you express these things at the start. You will find a lot of support for your position in academia generally, though some will certainly disagree with you. If you express an opinion and get pushback, just keep looking for a different advisor or one who will, at least, still support you in spite of differences.
And there is no reason that people should extrapolate from what you say about the nature of a project to an interpretation that you disapprove of any individual professor, especially for racial or ethnic reasons. If they do, it is on them, and is unreasonable. You can't prevent people from being offended, but that is due to their own prejudices, not yours.
I once had a friend (lost track of him) who was involved with national defense projects in the US. He had similar concerns as yourself. But his position in such projects was to be a member of the Red Team, whose function was to show the flaws in the proposals put forth by the true believers. Over a number of years he was proven right in that the proposals he attacked (as part of the project) were indeed infeasible. I don't necessarily recommend this, however, since he was still "contributing" to those projects.
I'd guess there are countries in which holding such views would be problematic, but I don't see the US as one of them.
An alternative, of course, is to mention projects that you would want to work on, rather than those you don't. That might avoid the issue in the short term while you get a degree and can be more readily public about views you think might be unpopular. Tenure is good for that, of course.
And, be aware that lots of things in science, technology, and engineering that were done with the best of intentions have been subverted to evil purpose. For example, lot of advances in big data have been used by large social media companies such as redacted and redacted to build dossiers on much of the public.

I'd suggest: "I would prefer to work on projects that help people.  I think technological interdependence is a better way to build international partnerships than deterrence."
It sounds to me like your concerns might be:

Warfare is bad.
You do not want to form relationships that the US government might disapprove of; perhaps you'd like to work for that government later.
You do not want to be perceived as racist/xenophobic for not helping Asians with military projects.

My suggestion avoids all these issues by emphasizing your goals.
I've not worked on military or intelligence projects, but my experience is that those opportunities are fairly easy to spot and, if desired, avoid.  While the exact nature of the project is hidden, the entity funding it is not.  If it's got an NNSA logo on it, it's nuclear weapons research.

Well, except for all the non-nuclear-weapons research done at NNSA labs, including that under Office of Science funding.

@JonCuster The Office of Science and NNSA are both funded by DOE.  I think your picture of the structure is different from mine.  I know it's a complex structure.

I am quite aware of how NNSA and the Office of Science are funded. But, note that the Office of Science labs are explicitly open to all (Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Fermilab, Jefferson, etc.). Lots of publications in the open literature from NNSA labs.

My very short suggestion: think about pursuing your PhD degree based on a "private"[1] company fundings, or in a foreign country where active aggressive militarism is not so strongly embedded in the country ruling elite modus-operandi.
Avoid Russia, China, US, Saudi Arabia.
Think about Iceland, Denmark, Taiwan, Switzerland, since you are looking into power distribution and trasmission, these are countries that are trying to play a role in the green energy production.
Then you can go back to the US and apply for grants and funding opportunities that are in line with your ethics.
[1] private, but I would rather aim at big public utilities that have a well delimited scope, there is always the risk of a private company being eaten up by one of the big defense conglomerate ...

Is the situation in the US actually as bad as OP indicates that one would need to consider seeking a job elsewhere? Admittedly, at times it gets hard to not be involved with anything military in Russia, but even then it falls under a more general concern of working under (=supporting)  a regime you have major ideological disagreements with... Most of the time, at least.

@Lodinn the defense corporations in the US are so powerful that they do not need to contribute significatively to presidential elections ( https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?Ind=D ) and they do not care about the gov't having a rep or dem majority.
Even more worrisome, is that the defense sector influence is not tied to some single individuals, but it is a systematic part of US business (see most recent deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and Taiwan ... tenths of bilions of weapons bought by the us gov't from defense corporations, corporations that care only about cashing in).

Well sure but how does that prevent OP from doing research without military ties? I know of two possible major issues: either the military thinks your research is interesting enough you just can't keep doing it in peace anymore or the lab/uni is starved for funding so they take on defense contracts. The latter is by far more prevalent even in Russia, where there are precedents of fairly heavy-handed handling of science... So unless the research won't get funded unless it's military, it should be possible to avoid having these ties, no?


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Relevant math courses for theoretical physics/applied mathematics?
I'm finishing my bachelor's in physics and for my masters, where I have a few free choice courses (~5), I'd like to take math courses that would be relevant for a future as a theoretical physicist or applied mathematician.
Rigorously (as in taught by mathematicians) I've had Calculus, Calculus in R^n, Complex Analysis, Linear Algebra, Probability and Statistics and just a small overview of differential equations. I've had more math in physics courses but not in a very rigorous way.
I'm setting my eyes on the following courses:

Ordinary Differential Equations
Partial Differential Equations
Group Theory
Stochastic Processes
Functional Analysis

Are all of these relevant? Which others could be added to this list?

To quote the physicist who taught me string theory: "There is no mathematics that God has not found a use for in string theory."

Sure those are all relevant; it would be hard to name any undergraduate mathematics course that isn't relevant to theoretical physics and applied math.  So as the question stands I don't think there's room for a very meaningful answer.  If you specified the subfield you want to work in then it would make sense to give more specific suggestions.

All of the courses that you've mentioned could be quite helpful depending on what area of physics or applied mathematics you end up in. The ordinary and partial differential equations courses would be expected in any reasonable graduate program in applied mathematics.
Differential geometry and tensor analysis is very important in many areas of mathematical physics.  In my experience, many physics graduate students end up learning a lot of numerical computing and numerical analysis (not quite the same thing.)

Although the name is not explanatory, a course in "Lie theory", or "Lie groups and Lie algebras" would be very helpful: this is about the influence of large-ish (certainly not finite) symmetry groups, such as rotation groups ("orthogonal groups"...), and more.
Also, "functional analysis" is very hit-or-miss, depending on what one wants. What a potential physicist would want would be "operator theory", especially "unbounded operators". Also, probably, "distribution theory/generalized functions", to be able to cope gracefully with things like Dirac's delta "function". (E.g., to not be at the mercy of semi-ignoramuses who'll happily rant about the non-existence of such a thing, and/or insist on describing it in ways which horribly obscure its utility and sense...)

To add to useful advice already given, consider a course on Fourier methods (widely used in image/signal processing and partial differential equations), possibly also covering wavelets and/or approximation theory. Also look into courses on inverse problems. Some of this might be more useful for experimental than theoretical physics but is all worth doing for applied mathematics.
Another possibility is to consider nonlinear dynamics, at least at the level of Strogatz for an introduction with an applied flavour. After that, you can go on to more rigorous courses. While linearity is hugely useful, learning about nonlinear behavior is very valuable too, as it can be very different and shows up in many physical systems.

In my humble opinion you have a reasonably good set for the pure math education (missing, perhaps, just combinatorics), but I would somewhat dilute it with such thing as numerical methods, programming, and a bit of computer science in general. I don't know what kind of physics and/or applied mathematics you are aiming at, but if you want to dab into quantum computing and applied non-linear PDE, these courses will bring you above the level of the general person whose primary (if not only) idea of investigating a complicated system of equations is to copy them literally into Maple or Mathematica and to call the "solve()" routine. That may give you both additional options in your research and the competitive edge on the job market. Otherwise I guess you are fine as you are :-)

A choice of additional math courses must be defined by the specific area of theoretical physics you wish to study.
For example, a solid knowledge of Group Theory is absolutely critical for those concentrating on Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Chemistry, Atomic Physics, Crystallography. A clear understanding of the theory of Lorentz and Poincare groups will help you to grasp Special Relativity. The next step along these lines would be to make an acquaintance with the theory of group's representations.  E.g. the theory of representations of the Poincare group is needed to understand why we have so different elementary particles described by so different wave equations.
An introductory-level knowledge of Differential Geometry and Tensor Calculus will be a necessary prerequisite to studying General Relativity.
Many areas of physics (especially, of Astrophysics) are now becoming more and more computational.  Therefore, if you decide to go that way, it may be prudent to study more of numerics, programming, perhaps computer science in general.  The same recommendation applies to the rapidly developing area of Quantum Computing which is residing at the overlap of physics and computer science.  Also, your computer skills may decide your fate if some day you choose to leave academia for industry or finance.
On the other hand, I would not elevate Functional Analysis too high in the hierarchy of physicists' needs.  Your chances of encountering a topological or Banach space other than the good old complex Hilbert space are slim.  A one-semester course on Hilbert spaces will safely cover your needs.
I am sure that practitioners of other areas of physics would add more to this list.
Good luck with your studies!

Functional analysis (incl. measure theory), differential geometry, differential topology, group (including Lie) theory.
Functional analysis gives you acquaintance with  different spaces (hausdorff, hilbert, banach, etc.) from the vector spaces one is used to in basic analysis courses and operations on them. Furthermore operator theory is part of functional analysis. This is beneficial for the study of quantum mechanics
Differential topology and geometry are useful since all major theories, from classical mechanics to thermodynamics to dynamical systems, to statistical physics to relativity, tend to be more and more investigated/exposed by way of a "geometrical flavour" (which should favour a more intuitive/visual understanding).
Group theory is spread over all physical theories

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Advice on study plan for Applied Math/Machine learning courses, for PhD degree not in either subject
My question requires a little background which I will give here:
I'm heading into the 2nd year of my Epidemiology PhD program. I work on vaccine trials/infection control using simple non-linear math models and love it. The majority of in-department modeling courses have been survey courses focused on translating epidemiological concepts into models, only briefly touching on the math used for implementation.
I've signed up for some introductory courses in the econometrics department (with my department's permission) which cover bayesian statistics, pdfs, importance sampling etc. I chose courses in the econometrics department as I thought they would be more applied and have more students at a similar math level to myself.
1) My main anxiety is that I've always been a solid B grade math student. I learn best through project-based learning and hands-on implementation. Formula based lecturing and proofs have been very difficult for me and I find that subsequently I don't retain much.
2) I've been able to learn more difficult mathematical concepts using computational software (I am a proficient R and MATLAB user) and doing self-teaching tutorials. Concepts that have previously been explained to me in math theory 4-5 times 'click' when I code them out and can experiment with sampling, seeing actual results. (for example, mcmc metropolis-hastings)
3) What would be your recommendations be for devising a study plan for these classes, and my future classes, which maximizes learning the relevant mathematical concepts given this 'learning style'? Were there any websites, types of courses, or textbooks/exercise books that taught difficult concepts with code but didn't overly rely on pre-built functions?
People in other departments either seem to grasp concepts effortlessly or stop trying to learn them. In addition no one else else in my cohort or the years above work on these type of questions or models so I have no one to ask for advice.
I am under no delusions about my mathematical abilities here and have no ambition to pursue math/statistical/machine learning research. My goal is to reach a level where I am able to fully comprehend the tools used in my particular field and be able to implement and critique them at a 100% competent level. Thanks!

I would recommend taking a look at the Coursera Machine Learning course by Andrew Ng. https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning
It's an excellent introduction into basic machine learning.

@metathor Can you suggest me good books for preparing for the entrance test in PhD Epidemiology. I am a Biotech student and have no idea regarding the syllabus of the Epidemiology test. Since you are a PhD scholar of Epidemiology I felt to ask you some Book recommendations. Thank you.

@Ak2817, I would recommend asking the school/department you are applying to a book recommendation as there are different schools of thought in epidemiology. We use 'Epidemiological Methods' (Oxford Press) by Dr. Noel Weiss and Thomas Koepsell to study for our exams.

Concepts
First, you should know that machine learning is nothing special. For the most part, the term is only one of a series of buzzwords exchanged in order to maintain linguistic novelty in popular reporting, grant applications, and so on. Machine learning refers mainly to a class of adaptive algorithms that are amenable to, or at least worth applying learning theory to analyze. (And since you're interested in the applications, there's no need to look into that rarefied area.)
Now, that being the case, what does the field stem from? Three more basic mathematical areas:

Probability (used to define basic intuitions, thinking, and formal notions)
Linear algebra (used to describe processed information and algorithmic steps, such as feature selection and regularization)
Calculus (used for optimization formulations, proofs, and continuous distributions)

If you have a good grip on these three things, you can handle more or less any machine learning paper or topic. Some challenges you might face, judging from your stated style:

Probability: You don't have to be able to recite everything about sigma-algebras or Borel fields, but you need to have the axioms and their implications down. You also need to understand why something will (or will not) converge. If you're doing Bayesian statistics, you need to grasp parameter estimation and be able to understand what the different formulas are expressing. This is just a lot of math, as much as it is eventually codeable.
Linear algebra: Notation can be quite complicated. For example, MRI or EEG data typically come in tensors, which you can think of as N-dimensional matrices. Machine learning papers often throw around such linear algebra forms as easily as they were scalar forms, because they assume the audience can handle it. You should try to make sure you don't become disoriented, and can visualize what is happening spatially.
Calculus: The main thing that you need to be able to grasp is optimization. Ultimately it boils down to proving that something is a maximum or minimum (a cost function in the case of most machine learning algorithms), often expressed in terms of a Lagrangian. SVM is a classic case of this, expressed as a quadratic optimization problem with vectors.

Resources

Trevor Hastie has a couple of good books that may suit your approach, one with applications in R, and one called Elements of Statistical Learning that my advisor recommended to me. He makes them available for free at https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/pub.htm.
I personally find Andrew Ng's teaching approach overly intricate and unmotivating, but Abu-Mostafa is a gem to watch: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD63A284B7615313A
For probability, I highly recommend this Oxford book. It's well-formatted and you can flip to sections quickly to refresh yourself.

Strategies
Be willing to compromise. I myself learned R and machine learning basics at the same time, and I was more or less free to work out both the code and implementation in practice however I liked. However, for actual use, I typically (with few exceptions) trust the published authors of R packages to have covered more bases than I.
Figure out what you want to know. For example, I'm not interested in learning the innards of the latest way to efficiently update a neural network too big to fit in RAM; I just want to be able to phrase my questions in a rigorous way that allows me to judge whether or not such an approach is warranted or helpful.


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How to communicate students' feedback about a professor as a TA
I'm a TA. Recently a few students (good students) approached me, because they are having a hard time retaining the information from the main professor's lectures. (They think he is putting too much information on the powerpoints, which makes it impossible to take notes).
Is there a good way to pass along this information, without telling the professor how to teach his own class? I'm in a country where anonymous teacher evaluations do not exist...

Can you say generally, what part of the world are you in? Cultural norms vary widely.

Thanks for your response! I'm in France.

Without being confrontational or expressing your own opinions, just mention to the professor that some good students are having difficulty keeping up with the pace of the lectures. You can suggest that the professor make the slides available in some way. The best solution is to make them available prior to a lecture and the students then have the opportunity to annotate them in the lecture itself.
If you meet regularly with the students then perhaps the professor would give the slides to you, if not to the students, as the basis of questions from the students.
Some professors prepare their slides from certain specific materials, such as a textbook. In that case, the book likely contains everything that is important. If they have access to the source materials, then the slides themselves become less important.
Another solution, not involving the professor is to suggest that the students record the audio of the class.
On the other hand, it is a skill worth having to be able to abstract/summarize detailed information in a few sentences. The students in question may not have such a skill and, if not other solution is available, suggest that to them.
I used to ask students at the end of a lecture to tell me the most important idea(s) of the lecture and would ask volunteers to suggest one of them. I also encouraged them to take notes on index cards capturing key ideas rather than detail and then  to make a single card from their notes summarizing the lecture. I would sometimes open a lecture asking for the key ideas from the previous lecture. They didn't have this skill when the course started but began to develop it.

Concerning recording the class, the professor should be involved in the sense that the students should ask them for permission to record the class.  I would definitely not suggest that the students just start recording the class without talking to the instructor first.  Some institutions actually have explicit policies against this, and even if the institution doesn't, it can sour student-faculty relations if a faculty member finds out they're being recorded without their knowledge.

@MichaelSeifert, I agree about asking, but I'll guess that in the age of the smartphone it happens pretty regularly. I think the issue isn't the recording itself, but someone later making it available without permission. Hard to control, of course, but people seem to be recording lots of stuff these days.

Perhaps the feedback would be best coming from the students themselves who are struggling. In my experience, anonymous feedback throughout an undergraduate course can be really helpful to improve it. It is common (in Canada) to offer course experience surveys at the end of a class. However, students can be more likely to put effort into the feedback when it has the potential to benefit them.
In this case, you could mention the benefit of in-course anonymous feedback to the professor that you are working with, and suggest that trying this might be a great way to find out how the students are currently doing. You could even suggest some general questions that could be asked and would allow your students' concerns to be heard.
Alternatively, you could recommend that the students voice their concerns to the professor themselves during office hours or via email if they are comfortable. Being able to talk with professors and get help can be a valuable skill for undergraduate students to develop.


