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:
- Computing Research Association (CRA),
- Graduate Student Information guide, and lots of other great career advice
- Pithy advice for researchers, Mike Dahlin
- Pithy advice for graduate school (Powerpoint), Rachel Pottinger & Kathryn McKinley, June 2005.
Big thoughts
- There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, Richard Feynman
- What Next? A dozen remaining IT problems (PDF), Jim Gray
- Computer systems research: past and future (PDF), Butler Lampson (Microsoft Research)
Writing Papers and Giving Talks
- Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, Joseph M. Williams. (a primer) (highly recommended)
- Style: Towards Clarity and Grace, Joseph M. Williams. (perfecting your sentences)
- The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
- How to give a bad talk (PDF), Mike Dahlin
- How to give a good talk (PDF), Mike Dahlin
- An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions -or- How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper, Roy Levin and David D. Redell, Ninth SOSP Program Committee Co-chairmen
- Hints on writing technical papers (PDF) , Armando Fox
- Advice on Research and Writing, Mark Leone
General Advice
- Time management Randy Pausch, CMU
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
Service
- THE TASK OF THE REFEREE Alan Jay Smith
- Tips for positive and constructive reviewing , Mark Hill & Kathryn McKinley
Job Hunting
- The Ph.D. Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions E. Lazowska. CRA News May 2002.
- Academic Job Resource Page, Steve Lumetta
- Job search tips, Mary Baker
- Is work hell? Life in industrial research, John Wilkes
- A list of research labs and contact information for job hunters, edited by Jian Yin
AI Research Resources
- Courses, Tools, and Resources for Research, tailored to AI , Risto Mikkulainen and others. If it asks for a password (i.e., if you are accessing it from an off campus host), use user "nn" and password "$igmoid".
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)
- Sermon 1: Simplicity (PDF)(Tom Anderson)
- Sermon 2: Performance Tuning (PDF) (Tom Anderson)
- Sermon 3: Programming as Craft (PDF) (Tom Anderson)
- Sermon 4: Information = Property (PDF) (Tom Anderson)
- Sermon 5: Stay Broad (PDF) (Tom Anderson)
- Sermon 6: Project efficiency v. risk (PDF) (Mike Dahlin)
Some suggested standards to follow:
- Programming with threads (PDF) highly recommended