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Research & Career Advice

This page contains links to a variety of professional development materials edited by Mike Dahlin, Kathryn McKinley, Risto Mikkulainen, and others.

What's included in the Powerpoint:

  • Overview & What we are doing to help you succeed, J Moore, Department Chair
  • Starting a research career & picking an advisor, Emery Berger, Assistant Prof at UMass (UT graduate)
  • What your advisor can do for you & managing your advisor, Doug Burger, Associate Professor
  • Communication skills - I speek pretty now, Mike Dahlin, Associate Professor
  • Networking, Pete Manolios, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech (UT graduate)
  • What it takes to land academic interviews & how to create it, - Kathryn McKinley, Professor
  • Preparing for an academic interview, Karu Sankaralingam, Graduate Student
  • What I did right, what I would change, & other general advice, Long Huang, Graduate Student
  • What I did right, what I would change, & other general advice, JP Martin, Graduate Student

Futher links to career advice:

Big thoughts

Writing Papers and Giving Talks

General Advice

Service

Job Hunting

AI Research Resources

System Building and Productivity

  • Writing Solid Code
    • Steve McGuire. Some of the specific techniques are dated, but the attitude is timeless. Learn to think this way and you will build better systems with less effort. Debugging the Development Process also by McGuire is also worth reading if you can get a copy (it is currently out of print.) (p 164--167 of Debugging is highly recommended)
  • Hints for Computer System Design , B. W. Lampson. Proc. of the 9th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, October 1983, pp. 33-48.
  • Coping with complexity (PDF) Jerome H. Saltzer (MIT)
  • C. A. R. Hoare. The Emperor's Old Clothes. Communications of the ACM, Vo. 24, No. 2, February 1981, pp. 75-83.

Sermons on system building and career as system designer (for undergraduate OS class)

Some suggested standards to follow: