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Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Application Criteria - Functional Responsibility?
I'm applying for a position as a postdoctoral research fellow (in mathematics if it matters) and encountered this under the key selection criteria:
"Ability to solve problems by using innovation and the exercise of high level diagnostic skills within areas of functional responsibility or professional expertise"
Googling "functional responsibility" didn't help me understand what is meant by this in an academic context. Does anyone have any ideas as to what is being asked for here?

Could it not just mean that you should be able to solve the problems that you're responsible for solving as part of your job (i.e., your function in the institution), using innovation and the exercise of high level diagnostic skills?

It's just boilerplate language, not specific to the post-doc position (or even to academic positions, probably).  All "areas of functional responsibility" means is that it refers to the kinds of things that you will be responsible for doing as part of the job.


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Mathematics Ph.D program foreign language requirement
I will soon be attending a Ph.D program in mathematics. I do not know how common this practice is, but the department has a requirement that graduate students must learn a foreign language and be able to read and write mathematics in that language. The three choices are French, German, or Russian. I personally have no preference on which to learn, but I was wondering if there were other reasons that would make one language more advantageous over the others in terms of a general mathematical career. Thanks in advance in any response.

Perhaps surprisingly this actually depends on what subfield of math you will be specializing in, For number theory and algebraic geometry, French seems the best choice. For some aspects of representation theory, Russian might be best, and for finite group theory, German would be the choice. However, even with this in mind, French might be the best choice in general, as the sources only available in French tends to have a higher quality gap down to the English equivalents than the other languages (this is only my impression though, so it might be wrong).

Petition your department to drop the language requirement. Nothing of consequence has been published in the past 25 years in either of these 3 languages that isn't also available in English. My sense is that the only countries where people still publish noteworthy things in their national language are China and Japan -- and if your department wanted to be fair, they'd include these two languages in their foreign language options.

@WolfgangBangerth Probably not even Chinese - Chinese language publications have the reputation of being of lackluster quality even in China.

@wolfgangbangerth I mean, let's just stop learning foreign languages because nothing of any consequence is done in any language other than English and if it I'd it'll be translated right? While we're at it, let's just get rid of math courses too, we already have computers to handle that. Sigh

I've heard of this in several mathetmatics PhD programs, but I've never heard of it in a PhD program outside of mathematics (that wasn't directly related to non-English languages).

@WolfgangBangerth: A counterexample: my dissertation was based primarily on a series of papers published only in French between 2004 and 2007, which prove some rather important results and are pretty consequential in my research area.

@WolfgangBangerth Wasn't the Fundamental Lemma proof by Chau in French?

Do the one that is simpler for you to learn, so that you don't waste much time on this. That's the canonical strategy.

@WolfgangBangerth even if that were true, one does occasionally have to read papers published >25 years ago.

@David while counter examples are sure to abound, my impression is that basically every humanities program requires it. History, art (and art history), philology (tends to require knowledge of three or four), philosophy, religion, etc. Nowadays even some nursing programs have started to require it

Folks -- the fact that some of you have occasionally used your foreign language skills does not prove that it is a worthwhile thing to require every graduate student to learn a foreign language. Because if you dabble in examples, I'm going to note that my mother language is German and that I read French passably well -- but that it's been about 20 years since I had the need to use either for scientific purposes (I'm in applied math). Point being that learning a language is a huge commitment with relatively uncommon uses for work purposes.

¨@WolfgangBangerth perhaps your opinion is less relevant here exactly because you work in applied math. It seems that here there is a significant difference between pure and applied math.

While it may be true that, if one had to pick a single language in which to read mathematics, English would currently be the best choice, ... it is certainly not the case (as many people do claim) that these days there's an English version of anything worthwhile. True, it is possible to "get by" reading only English, but there are little problems now and then.
In particular, for mathematics, perhaps unlike computer science, things don't really become "wrong" or obsolete (although they certainly can become less stylish), and until about WWII the cutting-edge writing in mathematics was mostly in French and German. (Depending on the epoch, Russians often wrote in French or German, as did Japanese in those times. English was not the lingua franca... :)
So, for people in mathematics of roughly my age, it was necessary to have some reading knowledge of French and German to be professionally competent in those years. And many of the classics of those times have not been supplanted by English-language versions, and are still relevant at least as subtle background to contemporary work.
Also, though I don't make a hobby of tracking this, it is my impression that many French mathematicians in number theory and automorphic forms and representation theory certainly do write in French, and at a level and substance that is not at all automagically transferred to English-language writing. And many pieces in Seminaire Bourbaki, a wonderful resource, continue to be in French.

The decision does depend on you field. As Tobias Kildetoft mentioned above there may be original non-translated stuff which is interesting to you. Also there could be more position of field A in country B is something to consider.
Then in Germany/Austria/Switzerland you may even get away in a teaching position in the beginning without speaking any German and in France this is less likely. I don't know about Russia.

I took an oral exam to satisfy that requirement in my applied math department.  I was psyched.  I dusted off my French, which I hadn't used in a while.  I was looking forward to the exam.  To my disappointment, the page I was asked to translate was mostly symbols; the few words on the page could have been machine-translated, they were so straightforward.  So in terms of satisfying your department's requirement, if your requirement is anything like mine was (and you can ask your department to give you a sample page ahead of time, to judge the expected level of fluency), pick French or German, whichever seems easier for you.  (For most English speakers, that would be French.)  (Avoid Russian because of the other alphabet.)
On the other hand, if your goal is to truly learn a new language, then choose from among all the languages in the world, not just those three.  Choose it for more than one reason, not just to make more articles in your field accessible to you.  And learn it thoroughly -- or don't bother.  Speaking 200 words won't give you the benefits of knowing another language.
The benefits of speaking another language well include:
- being able to communicate with a bunch of people you wouldn't be able to otherwise
- understanding another culture, especially its humor, in a way you wouldn't be able to otherwise
- being able to get nuanced meanings from articles and books in your field (note, these nuanced meanings will not be accessible to you without a less-than-superficial study of the language, which typically takes several years to achieve)
If you want to be able to read papers in your field, and you're not sure if knowing another language will be necessary for that, then do a thorough literature search in your area, to find out which other language(s), if any, will be needed.

Here is my opinion. Of French, German, and Russian the former two are much more important than the latter, and you will recognize this if you look into the history of mathematics. Hilbert, Riemann, Jacobi, Noether, Weierstrass, Von Neumann, Klein and other members of the Göttingen school (arguably the most influential in the history of mathematics) published in German, while Cauchy, Fourier, Poincaré, Hadamard, Euler and others published in French. Associated with those names is the founding of so many fields of mathematics.. analysis (rigorous calculus), complex analysis, commutative algebra,.. essentially all fields that are the basic cornerstones of mathematics. One cannot say the same about Russian; there are quite a few very decent Russian mathematician, but none is of the same calibre as the mathematicians mentioned above. This makes French and German (by far) the most important languages in the history of mathematics.
In the 1930's Hitler essentially killed German mathematics; Germany's position in mathematics is nowadays merely a shadow of what it used to be. There are still some important German mathematician's, but they are few. And they mainly publish in English (Hopf, Hirzebruch, and Faltings were notable exceptions). This put French mathematics to the front, and there is a countless number of important French publications of the postwar area.. Schwartz's work on distribution theory, Serre and Borel's work in algebraic topology, Serre and Grothendieck's work in algebraic geometry and commutative algebra, Serre's work in number theory. etc. etc.

"there are quite a few very decent Russian mathematician, but none is of the same calibre as the mathematicians mentioned above" Maybe "none" should be "few"? I'd certainly include Kolmogorov among rarified group of people you listed.

@DaveLRenfro well he is  perhaps comparable to Fourier or Klein, but certainly not to Hilbert, Riemann, or Euler.

Gelfand? .......

While I do not agree with this answer, I think the conclusion is right, for a different reason. During Soviet times, there were quite a lot of important works published in Russian. Maybe less so in Algebra, but definitely in some of the more applied fields. However the more important works generally had good English translations, often published with involvement of the original author.

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Can I accept offers from universities in other countries before I apply to a German university?
I am currently studying in Singapore and am going to take the A-levels this year. All the university applications for the UK and US take place this year and the results will be out early next year. And they usually have deadlines for you to consider their offer.
However, I am extremely fond of studying in Germany and the results of my applications to German universities will only come in July/August next year. By then all offer deadlines for other universities will have passed and if finally I got rejected by all German universities I will have no place to go...
In this case, is it advisory to take up an offer and then apply to a German university? Would the German universities know that you are already enrolled in other universities?
Many thanks!!!
Sarah

I doubt that the German university somehow knows that you are enrolled at other foreign universities, but it's generally forbidden to be enrolled at two German universities at the same time. However, it is possible and legal to enlist as guest student ("Zweithörer" or "Gasthörer" in German) while enlisted as full student at another German university. This might apply to non-german universities as well.
Regarding the application deadline: as far as I know the deadlines for normal applications is mid-july for the winter semester and mid-january for the summer semster. Normally, you get the results within 2-3 months.

"and mid-january for the summer semster" - but then, various majors at some places only start in the winter semester. On the other hand, an extra semester might be required for foreign students to do language exams and the respective preparation courses.

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What are the non-academic job prospects for a PhD in probability?
So I am a Master of Science, majored in math, as of now. I am going to a reasonably good US university as an international student to get my PhD, which will likely be in probability, my main field of interest. I have heard a lot about how probability has applications in non-academic jobs and was wondering what would be my job prospects (in research and development) with such a PhD? I am not interested in purely academic research job.
I would like to add that I will be taking CS courses (lots of modelling courses especially), so I can bridge the gap between my knowledge of the purer side of math and its more applied side.

The main industry job for anyone involved with probabilities nowadays is called

Data Scientist

(also called applied statistician which, in turn, is basically applied probabilities).

To this we may add, data management, information management, consulting at the top firms. If you are good with programming, that are endless possibilities in developing jobs. If you live in, or will relocate to, a major urban area the job prospects are endless (p ≤ 0.05)

@Repmat Agreed. It seems that Data Science (and all its byproducts) offer many possibilities to ppl with good probability education.

@PsySp  I haven't done a Data Science course yet, so I'm not so sure about this-but will my knowledge of Stochastic Calculus, Brownian Motion etc find applications there too? Just curious, because several friends of mine had done a Data Science course even though they never did advanced probability courses.

@SoumyoB Data Science is not a single course. There are even whole departments dedicated to data science. And no, you cannot do data science without good probabilistic knowledge/stochastic process and stochastic decision making.


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Literature review both by keywords in title and sorting by publishing date
Is there any free online databases where I can do literature review by
(1)  giving keyword(s) that occur in title
(2) at the same time, sorting by publishing date from newest to oldest?
I found google scholar meets criteria (1) but it sorts by date only for one recent year. Pubmed meets criteria (2) but I am not finding option to search by (1) in pubmed.

PubMed permits title-only searches through its advanced search option:

This gives you many options, including a title-only search:

Also, you could use the advanced search syntax to search. After doing an advanced search, the syntax will display so that you can use it for faster searching later. For example, to search all PubMed articles that contain "open source" in the title, you search with "open source"[Title].

Have you tried Scopus or Web of Science? Both feature extensive searching filter and sorting options for all fields of science.

OP asked for FREE databases. The entire point of the question, as I understand it, is that free databases don't seem to give as many search options as the subscription-based ones (which is not quite the case, at least in the case of PubMed).

I missed that (bold) "free" bit, sorry!


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Got Caught Telling My Friend Something Need Help!
Okay so I am a Computer Science student Today was our Programming Fundamentals paper basically I am very good in Programming so I finished my paper early and was so happy after leaving the exam class I was going suddenly I heard a voice It was my friend I thought he gave his paper as well but no he came out of the hall for a bathroom break there was another guy with him who was there to ensure that my friend would not cheat but he allowed me to tell him some answer very quickly so we were standing outside the washroom And i was telling him answer to one pf the questions suddenly the bathroom door opened and it was one of the lab engineer's of our college he heard us over so he took us to the invigilator ho noted our registrations and names Now I am asking you Am I guilty here? And If Yes How Can I Avoid this Because I learned my lesson and now I am scared what if My Paper got cancelled or worse.

First, don't panic. Second, talk to your instuctor. Third, don't panic.

Fourth, for the love of insert deity here use proper sentence structure, formatting, and punctuation.  Reading this gave me a migraine.

Your school likely has a written honesty policy, and there may also be one in your course's syllabus.  Read them.  They will explain the procedures and potential punishments for cheating.  In most cases, sharing answers with someone who you know is currently taking an exam would be a clear violation of a fairly severe nature.  Whether you "learned your lesson" is something that may or may not be taken into account.

I do have an issue with your description of events.  You state he "allowed you" to tell him an answer.  This comes across as trying to shift blame for your actions onto your friend.
To answer your question about guilt.  You are guilty of telling someone who was still taking the exam one of the answers.  Whether or not you did so knowing the other student was still taking the test or not is not up to us to decide.
There is no way for you to avoid being guilty of telling someone taking the test an answer, as you yourself admit you did it.
As far as learning your lesson, this is not up to you to decide.  This is up to your institutions disciplinary committees.

Am I guilty here?

Unfortunately, the answer is probably yes.

How Can I Avoid this Because I learned my lesson and now I am scared.

Being scared and claiming that one has learned one's lesson are such universal reactions to being caught that I wouldn't expect to get much sympathy on these grounds. Moreover, playing the "I learned my lesson" card is also an implicit admission that you did something wrong. A better strategy is to insist that you did nothing wrong (idiotic as it may sound).


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Unclear paper status
I am sorry if this question looks inappropriate here, but I have a question about the paper that I submitted to the highly ranked journal long time ago. After waiting for more than half a year I've made a status request, and I got a message from the journal secretary saying that the status is "report out with editors". Unfortunately, I have no idea what this means. The most positive interpretation is that the editors have already received the report/reports from the referee/referees and are in progress of making a decision for my paper. On the other hand, it is really not clear. I would really appreciate any help in this matter.

Which journal/publisher?

Journal of Differential Geometry, International Press

There is no information online and I can not even come up with an interpretation of the phrase "report out with editor". Sorry.

Simply ask the journal secretary for clarification.


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Can software based project be considered for the award of PhD?
I am having issue in understanding the meaning of Philosophy in technical area. Suppose I have novel project that could be even patentable, can that be considered as a topic for PhD? The project is software oriented and can be developed on any standard computing machine such as PC/Tablet/Mobile phone. When I approached one professor for accepting me as his candidate for PhD, he started telling me that there is no Philosophical approach in my topic and it is just a project work. My topic was mainly related music synthesis involves developing algorithms to develop music from certain text based script files. Also no one did any work on specific topic that I opted.

Does your work advance state-of-the-art research?

Producing software, on its own, is generally not sufficient for a Ph.D.
The purpose of a Ph.D is to create new knowledge.  If you want to connect this to the underlying 'Doctor of Philosophy' concept, philosophy is literally the love of knowledge. No matter your field, to get a Ph.D you need to convince a committee of faculty that you have created or discovered new knowledge by the standards of your field.
If the software work advances the state of the art by creating new knowledge, then it can drive a Ph.D, but the degree is awarded on the basis of the new knowledge (and communicating that knowledge), not the software.  There are at least two ways this can arise in a software project:

New knowledge (new computational techniques, new mathematical results, new user interaction techniques, etc.) are needed in order to make the software possible.
The software can be used for experiments that produce new knowledge.

Either of these is fine, but the degree and dissertation rest on the knowledge.
As far as how much knowledge - my rough rule of thumb, which was taught in the Intro to Research class when I started my Ph.D, is that a dissertation in computer science should contain sufficient new research to carry 3 good papers (full papers in high-level conferences), along with the supporting material that didn't fit in the published papers.
Personal Story
My own Ph.D was heavily software-driven - it was largely the result of building and applying new software tools for recommender systems. However, this process resulted in the creation of new knowledge:

Building reconfigurable, web-capable machine learning software with dependency injection
New techniques for dependency injection to enable that software
A re-evaluation of commonly-accepted configurations for common algorithms, finding that several of them are sub-optimal
New research showing that different algorithms make different erroneous recommendations
A user study, powered by the software's interchangable algorithmic capabilities, finding differences in how users perceive the output of different recommendation techniques

Those are the things that formed the basis of earning my Ph.D. The software was an important part, but I didn't get the degree for building the software.

Good information. In case it is possible to share your thesis, could you provide a link so that I can take a look at it?

Fully agree, the science is more about "what do we learn from / with / about this software", but not the software itself in most cases.

Basically my research is to develop software that can synthesize music and this synthesized music can be used by learners and therapists. So I can say it is something new I am developing that can be used to gain knowledge in music or for healing certain ailments. Also the algorithm I am developing for synthesizing music is also something new. I guess this should be a candidate for research.

@Rajesh: It took me about 30 seconds to find Ekstrand's thesis on line.  Finding it yourself would be a good exercise of your literature search skills (and avoid taking up anyone else's time).


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Staying at my undergrad for my PhD
I'm in a situation that I'd love to hear some second opinions on. I am a second semester senior at a well known engineering university. I was never interested in going to grad school during my first three years of undergrad. After an internship, I realized that I might want to go to grad school but didn't apply to any by the deadlines because I was hoping to get a job in industry. When no opportunities panned out, I approached a professor to do undergrad research in his group this semester in the hopes of getting a recommendation letter for future applications. Once we talked, he mentioned that he had a PhD position available and asked me if I would be interested. Once I learned the details (the funding was coming from an external company that I would have a good chance of getting a fellowship from), I was extremely interested and said that I would join his group to pursue my PhD.
Now that I have accepted the offer, I am starting to have reservations. I believe that I would love the research and the coursework, but I'm not sure that I want to stay at my undergrad university for that long. Would it be beneficial to go somewhere else? If so, how should I go about considering other universities? How should I let my potential advisor know about the doubts I am having? Any insight more experienced people could provide would be extremely helpful!

Are you looking for a career in industry or academia? In a previous question it was noted that there is some taboo to doing this in academia - you are expected to get a diversity of experiences a bit - but some people do it with no issues. I think it's a bigger issue that you will have had all your research experience in one lab, not just the institution. If you aren't planning on academia long term none of this matters. If post docs are common in your field you might be able to leave for a postdoc.

In addition to what Bryan said, also consider any options for joint research projects if any are available, especially those that let you go work at other institutions.

(and if you just want a survey of opinions, I was accepted at my undergraduate institution; when I declined to go elsewhere, the head of the admissions committee effectively said "We'll miss you but now that your decision is in I can tell you I would have advised you to go elsewhere." - I didn't get the impression this was because he thought I chose a better school, or my training would be better elsewhere, but that someone somewhere else who would be put off now would not have reason to be)

Thanks for your help Bryan and Halfway. I am much more interested in a career in industry, so I am not quite as concerned with the taboo around staying at my current university. Of course my mind could change over time, but I am very interested in this project for the industry exposure and practical applications of the end work. I'll definitely look further into PhD internships and working with collaborators at other institutions in order to travel and gain some new experiences.

I am in a very similar situation. I'm at my undergrad school for PhD. I would say that it's more important to be in a place where you feel you are going to be happy and productive. There's no point going to a new place if you're not convinced you'll be able to get a good PhD out of it. If you are productive and publish good research it won't matter where you did your undergrad. I would also suggest looking for internships in industry or applying for travel grants to visit collaborators in other institutions to get some diversity on your CV. Hope that helps!


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May I mention in my CV that I am a reviewer for a journal if I co-refereed?
Recently, a collaborator of mine received a paper to referee from a journal, and he proposed me that we review the paper together. When he submitted the report, he indicated to the journal that he reviewed the manuscript with me. Am I allowed to write in my CV that I am a reviewer for this journal?

Erm, the problem occurred when you collaborator asked you to referee the paper with you - this should not happen without the editors consent since your collaborator got the paper on a confidential basis. Probably the editor was fine with it, but this action should be indicated before.

Indicating it would be at least a bit dishonest. The only thing reason to indicate being a reviewer for a specific journal on your CV is that this is a (relatively) highly regarded journal and the fact that they asked you carries some prestige. But they did not in fact ask you, they asked your collaborator. Further, this is the sort of thing that is already borderline to put on a CV as it is not verifiable by others.

@TobiasKildetoft I refereed for journal X is verifiable by contacting the editors.  Referees are anonymous for a specific article, but the list of names of people who refereed for a particular journal issue with dozens of articles is often public.  Agree that co-refereed is less prestigious and listing co-referee as referee is overstating, though.

@gerrit I had not really thought of that. Not being an editor, I have no idea if it would be considered "normal" to inquire about such things in my field (math).

@TobiasKildetoft I expect such an inquiry would not be usual, because if a potential employer/supervisor suspects that an applicant is lying about their achievements then there may be larger worries / alarm bells in the way of proceeding.  But I'm no editor either so I'm not sure (and I'm in a different field).

You can list reviewer activities on your CV, especially in an early stage of your career, see e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/3543/68222.
The situation you describe is different. You weren't one of the official reviewers of the paper. As stated by @Dirk, this situation is uncommon and might not be compliant to the journal policies. Because of that, I suggest to not mention this specific "review" on your CV.


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Found reply for a research application from 2 months ago in my junk mail
I am a third year undergraduate biology major student.
At the beginning of this quarter, I sent out a bunch of emails looking for research opportunities. I heard back from some of them and got a position.
But today when I checked the junk mail, I found a reply from a lab that I am really interested in. The professor replied me two months ago and asked for my transcript.
I am wondering should I reply this email directly with my transcript and apologise for the late.
Or should I send him another email and apply again?
Thanks for any suggestions.

You can definitely try emailing with an apology and a short explanation ("Your email accidentally ended up in my junk folder and I didn't notice until now." -- nothing more). That said, remember that you've already gotten a position, so if you were offered a position in the other lab, you would have to figure out how to leave your current position. That may require burning bridges if you aren't careful about how you handle it.

Thanks for your suggestion. My current lab position does not have so many workloads and my project will finish soon. I am thinking if I can get this position, I might try to do both at the same time.

I think it is time for you to stop doing junk mail .Put a no junk mail sign on your letterbox and things like this will not happen again .The utility function of junk mail is zero .The glossey paper is no good for starting the log burner with .Maybe somebody could invent a car that would run on junk mail in the future but untill then it is best not to have it .

Suppose you do nothing. Then you remain at your current position, yourwork carries on, and whatever may come of that will happen.
Suppose you respond to this professor's request. You may write something that apologises for the late response, asks whether the position is still available, and provides your most recent transcript.
Then at worst, they reply with rudeness and aggression, and you thank them for their time, then move on. They may tell you the opportunity is closed, but invite you to keep in touch or to apply again when you graduate/advance in qualification.
They may also say the opportunity remains. At that point you must decide whether it is better to

thank the professor and remain where you are (flakey, might be seen as rude),
open a dialogue that allows you to transition once current projects are complete (reasonable, but may not work for the professor or their lab),
try to develop a sideline partnership working in or with both labs (could be a huge job, but also huge rewards if it works), or
jump ship totally (also flakey, reflects poorly on your commitment).

A reason for the downvote would be appreciated. If your issue is a lack of detail, that's not going to change, and if you disagree with a potential outcome, you could explain why it wouldn't be possible.

Thanks so much for your answering. I guess since I am new to this website, I cannot upvote you. But I really appreciate your analysis.


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Master thesis possibly does not work out as expected
I'm currently working on my CS masters thesis. The timeline is set up to 5 months with developing the software and writing the thesis itself. My supervisors and me had a nice idea that would (if it were implemented successfully) be a great contribution to a currently running research project of one of the supervisors.
I started out with checking whether the first of the two main problems of the thesis would work at all (I implemented that part of the software, it worked and so we were fine with that). After that, we felt confident to finally and officially register the thesis, so that eventually, with that day, those 5 months of officialy working on it started.
Today, 2.5 months later, I'm stuck with the second part of the problem. Since starting to work on that two months ago this one great problem was cut down into many smaller ones of which a few are solved, others aren't.
Those few unsolved problems are a major issue now. On the whole, our "great idea" with which we started works under the condition that those few unsolved problems would some day work, but currently I feel

that some of the unsolved problems can't be worked out in the remaining time
few of them I might not be able to solve at all - literature on them is very rare or non existend; I suppose we're the first people to try to accomplish that fuctionality with these tools

In conclusion I currently don't believe that the whole "great idea" we initially had can be put into software within the time horizon of my thesis (or at all).
The questions now are:

I think I need 6 weeks (more likely 8 weeks) for writing the text of the thesis, so my time is running and I fear I cannot finally and certainly find out which of the remaining problems can be solved; What to do (and write) in that case in my thesis?
I think my supervisors expected this whole thing to work out, being implement in code. I fear I'll not satisfy that expectation. What to do about them telling me I could have done better, worked more, harder?

I think my supervisors expected this whole thing to work out How come? You did not tell them what you said in this question? Why did you not keep them posted? They are your supervisors. They should have known it the minute when you knew. Go to them today and  let them tell you what to do.

My Master's Thesis was 100 pages of "here's what I tried and it didn't work for these reasons". My committee loved it. Research isn't always about finding what does work -- telling others about what doesn't work is equally important.

First of all, you can relax about the fact that you won't solve everything. In research, it's the default case that you will solve some of the problems, and leave plenty of others as future work. (There's a great inspirational comic about this truth.)

As a criterion for selecting the remaining problems you want to work on, I recommend to select the ones that will help you to a tell good overall story in your thesis. For example, it's better to deliever a program that works in certain cases and under certain assumptions, rather than a program that never works, but could possibly work if certain remaining problems would be solved.
Make sure to have the facts on your side. For example, prepare a table with the specific tasks you solved/tried to solve, the time you spent trying to solve them, and the specific issues that made the tasks hard to solve.

Whenever you find a subject that it is considered A GREAT contribution to the area (and you find yourself in the middle of a huge problem that might need to be solved) ... ask yourself the following question: why this problem was not addressed before? Perhaps previous seniores researches with more experience than you faced that very same questions and, even so, it still lacks a resolution.
Is this problem marked on surveys from this subject as an open research opportunity? Did someone try to do this before (even remotely) ? Why didn't they succeed? I think you already kind of answer this questions to yourself when you stated that there is no time to solve your problem.
When I did my master's I faced a problem similar to you.. you need to narrow down the comprehensiveness of your thesis... focus on a particular subject inside of this huge contribution you would expected to give.. Only this way you have a chance to do a work your are proud of..
Be clear to your advisor about what is going on.. then you two should decided together how your going to proceed (cut of a slice of your good pie to present as a mater thesis and perhaps bake the rest of the cake on a PhD proposal ou research assistant position - what about that?).. I am afraid you reached a state of anxiety because you know you can't handle the hugeness of your work and in order to delivery something good, you need to get ride of these feeling.
Hope my advise helps.. good luck and have in mind that you are not the only one who is going (or went) through this
;)


text:
Are proceedings of this conference really published by IEEE CS CPS?
Today, I got the following e-mail from info@snspconf.org :
Conference invitation to [my name]

Dear [my name]
This is Senlin Yan, the conference secretary of the 2018 International
  Conference on Sensor Networks and Signal Processing (SNSP 2018)(Oct. 28-31,
  2018, Xi`an University of Science and Technology, Xi`an, China).
  We have got to
  know that you have published paper with title [one of my papers],
  it is quite inspiring and related to our conference topic, on
  behalf of SNSP 2018 organizing committee, I sincerely invite you to attend our conference.

Winners of the Best Oral Presentation in each session will be awarded a free registration to the next conference.
Active Reviewers are candidates for Technical Program Committee next year.
Attendees can enjoy a free tour of Terracotta Army in Xi`an.

If you are not available for attendance, could you please help us review one or two papers?
  It is highly appreciated if you kindly forward this conference information
  to your colleagues or friends in this field.
For more information, please visit
  http://www.snspconf.org
or contact
  info@snspconf.org
Best Regards
  Senlin Yan

I have no intention attending this conference or reviewing one paper (I do not even work in Sensor Networks and Signal Processing), but I wanted to know if it was just some kind of spam or a real conference. Actually, the automated e-mail made me think it was some kind of academic spam asking for my bank data if I'd anwer, but it seems the conference exists (at least the website does).
as they prentend its proceedings are published by IEEE CS CPS, I searched on the IEEE website and I did not find any reference to this conference.
So now my question is as follows :

does IEEE really publish the proceedings of this conference which does not fit IEEE standard?
Or is it a scam, and should I inform IEEE their name is used for dubious purpose?

Based on I do not even work in Sensor Networks and Signal Processing---This made me think that this conference is doing not more than crowd funding. Quality of this conference could be predicted to be low.

@Coder : I got that. That is why I suspect it is not published by IEEE, because IEEE = quality up to my knowledge, but perhaps I am mistaken.

@Distic: IEEE lends its name to many, many spam-ferences unfortunately. I would never rely on the IEEE logo alone to mean anything concerning the quality.

@nengel: OK, I did not know that. Actually, there is not even the logo. They just say proceedings are published by IEEE.

@Distic I completely agree. At the end of the day, IEEE is a private body which wants to make money. Except some top conferences like CVPR and few others, IEEE conference does not guarantee quality.

@Coder: thanks. Still, I do not see anything about SNSP on IEEE website, so I maintain my question: is it really an IEEE conference?

The IEEE Computer Society Conference Publishing Service is a service available to conference organizers to help them publish conference proceedings, nothing more. The services they offer to conference organizers include: collecting copyright forms from authors, validating that submissions are in proper format, getting DOIs for the papers, and submitting bibliographic data to indexing services.
It doesn't mean that the conference is endorsed by the IEEE or IEEE Computer Society.
See their FAQ.
It does not mean that the conference is sponsored by IEEE an IEEE society (when you refer to an "IEEE conference", you probably mean one that is sponsored by an IEEE society):

CPS publishes proceedings of conferences that are not sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, IEEE, or any other IEEE society.

The eligibility criteria for non-sponsored conferences are listed here.
It does not mean that the proceedings will necessarily appear in the IEEE digital library:

CPS-published conference publications are submitted to IEEE Xplore and the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (CSDL). All conferences and conference proceedings must meet IEEE's quality standards. IEEE reserves the right not to publish any proceedings that do not meet these standards.

Conferences that are technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society are listed on its website, in its conference calendar. This conference isn't, because it isn't sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. It doesn't need to be sponsored to use IEEE CS CPS as its publishing service.


text:
Fundementals of Engineering exam with Math degree (not ABET-engineering?)
Is it possible to take the Fundamentals of Engineering to become a licensed engineer with only a math degree? I don't think a math degree is an ABET accredited "engineering program".

I don't see any requirements to sign up for the test beyond paying $225. Are you asking if it's possible to pass the test?

You may be able to take the test. I'm sure they would accept your money. But becoming a licensed engineer would depend on your engineering discipline, the state you want to practice in, your experience, etc. This question may be more appropriate in engineering.stackexchange

According to this National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) website:
The NCEES board of directors recently approved an amendment to the policy that governs the NCEES Engineering Standard to expand access to its credentials evaluations service. NCEES uses this standard to evaluate educational credentials of engineering licensure candidates with degrees from the following:

Engineering programs outside the United States
U.S.-based programs in engineering, engineering technology, related science, or mathematics that are not accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, when coupled with a master’s degree or doctorate from a program that is EAC/ABET-accredited at the undergraduate or graduate level

So, it seems that having an undergraduate degree in math is not, by itself, a showstopper for sitting for the FE exam, provided that you have a MS or PhD in engineering from an institution that is ABET-accredited, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. In this case, it sounds like you will be referred to the NCEES Credentials Evaluations service to have your background reviewed in order to determine if you are prepared well-enough to pursue engineering licensure.

The point here is that you need an MS or PhD in an engineering discipline from a program that is EAC/ABET accredited.  Thus completing an MS in Electrical Engineering would be OK, but even having a PhD in mathematics wouldn't be sufficient.


text:
Alternatives to supervisor for letter of recommendation
I am applying to an executive MBA program. Of course, letters of recommendation are needed. My supervisor has, on multiple occasions attempted to discourage me from applying to any graduate program. He has said than an MBA is a "waste of time". He has said that a PhD would "not help" me. The only programs he has expressed any favor with are those that are 1) on our campus and 2) are simply training in skills that I already use in my current position. He has claimed that he could, personally, "certify" me regarding management skills. He's a professor at a university biological research department. I have been working for him since about 2002, with a brief gap where I moved away to care for a relative. It essentially looks like I will not get a letter of recommendation from him.
What can I do?

I am no expert on MBA admissions, but I believe they are looking for letters attest to qualities beyond the ability to do well in school, such as entrepreneurship, community service, leadership, and so forth. If your current boss--it sounds like that's what you mean by "supervisor"--is as weirdly hostile as you say, don't ask him for a letter. Look for other respected people in your network who can speak to the qualities MBA programs are looking for, such as administrators, elected officials, community leaders, or even clients.

"He has said that a PhD would "not help" me." Then why the hell does he have a PhD since it does not help?!! Seems to me that he wants to keep you working with him and discourages for his own benefit. That is selfish of him.
I had a similar experience when I applied from my co-supervisor. I can only suggest finding other professors willing to write you a good letter. I would be worried asking this person for a letter given what you have said about him discouraging you.


text:
How to decline a potential PhD supervisor?
I have seen something similar has been asked but I seriously don't know what to do.
I applied to 3 PhD programs all from quite good Universities. For all of them I contacted a potential supervisor, and they agreed to supervise me after a skype interview. Recently I finally got an answer from the best of the 3 Unis and after three interviews and a small project, the professor agreed on supervising me.
Due to some life events I had to wait one month to complete one of the applications, which I think it already pissed off one of the professors.
Obviously, I would like to go for the best University, not only for its ranking but also because of the city itself, the people I know in that city, and the research field which is closer to mine and more interesting for me.
All the professors agreed to supervise me after meeting me for an interview and after deciding a research topic. I have already applied to all 3 of them and I am waiting to know anything about the funding.
I did not want to take the risk of getting no scolarship for the position and missing the deadlines for others possibilities (which would then force me to wait up to one full year, which is really not a good option).
Now I may win more than one scolarship, so:
How can I decline the other two offers? I wasted their time and possibly affected their chance to accept other PhD students. I don't want to sound rude, but the PhD it's a very important choice in my life. I know they invested some time in me and my application.
From the way the talked to me, it looked like they did not consider the idea of me applying to other Universities (some of them even introduced me to the research group). I feel incredibly embarassed to be honest.

I'd say that being introduced to the research group is a normal part of the interview process (to see if you fit well with the group, and for you to see if you like the atmosphere). Don't feel embarassed about declining even after the professor's investment in you-- this too is a normal part of the application process.

I wasted their time — [citation needed] Even if you decide not to join their research group, you've established connections with potential future colleagues. — it looked like they did not consider the idea of me applying to other Universities — Oh, I'm sure they considered the idea, just not in front of you.  Remember that they are applying to be your department; why would they even mention their competitors to you?

Thank you everyone. I really appreciate it, for sure I learnt a lot, but I was just worried to make "enemies" or to upset the professors, which is not really my purpose!

I wouldn't say you 'wasted' their time. All supervisors are well aware that most applicants apply to more than one institution at a time; wisely so, especially that PhD admissions for good universities are highly competitive, and one shouldn't risk their chances applying only for one place.
Unless you made a promise or commitments to be working with them, you've been an applicant and have acted as such. As an applicant you have the option to decline an offer, so this is totally normal.
Therefore, you can contact the other supervisors; the sooner the better so that they can consider their other options too. You can thank them for their time and the interest they had in you, and explain your situation like you did here. They will likely understand the situation (TBH this should be happening a lot for them).

Thank you for your reply! No I did not commit to anybody, I always specify that "I will be sure after I know the result of the scolarship application".
For sure, as soon as I know something I will contact them as soon as possible. Right now I am waiting for my top choice, after which, be it negative or positive, I will be able to decide!

I applied to 8 PhD programs and went to 5 different interviews. I was eventually admitted to 4 programs, and had to notify the rest that I would not be attending their program. Professors do expect you to consider other choices, so do not be embarrassed. Letting them know about the decision is the best thing you can do.
I am posting one of the letters I sent in case that helps:

Hello XXX,
I am writing to let you know that I have accepted the offer of
  admission from Uni X. It was a difficult choice, and I will miss the
  atmosphere and opportunities at Uni Y, but I hope that we will be able
  to stay in touch. I really enjoyed meeting you and your lab members and look
  forward to learning about your future work!
Best, neuranna

In my case, I also sent similar (but shorter) letters to other interviewers I had, since they also invested their time and effort into considering my application.
Bottom line: there is nothing wrong with declining an offer, but do notify your prospective advisors and do it politely!

Thank you! Is good to know this is a common thing among students looking for a PhD position!

It sounds like you do not yet know what kind of funding will be available at the three institutions to which you applied.  If that is a defining factor in whether you accept, I would wait until you have the final offers in hand, make your decision, and then politely decline any alternative offers.  As @ali14 said, this may be disappointing to the other supervisors, but not at all unexpected or unusual.

Unfortunately I cannot be certain until I get news on my scolarship applications. But the applications' deadline are all in the same period, which means I have to apply to all of them at the same time, being potentially notified of the result at the same time (again).

Disappointment, not really. It is a shame to see a promising candidate walk but that is just how it goes sometimes. It is all in a day's work.

I am very grateful for the offer but I have decided to proceed with a different one.
I wish you the very best for the future,
Yours,
See- short and sweet. They are busy people and at this point they only need one bit of information from you. They have invested a lot of time already, as you say, they do not wish to spend anymore time beyond the point where you become a no-go.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
School Director: T/TT boss or not?
I'm an assistant professor at an undergraduate institution with significant research expectations.  A number of my colleagues insist on calling our school director their boss, which I find bizarre. In my training,
the head of an academic unit is a distinguished colleague to whom we are indebted to -- they sacrifice research time to perform necessary but tedious bureaucratic work -- but not a 'boss'. What is the norm at most institutions? Is there a division between primarily teaching and research institutions?

This could be the difference between a "strong chair" and "weak chair" model.  Both are common.

It's just a word for "person in charge", why does it matter?

I think you should look at your contract of employment with your institution. Mine said something effectively like "you have to follow what the head of your department instructs you to do". I always took that to mean he was my line manager or boss.

While it is indeed bizarre and there are many ways in which a school director would not be the same as a boss in a traditional workplace, it is technically correct. An academic unit director such as a department chair, head, school director etc is technically the supervisor of everyone in that unit. Faculty are still employees and have someone above them (a person they “report to” in traditional-workplace lingo) in the organizational chart. If the employee misbehaves, the director would be the person who would need to handle the situation; if the employee has some special life situation or a request that needs accommodating, the director is the person they need to see; etc. These are all functions of a boss or supervisor.
Two notable aspects of an academic director’s work that make them rather different than traditional bosses are:

The academic supervisor does not have as many powers as a traditional boss, and is constrained in many ways by the institution’s policies and by the academic culture of shared governance. In particular, he/she can’t usually make hiring and firing decisions. And faculty members with tenure cannot get fired anyway, so the workplace dynamics and psychology of how people relate to their “boss” are much different than in other places.
In many academic units the directorship rotates every few years. This results in a situation where the person who is your boss today could be your underling tomorrow. Again, this frequent change in the organizational hierarchy drastically changes people’s perception of what it means to be the boss, to the extent that the word “boss” no longer sounds very appropriate to describe the role of the supervisor. But as I said, it is technically correct.


text:
Should you tell grad students to apply for grants you know they won't get?
I am a humanities professor at a middling university in the United States.  My department has a poorly funded Ph.D. program, which attracts second-tier students at best. (The good Ph.D. students go to programs that can afford to fund them fully, it seems.)
Each year, I typically have my Ph.D. students apply to all of the relevant major grants (Fulbright, Mellon stuff, etc.) that would fund their dissertation research.  None has ever gotten a grant, nor have I ever had a student who I thought had a remote chance of getting one. Their essays are usually poorly written, despite lots of editing help from me. (By poorly written, I mean there are really fundamental writing issues, like incomplete sentences. I point these out to them to the extent possible but I can't write their essays for them, and I don't catch every error they make.) Frankly, I think our Ph.D. students are just not of the caliber that are going to win grant contests where only the top 1 or 2 percent of applicants are funded.
I am wondering if I should continue to have the students apply to these grants each year. On one hand, it feels like a waste of their time (not to mention mine, and the application reviewers') to have them write grant essays for fellowships that they basically have no chance of getting. On the other hand, I can't know for certain that they will never get grants -- strange things happen -- and more importantly, I think that writing the application essays is good for forcing them to think through their dissertation projects. But maybe that time would be better spent doing research so they can finish our program without accumulating massive amounts of debt (because we have poor funding, many of them borrow money to attend -- for which reason I think we should not even admit students if we can't fund them, but that is a separate issue).
For the record, I do strongly encourage my students to apply for smaller-ticket grants -- the kind that pay $500 or $1000 to support a certain type of project, or go to a specific research site, etc. These grants are usually more obscure, more specialized and less competitive, and the students have a better record of getting them. (I also work very hard with them on these smaller grant applications because I know their chances are better.) But when it comes to the big-name, Fulbright-esque grants, the prospects just seem hopelessly dim, and I wonder if the time everyone spends on their applications is worth it.

If you don't think these are top students, presumably just your reference letter alone is enough to ensure they will never get the scholarship

Are they even allowed to apply for grants before having gotten their degree?

Surely if they can't write effectively, they aren't going to get a Ph.D. anyway?

From the sound of it, middling seems like a generous description for this university. But then, maybe the university is fine and its just the department that isn't.

Sorry I do not want to be rude, but if you keep struggling with constantly having all your students under your expectations, isn't it time for yourself to consider changing the university (or completely changing the job)?

I also have overheard stories of PhD students who need remedial English editing help at an institution close to me.

"more importantly, I think that writing the application essays is good for forcing them to think through their dissertation projects" just as writing this question out left you with this conclusion. They are better students for the effort; your own as well as theirs. Keep at it! Their employers will thank you for it!

If what you say about your students' writing skills and their chances of getting a major grant is accurate, I would say that it's a complete waste of everyone's time - theirs, yours, and the reviewers - to have them write such major grant proposals. Forget about using such proposal writing as a vehicle to improve their writing skills. The experience won't benefit them if their current writing skills are really as bad as you say they are. Instead, have them focus on the smaller-ticket grants. If any of them show evidence of more promise and growth after such experiences, then you can direct these more promising students towards targets that are higher up on the grant ladder.

+1 but why have them focus on grant-writing at all? The grant funding body isn't going to give them the writing feedback they need. And if they can't even write complete sentences, they need a remedial English class, not practice at writing grant proposals.

@DavidRicherby I think grant writing is a good way to practice both the form and the function simultaneously. An English class will help with the basic grammatical and syntactical issues, but writing a grant has direct relevance to the PhD students' studies. I took a grant writing course to help prepare for writing my dissertation proposal. Even if the grant isn't funded, there's value in thinking through the research proposal in detail. I agree it sounds like some students might need to focus on their English specifically, but I think practice writing grants should be useful for most.

@NuclearWang Sure, practice writing grants. But don't waste the time of the grant awarding body by submitting these practice pieces to them for consideration. There's a huge difference between a grant writing course (where one typically writes mock proposals and receives constructive feedback on them) and writing a real proposal, wasting people's time evaluating it and receiving no feedback beyond "Request denied."

@DavidRicherby:"but why have them focus on grant-writing at all?" - Well, obviously not for writing feedback. I agree with you there that their time would be better spent in remedial English composition classes. But the students are reportedly sometimes successful in getting the smaller-ticket grants and I assume that they could use the grant money, so I didn't voice any objections to them continuing to try for those grants.

@SamuelWeir Good point about the smaller grants, yes.

@DavidRicherby I would make a stronger statement than Samuel: if the students are sometimes awarded the grants, then the grant awarding body obviously doesn't consider them a waste of time.

@jpmc26 I was talking about wasting the time of the bodies that never award the grants, which are the main thrust of the question.

It sounds like you have a lot of baggage with this issue that you need to deal with. You need to talk to your students. Make it clear to them how you are willing to help and what you expect of them. As an advisor, it is NOT your job to copy edit their work. They can ask other students, use the univeristy writing center if there is one, or pay someone to copy edit their work. Your job is to help them with the ideas and how to move forward on the project.
When talking about fellowship, explain to them they are long shots, but often a good motivator to get projects in good shape. Then, if they want to spend the time and take a shot, or multiple shots, at a fellowship, then you should support them.
I used to feel that if a student was not good enough to get a job in academia or industry that required their PhD, then getting the PhD, and possibly taking on debt, was not worth it. Over the years I have come to realize that it does not matter what I think. If the student thinks it is worth it, then it is. All I can do is be honest about what the process involves and the likely outcomes.

"it is NOT your job to copy edit their work" Might be field-specific, but I strongly disagree here. The job description of a professor includes the training of young scientists, and writing is a major skill that a full scientist should possess - after all, a PhD is traditionally obtained by writing a full book.

@lighthousekeeper Helping students learn to write is important and necessary.  But actually copy-editing student writing is detrimental to that effort, not helpful.

@JeffE Indeed, that's an important distinction, thanks for pointing it out (although I believe that copy-editing can actually be helpful, as it can put a spotlight on subtle mistakes). I was adopting the word choice of the answer, which seems to imply that helping students learn to write is not important.

The fundamental problem here is that you have been using the grant funding system for a purpose other than what it was designed for. This system is built on an assumption that grant proposals are submitted (and supported by advisors and mentors) in good faith, with a genuine belief in a realistic chance of getting the grant by participating parties. It is not meant for educating or training grant writers or helping them crystallize their research plans, nor is it a lottery ticket.
To summarize, I'm sorry to say it but I think the way you have been using the system is a form of abuse -- a mild one, and apparently well-intentioned, but still. Please train your students using the means appropriate to achieve that goal, and use grants for their intended purpose only.

I would recommend that you not discourage your students, for two main reasons:

The practice of writing will make them better writers in the longer run. You simply can't become a good writer unless you write, write, and write some more.
Rejection and failure is a big part of the life of a "knowledge professional," both during their graduate studies and afterward. Sheltering them from processes that lead to bad outcomes will not help them learn to manage with adverse conditions.

I dunno. The OP wrote that these students have "really fundamental writing issues, like incomplete sentences". Kind of unrealistic in my view to expect that having them write grant proposals is going to help them improve their writing when it sounds like taking a remedial English composition class would be a better fit to them.

While usually I'd agree with this advice (and I'd go a step further and recommend to be open of their very slight chances but tell them those failures allow learning how to apply successfully - just like the recommendation to first apply to couple of jobs that you don't want very hard to get to learn how the application process works as preparation for applying for jobs that you really want), if the level of failing is so basic as the question suggests I have to agree with @SamuelWeir that I don't see how this can be an efficient way of improving.

I can't agree with this advice. Scholarship applications are terrible writing practice: you don't get feedback on your writing from the scholarship board and submitting hopeless applications to them just wastes their time.You'd be pissed off if it turned out that your taxi driver was just a learner trying to get more practice; why do you think it's appropriate for these learner-writers to use the scholarship board for writing practice?

Note that I didn't say "encourage." I said "not discourage." While I wouldn't actively encourage students to apply for something if I know they're not qualified, I don't want to discourage them from trying, either.

I think that the most direct response to your literal question is that, if you literally cannot support your students' grant/fellowship proposals, it would be at least hypocritical to encourage them to apply, in effect knowing that your letter of recommendation will sabotage their application. That is, whatever the quality of their write-up, they may not suspect that your letter for them will be fatal. So, in short, don't encourage anyone to attempt something when you know that you yourself have pre-judged them and will make them fail.
If we can move beyond that, then, yes, it is good practice to write such things, and to go through the editing/advising for it. "Education", I believe they call it.
For that matter, for NSF graduate fellowships, apparently the total number of fellowships granted in a given subject (e.g., math, physics, chemistry, ...) is, for systemic reasons, proportional to the total number of proposals sent in in that subject. Thus, in such a subject one is doing a service to one's subject by writing proposals...
And, as a bit of unsolicited advice, I'd try to be more hopeful about who/what your students will grow up to be. Immaturity dominates many peoples' behavior for long stretches of time. (Sometimes indefinitely, unfortunately... but let's not go there...)

If your students don't know something, or haven't developed a skill relevant to their success in your discipline, then it becomes your responsibility to teach them.
Consider creating writing workshops for your students where they learn to work collaboratively to peer review one another's work and provide feedback for improvement. Meet regularly - perhaps even once a week - to work on developing writing skills for research grants.
Your University may also have a writing center that can be used to help supplement writing workshops.

Doctoral student here, about a year into my program.
I went to one of these "meh" Canadian schools (small liberal arts university in Southern Alberta - chances are they rank lower than your school) for my BSc & MSc. I had good grades (graduated with Great Distinction) & a lot of research experience, but had to stay in my hometown for other reasons - an immediate family member was diagnosed with a terminal illness during my Bachelor's degree, and it fell on my shoulders to take care of her. I found during my time at this school that the graduate students in my lab (including myself) were treated as though we were mediocre at best. My PI always asked undergraduates to stay for their graduate degree, but once they were locked in, she acted as though if they were any good, they would have gone somewhere "better."
I spent the first year of my MSc applying to grant after grant, all the while not getting anything. My department offered students a yearly stipend of $7 000. I started having to pick up odd jobs outside of science to make ends meet, and started falling behind in my research as a result. I would send my PI grant applications weeks before they were due, and not receive any feedback. I felt as though I was competing with people who had strong mentorship, whereas I had none. About halfway through my first year, I applied to law school - I was ready to leave science. I had only applied to one school, and it was one of the best in the world, but I got in. Suddenly, I thought maybe I did have some potential - and maybe I was just looking in the wrong place to nurture it.
As my first year came to an end, I thought I'd give grant funding one last try. I wanted to stay in science. I turned down my offer to law school, and applied to some PhD programs instead. I also thought I'd shoot as high as I could and applied for a CIHR DFSA to take up a PhD at MIT. I didn't think I had much of a shot, but I also had nothing to lose. I applied for one last major grant for the second year of my MSc as well, but this time I did something differently. When I didn't hear back from my PI, I reached out to other professors in the department and asked for their help. A professor that had nothing to do with my lab or my project took time out of his day to give me feedback.
I received funding to finish my MSc - more than any student in our lab had gotten previously. I also got the CIHR DFSA, and an acceptance to MIT. My PI was surprised, to say the least. I'm sure you're a great PI, and I'm sure your students (at least some of them) have potential. I hope you don't give up on them - there may be a few, like me, who have had to stay in the area for socioeconomic or family reasons. Sure, some students may just not be cut out for research, but a lot of people tend to live up (or down) to the expectations set for them. My old PI would take anyone, because having more students appeared to look good on their CV... but she didn't really help any of us reach our full potential. Every institution has a bell curve - make a habit of taking the students composing the top of yours, and mentor those students. I think you'll be happy with the results.
I agree that department who don't fund their graduate students tend to have poor graduate programs and poor graduate students (literally & figuratively) - but there have got to be some diamonds in the rough, wherever you are. Find those and I think you won't have trouble getting them funded.

You need to start this day one, so the students have time to get help with grammar.
First show them examples of excellent grant proposals, so they have a good frame of reference.  Maybe even email them copies so they can refer back to them.
Then you need help to try and mitigate the grammar issues.
Have them prepare say 5 pages of it as test.  Send them to your universities tutoring centers and/or writing labs.  Let the centers know your students are coming, and exactly what you expect from them.  Send the centers an example of a properly written grant samples.
Expectation:
Every paper should be grammatically correct with proper sentence/paragraph structure.
The key here is the students need to write enough to know whether they will succeed or not, but not put more than a few days effort into it.
Now, you should have paper that at least are grammatically up to snuff.
Then you need to evaluate the technical part of the work to see if they have any hope of success.  Then have just the candidates who pass actually do the real work.

Maybe you should first answer yourself the following questions:

Aren't you suppose to write a recommendation letter? Can you do it with your clear conscience?
Would you feel it fair if your incompetent students by some chance passed through the grant process instead of those who really deserve it?
Is PhD some kind of a "basic human right", or rather a certificate about an exceptional knowledge and skill? Do you really want to depreciate the title? <sarcasm>Isn't it enough that nowadays each taxi driver has some kind of university degree?</sarcasm>
Do you want later to have to filter out the articles of those low quality students from the stuff you go through in your future research?
Is your responsibility science, education and guarding of scientific quality, or are you a social worker?
Wouldn't you serve the students better if you gave them realistic feedback, so they would not lose time and would not be frustrated by being unsuccessful in what does not suit them?
And a personal question: It seems that you are very frustrated by the current situation. If you keep struggling with constantly having all your students under your expectations, isn't it time for yourself to consider changing the university? :)

Wow, such disagreement (-7 so far)! I am surprised how leftist the StackExchange Academia community is! I would appreciate if each downvoter can leave here a short comment why you downvoted my answer - will you find any rational reason why you can argue that my answer is wrong, or does it just hurt your social feeling?


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Former MD/PhD student looking to apply again to MD or MD/PhD
I am a nontraditional applicant for MD or MD/PhD programs and wanted to ask questions about my application here.
I spent six years at another MD/PhD program. I have various publications at the top journals (Cell, Science, Nature). I had a mental health crisis that resulted in some abnormal behavior. It led to me withdrawing from that MD/PhD program, but I have spent two years recovering.
I maintain a strong interest in academic medicine and I am ready to take another go at it.
How might my application be processed differently? How successful could an applicant like myself be? Do you have advice on how I can present myself in the best manner?
Thanks very much for your time.


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Does one typically hand over their research work to their lab if they decide to leave academia?
Let's say that I've been part of a research lab at a U.S. university for awhile but do not plan to continue on for my PhD.  What does one typically do with all of their research work, e.g. experimental write-ups, code files and email correspondence with researchers external to the lab?  Does one typically initiate some "handover process" and document all of the work carefully enough so that someone else in the lab gets to inherit the work and take over from that point on, or should one keep their own work theirs, without distributing it to the lab that they were a part of?

What does your employment contract say about intellectual property rights?  Chances are, all your work belongs to the university, but it's up to your advisor to specify the handoff process.

@waldol1 Not so fast.  At my university, all intellectual property created by students belongs to the students.

@JeffE, yes that's why you need to explicitly check your contract.

Ideally, all work would be carefully documented and discussed with co-workers in the group before someone leaves. Often times, though, departures are much more sloppily handled.
However, the research group obviously retains an interest the lab notebooks, data, and other work products created while someone is part of a research group. For data retention practices, I would say that "best practices" would include leaving the originals with the research group, while the person who created the data keeping a copy for their own personal records later down the line.

Saying that all work belongs to the research group and university is a huge overgeneralization. In many cases, scholarly work belongs to the originator. Even within a university, it can depend on the funding source.
Example University of California: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/2100003/CopyrightOwnership "Ownership of copyrights to scholarly/aesthetic works shall reside with the designated academic appointee originator, unless they are also sponsored works"
Also note that data generally cannot be copyrighted, so there may not be a legal "owner".

Considering documentation and informing coworkers about your work, is not different than in the industry. The research you create at work, where you were employed and paid to do the research with the employer's resources, is most often property of the team/department and the company. But usually, you can keep your research notes and some of the data - if it's not critical intellectual property.
Also, the correspondence to external people could be viewed as somewhat public (if they didn't have to sign a NDA) and you could keep it and use it in further correspondence to those externals.
Even during normal research projects, coworkers should know what you do and what experiments etc. are lined up in the near time frame and vice versa. In the industry, it's also very important that you constantly have notes that 1 or 2 coworkers that are familiar with the topic, can use if you're ill or on holiday.
So I would say it's normal to start a "handover process" at least 1 or 2 months before you leave. Even if the present coworkers won't (or can't, because time etc.) take over your research, as a supplement to the notes, they can help the next person who does.
The idea of writing the description like a paper seems a very good example. Maybe you can talk with some of your coworkers about your research and focus the "papers" on the parts where they had the most questions about.

This answer also applies to leaving a lab but staying in academia, just moving to a new lab, institution, etc.
Have a Talk About Future Plans : Is it intended that you will be an author on the projects you are leaving, because they're at the stage where your part was a significant contribution? Have you done enough that you should still be first authors (if you are), or are you willing to give that up for whoever carries things the final distance.
This is also a good time to make sure what you're planning to do and what your PI/boss wants you to do are the same.
This is also also a good time to make sure you know whether or not you can use code/data/etc. in the future at your new position or not.
Leave Your Contact Info : Preferably a relatively stable email address.
User accounts/Electronic Resources : Make sure that any electronic accounts that are tied to you (i.e. GitHub accounts, things where you're the admin/moderator/etc.) are transferred to someone else, and that their username and password combinations are findable.
Documentation : That thing you've always been meaning to do, but never gotten around to doing? Now's the time. Create a data dictionary with clear descriptions of any data you have, what the values mean, etc. Talk it over with whoever is taking over your project to make sure that they understand what you mean. If you have code, make sure it's documented, commented and easy to follow. Clean up any lingering #FIXME type comments, or at least make sure your successor knows they're there.
Contacts : If you've built a relationship with a stakeholder group, another collaborating team, someone in a core facility that helps with your work, etc. it's time to do your best to hand over that relationship - at the very least, make some introductions so that they know who you are.

We have a lab culture of having a lot of digital write ups.  We spend a lot of time documenting everything and they look like research papers even if they do not get submitted.  Since you seem to not have that:
I would take a bit of time to outline anything that you believe is valuable in the same way you would write an academic paper.  The two reasons for this are 1) it transfers knowledge to your laboratory, and 2) it is something that you can show an employer if questions come up about your time in academia.
From anecdotal stories from people who have left the lab, these sort of documents were useful when they were finding an industry job and if they went back to academia in the future.


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Instructor provided an assignment rubric that has no point distribution
I'm wondering if someone could offer some professional advice regarding how I should approach a situation at my university. Essentially, we had a paper due for an English class, and the instructor provided a rubric. This rubric consists of six categories that are each worth 0 points, followed by a holistic assessment category worth 100 points that is a sum total of the other six categories.
I emailed the professor voicing my concern that without a point distribution in place (0 points for each category), there is no way for us to determine whether the grading was performed objectively, or even how to interpret a grade in a certain category. I asked him for clarification, and he said that the maximum number of points any category can have is 16.67. This, of course, implies that the categories are equally weighed. So I told him that this is also concerning for two reasons:
1) Not all categories should be weighed equally (content is not nearly as important as mechanics, for example)
2) It doesn't make sense to have a category worth "16.67" points max, since that implies you could earn a 14.17/16.67, and who is to say that 14.17 shouldn't have been a 14.18?
He responded saying they aren't weighed equally, which seems to contradict what he said before. Because if they are not weighed equally, then the maximum score any particular category can have (in the extreme case) is 95, with the remaining 5 points distributed among the other five categories.
So I'm not really getting anywhere with the professor; it doesn't seem like he understands the implications of not disclosing the point distribution on the rubric. How should I approach this situation?

Why do you want to know this? Maybe that can give you a more productive avenue of communication with your prof.

@MaartenBuis Well, I think it's fairly self-explanatory. Suppose I get a 90/100 on the assignment. How do I interpret that in terms of the categories I was graded on? Let's say the teacher claims I got 10 points in the content category. Is that good or bad? Without that transparency, I won't know if I was graded fairly or if the teacher was simply throwing around numbers that "felt" right.

You appear to believe that an essay can be uniquely and mechanically graded. This is not the case, since, for example, style or grammar problems can make specific points difficult to follow. While more guidance about what might be emphasized in the assessment (logic over grammar for instance) could be useful, in the end one assesses the essay as a whole.

@AleksandrH no that is not self-explanatory, and is still not clear. Do you want to learn how you can improve yourself, or do you want to check if the instructor was fair?

@MaartenBuis I can't do the first if the instructor graded unfairly, now, can I? Because then I don't know if I really did poorly or if they just came up with a random number and plugged it into the holistic assessment category.

@JonCuster Don't exaggerate. Of course it can't. Essays are, to some degree, subjectively graded. But there's a reason those six categories are there—we are being graded on how well we did in those areas. If the distributions are not provided, we can't be certain that the grading was done properly. There's no transparency. The teacher could claim a category was worth 10 points max. And how would I dispute that if the information was not provided beforehand? I don't see why this is difficult to grasp, tbh. "Hey, let's make an already subjective assessment even more subjective." Perfect logic.

You are an undergraduate. Soon, you will have graduated and your assignments in the workplace will not have a rubric, and won't be graded on a curve.  How will you possible do a good job? You know what is considered important on the assignment from the rubric. Go write a good essay taking all that into account.

@AleksandrH yes you can, and you should. The grade is just a number. If you want to learn from your mistakes, then it is highly inefficient to start from there. You should identify your mistakes and learn form them, whether those mistakes cost you 1 point or 2 is immaterial. I suspect your communication with your instructor got derailed because you weren't focusing on the right thing.

@JonCuster To be fair, comparing performance on an essay to performance on the job is a bit of a stretch, but I get your point. For the time being, since this is an academic environment and teachers are expected to grade fairly, and since a rubric was provided, it's only logical for the instructor to also be transparent about the category weights. Simple as that.

What grading results is this professor providing? If all you get is one "holistic" number, then I'd agree with you that this is not enough information to help you improve. It would be better to get 6 numbers, one for each category. Better yet would be to get comments about what exactly should be improved --- red ink all over your essay. (Caution: When I was an undergraduate, my worst grades were in English classes, so don't give too much weight to my comment here.)

Have you received your grade back yet?  If not, you may want to defer the whole matter until then.  The grading scheme may make more sense once you have seen how it is carried out in practice.  And if you are happy with your grade, the whole question will be moot anyway.

Although I am in favor of rubrics with points attached, instructors are under no obligation to provide them. (Most of us of a certain age went through a complete academic career without ever seeing or hearing about a "rubric" at all.) As one systemic example, the Blackboard learning management system has on on/off switch for whether rubrics with point values have those point values displayed to students or not. Clearly both settings get used.