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PhD: Letters of recommendation from foreign professors
My partner was born outside the U.S. and received their degree from a foreign university. My partner is now living and working in the United States. They have begun to apply to various Ph.D. programs, which all require letters of recommendation from previous professors.
The problem that has been occurring is that it is not common in their culture for universities to ask for letters of recommendation or for professors to write them which has resulted in poorly written letters because of a misunderstanding from the professors on why it's needed or its purpose, as well as the language barrier. This problem is exacerbated when you take into account that it's common to apply to multiple universities. In this case, my partner has attempted to apply to 7 schools.
So now my partner has not only struggled to get in contact and have them write a letter, which they don't normally do, but my partner also has to hound their professors to upload the letters themselves into university systems 7 times over.
This has resulted in multiple applications not being able to be completed before the deadline even though they have been started many months prior.
I feel frustrated for my partner and I am wondering if other foreigners have had similar issues and any suggestions to overcome this.

Assuming the professors don't need to tailor the letters to each school, one part of the solution is to use interfolio.com. Then they only have to upload their letter once, and then you can have it sent out to different schools.

But what kind of solution is it possible to imagine? If people aren't used to write recommendation letters, you have to approach them personally and persuade, and provide examples of what is required.

@AnonyPostdoc, perhaps expand that to an answer. I've included it in my answer, but you should probably get credit for it.

Unless your partner is coming from a country where few students apply to graduate school in the US, chances are that her former professors do have experience in writing such letters.

I have seen two approaches:
Draft the letter yourself, or have it drafted by someone familiar with the system you are applying to, and get the professor to sign, or in these days upload, it. If there is an admin team, try to involve the secretary. Basically minimise the amount of work for the professor providing the reference.
The other approach is to get a masters or some other one year degree in the local system, so you can get local references. This might be unavoidable if the two systems are too far apart or if one regards the other as unreliable. (I'm not saying it's fair.)

Sorry, both of these suggestions are bad advice. The first still requires contact that could be used instead to inform the foreign professor and the second doesn't avoid the problem of getting accepted into  a local system and needing letters.

@Buffy  Well, that's what I gave seen working. Good luck getting into a PhD programme coming from Iraq.

Or from lots of places, actually. But, hopefully, an Iraqi professor wants to advance their students, as do we all.

If you have good relationships with the foreign professors, the right way to handle this is to let them know what the requirements are when you ask for help. Hopefully they will accommodate you in some way. But if they aren't familiar with doing this then they need a bit of an education about why it is important and how it might look.
One way is to explain the expectations and importance of the letters in the system to which you are applying. In the US they are quite important. You could also provide them with a sample letter or two that describes some fictional candidate so that they get a feel for it. Something too "gushy" or too "boilerplate" will not be helpful.
The might just appreciate the information you give them.
You can also give them a list of what you think your accomplishments are that they assisted you in to give them a head start. Some professors will ask you for a draft, but I'd suggest not suggesting that as it is a bit pushy. Some people will let you review the letter before it is sent or give you a copy afterwards, though note that some systems forbid this explicitly.
You can even, perhaps, beg a bit; "I know this is an imposition and a bit of a pain, but those dirty, rotten, scoundrels in the US require this sort of nonsense." (Well no, not so far over the top.)
User AnonyPostdoc has also suggested in a comment that inter folio.com can make multiple submissions easier. Perhaps they will expand that to an answer.


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Short comment paper - time to review Vs urgency of the topic
Several weeks ago, I submitted a comment paper/policy brief of about 800 words to a journal. The paper critiques frequent reports published by major international organizations, which I believe overlook an important aspect. Given the rapidly evolving nature of the topic, it’s crucial that my paper is published soon to maintain its relevance.
As a young researcher, I prefer publishing in peer-reviewed journals. However, I’m not sure of the best action given the time-sensitive nature of my work. Here are the options I’m considering:

Contacting the editor and explaining my situation to potentially speeding up the review process. Has anyone had success with this approach?
Publishing a preprint but would it affect my publication in a peer-reviewed journal later?
Withdrawing and submitting to a magazine style The Economist, The Guardian, etc.

If you think of any better suggestion, please share with me.
I’d appreciate your advice!

I would think that your submission to the journal would have a different structure and tone than a typical submission to The Guardian and the like (though The Economist might be closer to a journal), so I don't understand why option 3 would require withdrawing.  Can't you do both, writing a different piece that covers the same ground?  Since the audiences are presumably quite different, you would be doing a good job of getting your message out.

Hopefully you noted this fact in the submission's cover letter, including basically your first paragraph of the question in the letter. If the editor couldn't accommodate this, then they would have desk rejected it.

@Mike "The Economist might be closer to a journal" whoa, that is a lot of trust in one of the strongest lobbying group in the world. Jut look at who owns "the economist group": do you really think they need to sell copies and make a profit? they just need a good vector for their ideas and lobbying.

@EarlGrey I was just talking about the structure and tone of articles — not "trust", ownership, or anything like that.

I doubt that contacting them would change anything. Their priorities are more about quality than speed, I'd think. Only if the editor agrees with you would it be possible and it is likely still going to undergo a review.
A preprint is possible provided that the journal allows preprints and will still publish something that has already appeared. Many do, but some don't. You need to explore their policy before you act. And, a preprint might get little notice. Since preprints are not formally reviewed, they are just, in this case, the opinions of the writer. A published paper has some "backup" from the review process itself; an important consideration.
As a new academic, you want the paper published, of course, but if your concerns are valid, you want it "seen" not just published and you want the agreement of other experts. That suggests, to me, at least, that the publishing process works in your favor here.
Other places you might submit to will also have some process for acceptance and that might take time as well.
You say that it is crucial that your paper be published soon. It is normally others who make that decision, unless you are in a position to self-publish. But self-published work can be hard to find unless you are already well known to the audience.

Thanks. Your insights are always helpful! About the preprint option: It is not written anywhere in the journal's website/guides. However, after the submition,  the Review Timeline has been automatically transferred to Research Square. Also according to the Editorial Policy (https://www.springer.com/gp/editorial-policies/preprint-sharing), it seems to be encouraged. However, I am not sure of whether I need/should notify the editor before preprinting it.

Yes, some journals do preprints, but want to do it themselves so that they control the venue. But author submitted preprints may be a different matter.

Doing #1 can't hurt. It might not change anything, but, at worst, they say "sorry, we can't publish it quickly".
#2 I have no idea about this.
#3 I am pretty sure that the Economist does not take submissions. I'm less sure about The Guardian but you can look over past issues and see if they have op-eds. But, in general, newspapers (as opposed to magazines) do take "letters to the editor" and "op-ed" pieces.

for sure this ☝  If what you have is a timely "opinion" rather than a journal article,  then a periodical - which could be an industry-focused one - would make the most sense. Exceptions could be where a journal specifically invites commentary, perhaps for online, or where you are so well-known you can just call an editor and ask them to print something.

Your interests and those of a publisher might overlap in some respects, but for the most part they are quite distinct. What is important to you (publishing your paper quickly) is probably not of significant interest to a publisher unless your insights are so extraordinary that they are guaranteed to bring kudos to the publisher.
Having now submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, I suggest you stay the course and accept whatever outcome eventuates; there is plenty of life in which to publish something else later.
There is one last thing worth commenting on, and that is your use of the word "urgent". I understand that the topic about which you have written is one that is currently relevant ... but does the sense of urgency in any way reflect its importance. As Stephen Covey so frequently commented, urgency and importance in so many domains are inversely related. If your work if important and not simply urgent, you can take your time.
.

There is one part in your thinking that bothers me:

The paper critiques frequent reports published by major international
organizations, which I believe overlook an important aspect.

If frequent reports overlook an important aspect, it is likely that they are doing it deliberately, therefore there is no urgency because they know they are overlooking something, and if they know also someone else is knowing it.
There is no urgency in letting the overlooked aspect out, but there is an opportunity for you to team up with other researchers investigating the same overlooked aspects and write a strong case for considering the overlooked aspects, instead of writing a critique to deaf people...