I think you have a misperception regarding the extent to which your professors owe you a scientifically accurate accounting of their grading methodology. That extent is, to put it mildly, rather minimal. So, while your professor certainly has a duty to grade your work fairly, he has no obligation to provide you with extensive evidence that he has done so. I suspect that your efforts to reason with him that he should be more transparent about his grading methodology are doomed to failure and would only serve to annoy him.
Moreover, your sarcastic quip ‘“Hey, let’s make an already subjective assessment even more subjective.” Perfect logic.’ suggests a related misguided premise that fairness is inversely proportional to subjectivity. I don’t think that’s true. I am a math professor, and even in math where you would think there is an objective truth regarding what constitutes a right versus a wrong solution to a problem, grading often boils down to highly subjective value judgments that professors and students (as well as professors and TAs, and even professors and other professors) frequently disagree over. A rubric may create the illusion of objectivity, but will ultimately fail to measure the things that most professors think are the right things to measure when assessing students’ work. I’m guessing that your professor’s resistance to your request that he articulate his grading scheme in precisely quantifiable, algorithmic terms has more to do with his wish to grade you more fairly, according to his own definition of fairness, than with some nefarious intent on his part to grade your essay in bad faith.
TL;DR: listen to the advice of experienced people here who think your professor’s behavior is reasonable, accept the fact that you cannot monitor the honesty of every person who has decision-making powers over you, and find more worthwhile things to worry about — like writing such an amazing essay that the professor will have no choice but to give you a perfect score.

Essay grading in English at the college and graduate level is usually not completely granular. That is to say, if you, for example, misspell a word or miss a comma, you will likely not see a straight docking to your grade. Consistently poor writing, though, will lead to grade reduction. I have not always been a fan of writing, but I did due diligence through undergrad taking Humanities courses and writing papers, and have never received a point-breakdown rubric aside from a loose description of what is expected.
It's been a decade since I've taken a pure English class, but much more recently that I've taken the GRE and GMAT. While not shining examples of essay prompts by any means, give you a numerical grade for your written efforts with only loose descriptions of the categorical requirements.
When you compare a 6 (the top score) and a 5 (the second-highest score):

In addressing the specific task directions, a 6 response presents a cogent, well-articulated examination of the argument and conveys meaning skillfully.

versus

In addressing the specific task directions, a 5 response presents a generally thoughtful, well-developed examination of the argument and conveys meaning clearly.

There's not much that separates a 6 from a 5, but if you read the sample answers you should be able to tell there are subtle differences that make the 6 paper superior to the 5.
At this level of writing, I don't believe you still need a point-by-point breakdown to write a paper. You know, from the rubric, exactly what ingredients you need to put together to get that A. You just have to write it all.
The five-paragraph essay format, taught in high school, is great for handling all those English tests, but largely fails to capture the strength of free-form writing that becomes more prevalent in college. Does this mean a lot of subjectivity inherently comes into play for your grades? Of course. But if you write well and follow the basic guidelines, you will predominantly get As on your writing assignments.
I believe what the professor is trying to get at is that he is grading your writing as a completed product, especially considering each category is likely intertwined. I, for one, cannot imagine a paper getting any more than an F if it is a five-page paragraph with run-on sentences and spelling errors, or an eloquent paper documenting the rise and fall of Rome when the essay topic is supposed to be about writer's block.

I agree, I don't need a point-by-point breakdown to write the paper (I already wrote it and, in my opinion, far surpassed the requirements). What I do need the point distribution for is to assess whether the instructor/TA graded my paper fairly.


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NSF Grant Status Update
Our NSF grant had its status date changed a couple of weeks ago on fastlane, but no change in status (it stays as "pending"). Does anyone know what that means? We submitted the grant in June and it went through a review panel in August.

That means someone has accessed the grant application but has not processed for the next stage.

Do you know whether that is a good or a bad sign, given we expect to hear back in Dec/Jan?

It is definitely a good sign. Soon, it should be processed for the next stage. Good luck :)

I am actually interested to see if this was indeed a good sign. OP, care to state your experience?


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How and if to advise editor about suitable referees for my paper
I am writing a paper where the proofs involve more than one field of mathematics. Call them fields X and Y for simplification. This is not very unusual, but I think it may confuse the editor in the following sense:
There are several motivations for the paper coming from both fields X and Y. However, all technically hard parts in the proofs belong to field X.
So, in my opinion, it would be best to get at least 2 referees, at least one of them from field X (but another one from field Y would be great, at least to give comments regarding the motivation).
While I am not the first one to write about the problem my paper attacks, it is still a rather new problem, and an editor possibly will not have the right "feeling" about what kind of expertise is required for working on this problem.
Even more confusing: Previous work on this problem has been done through field Z, which is certainly not my approach (people from field Z will have to struggle quite a bit with the technical parts of my paper, as I had to struggle with reading their work).
My contribution in this paper is "generalization, theory building, solving some open problems stated by others, stating new open problems". But there is another contribution - I give new motivation which applies also to previous work (not done by me), but went unnoticed.
I would like to communicate to the editor the information regarding what kind of mathematicians I think should review my paper (when I submit it). However, I am afraid it may come out as very rude: Not only I am telling him how to do his work, I am telling him how to judge my own work! Yet, if I were the editor (I am young and not an editor anywhere), I think I would appreciate the information that "this is how the author thinks I should do my work".
Should I communicate any of this information to the editor? What part of it? If coming out as rude was not be an issue at all, I would send a list of possible reviewers explaining why they are good for the job in my opinion.

I think it is a reasonable idea, both to indicate what you just said (it involves fields X and Y but the proofs belong to X), and to make some suggestions accordingly. I've had bad experiences where the editor did not know who to ask to referee a paper because it belonged in several fields. The editors do not have to follow your suggestions, but they may still find them useful. Better than wasting months because of difficulties locating someone suitable.

It seems to me that the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th paragraphs of your question, suitably edited, would be appropriate to include in your cover letter to the editor.

First, you need to write a good introduction to your paper, explaining all of the issues you have stated in the question.  After all, if you are worried the editor will be confused about these issues, you should also be worried that readers of your paper will be confused (unless your aim is to only have readers who are in your subsubsubsubfield who already know these issues).  State early in the introduction what kinds of technical expertise your reader will need.  State that you are providing a new motivation to old problems.  State that you do not use field Z at all.
Editors generally do read a few paragraphs into the introduction, so that should take care of some of the worry.
Second, when you are choosing a journal, try to choose one with an editor who is familiar with this area of work and will be able to look at your paper and choose the right reviewers.  Ideally, the editor is someone who has at least seen you talk about your work (perhaps not this particular work but something related) at a conference or someone whose prior work is important to the paper.

In biophysics, many journals actually ask authors to provide suggestions for reviewers. If you have not done so already, have a look at the submission system and the author guidelines to see if this is the case for your journal.
Otherwise you may be able to choose the editor, so choose the one that you think understands your paper and has the right reviewer network to choose from.
In any case: make it clear in the key words and abstract of your paper what it is about. The editor will use these to choose the reviewers.

This certainly sounds like it could be communicated through a cover letter. This does not guarantee that your comments are actually being read by the associate editor, though - at least in my field, cover letters are uncommon enough for journal papers that I typically don't even check if there is one if I get a paper to handle. However, it is unclear to me what practical other ways you have to communicate with a handling editor where you don't know yet who it will be.
That said, you never have a guarantee that the editor will take your input on reviewers into account. Personally, I tend to be fairly sceptical about "suggested reviewers" or anything that approaches this - maybe I am too suspicious, but whenever authors suggest a reviewer, especially when not explicitly asked to do so, I immediately assume that this reviewer will be in some way positively biased, even if no conflict is obvious from the outside.
So my summary is - sure, (briefly) explain your reasoning in the cover letter, but don't get your hopes up too much that this will change substantially how your manuscript will be handled.

In our field, "suggested reviewers" can be taken as indication of how good the author thinks his/her paper is. An author suggesting leaders in the field expects his paper to be reviewed thoroughly, however, an author suggesting his colleagues and some unknown people who try to support the same specific hypothesis is likely looking for an easy way through peer review.

Just include a covering letter that suggests that, although the paper uses both X and Y, it would probably be better to find reviewers who are X-theorists who know some Y, rather than Y-theorists who know some X.  Z doesn't seem very relevant to reviewer choice, but you could mention early in the introduction (or perhaps even in the abstract, if it's significant enough) that you don't use any Z theory.
Some journals invite authors to suggest particular reviewers to use or avoid.  If you're submitting to a journal that does that, you could use that section of the submission form to make this suggestion, instead of a covering letter.

Seems to have been covered thoroughly in the earlier answers....

@SolarMike I completely disagree. Alexander Woo only talks about how to write the paper and select the journal. louic talks about suggesting specific reviewers, choosing an appropriate editor and using keywords. xLeitix  talks about covering letters but seems to conflate suggesting a field to draw reviewers from with suggesting specific reviewers.