Advice Collection
[Feedback]
(Maintained by Tao Xie and Yuan Xie)

  Ph.D. dissertation/research advice
  Presentation advice
  Technical writing/research advice
  Technical reviewing/referee advice
  Advice for faculty
  Job hunting advice
  Misc. advice
  English learning advice

• Suggested guidelines for finding "related work" for conference papers. by Gail Kaiser.
• Discussion on Ph.D. thesis proposals in computing science by H. C. Lauer
• How to write a PhD Thesis given at the doctoral symposium at ASE'03 (Oct 2003)  by Steve Easterbrook 
• Advice for finishing a Ph.D. (pdf document containing slides by Prof. Daniel M. Berry)   Lecture
• Some guidelines on doing good research
• How to Organize your Thesis, by John W. Chinneck.
• Chris Riesbeck on What is a Thesis Defense?  
• How to write a thesis in an Experimental area of Computer Science by Doug Comer.
• How to escape during a Ph.D. Final Exam by Doug Comer.
• An explanation of language used in CS Departments by Doug Comer.
• For anyone considering a Ph.D. in Computer Science by Doug Comer.
• How to measure research by Doug Comer.
• How to write a Ph.D. thesis by Joe Wolfe.
• Tips for Writing and Presentation of Thesis or Dissertation by Joseph Levine.
• Dissertation Advice, by Olin Shivers Dissertation Advice
• Resources for Students interested in the PhD by Norman Ramsey
• How to get admitted to a PhD program, by Norman Ramsey.
• Advice collection
• What Am I Doing Here? A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of Grad School in the Sciences by Cory Kerens, Ph.D.
• For anyone considering a Ph.D. in Computer Science, by Doug Comer
• Making key research decisions. From 500 Tips For Research Students, by Sally Brown, Liz McDowell and Phil Race.
• Thesis resources
• PhD rants-and-raves
• Dissertation writing 
• Tips on research and writing, by Renée Miller.
• Jeff Offut Lectures for PhD Courses
• So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!, by Ronald Azuma
• A Letter to Research Students, by Duane A. Bailey
• Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students
• Master Thesis Computer Science
• Thoughts on Ph.D. Qualifiers by Phil Koopman
• Tom Martin's qual page for some good hints from the student point of view.
• Graduate Study in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences : A Survival Manual, Dianne O'Leary
• How to be a Good Graduate Student by Marie desJardins.
• Guide to working with Norman Ramsey expectations and obligations as an advisor.
• A Dictionary of Useful Research Phrases
• Burnout Prevention and Recovery at MIT
• Networking on the Network by Phil Agre
• How to be terrible graduate student (by Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto).
• Choosing an Advisor by Marshall Lev Dermer, UW-Milwaukee.
• Information for current and prospective graduate students by Timothy Finin.
• Computer Science Graduate School Survival Guide by Ronald Azuma.
• Notes On The PhD Degree
• Re-Envisioning the Ph.D. by the graduate school of UW
• Statement of Purpose Tip Sheet

Presentation advice:

• Some Advice on giving a Talk, by Olivier Danvy. Issues in making an oral presentation
• Conference talk advice from Mark Hill.
• Veljko Milutinovic, A Good Method to Prepare and Use Transparencies for Research Presentations
• Robert Drysdale on Giving Technical Talks  
• Peyton Jones, Hughes and Launchbury on How to Give a Good Research Talks
• Hints on Writing Technical Papers and Making Presentations
• Presentation Advice
• Presentation Techniques by T.H. Tse
• How to Give a Technical Talk by Donglin Liang
• Things I Hope Not to See or Hear at SIGGRAPH, by Jim Blinn.
• How to Do Research and Give Presentations
• How to give a good research talk, Simon Peyton Jones, John Launchbury, John Hughes, SIGPLAN Notices 28(11), Nov 1993.
• How to give a good research talk: comments by others (Simon Peyton Jones)
• Guide for Speakers by Ian Parberry
• Writing Good Papers and Presentations by David Coppit
• Ideas from Bruce Donald
• Ideas from Paul Edwards
• Maxims for Malfeasant Speakers
• Tips and tricks for giving a talk
• Oral presentation skills  Tips for Preparing and Delivering Scientific Talks and Using Visual Aids
• Preparing Your Oral Presentation  Tips for a Better Generated Slide Presentation  Presentation HOWTO
• The Short Talk
• Giving a Talk: Guidelines for the Preparation and Presentation of Technical Seminars
• The Best Method for Presentation of Research Results  A Good Method to Prepare and Use Transparencies for Research Presentations
• How to Present a Paper in Theoretical Computer Science: A Speaker's Guide for Students
• Ian Parberry, How to Present a Paper in Theoretical Computer Science: A Speaker's Guide for Students
• How to Present a Paper by Ashwin Ram
• How to Give a Good Research Talk
• Designing Effective Poster Presentations

Technical writing/research advice:

• Courses:
• Mary Shaw's What Makes Good Research in Software Engineering? (course)   
• Mary Shaw's How to Write a Good Research Paper? (course) WordWright -- the Rite of Writing Right  
• Scholarship Skills by Andrew Black OGI MockPC
• UMBC CMSC 691B: Basic Research Skills
• UCIrvine ICS 280: Seminar in Information and Computer Science Research Methodology for Software
• Gary Leavens's Computing Writer's Workshop  A talk about research and writing in Computer Science
• Computer Science Research Methods and Writing Workshop by Iowa State U.
• Research Methods in Computer Science (Tom Dietterich's course at Oregon State).
• Conference paper writing advice articles:
• Suggested guidelines for finding "related work" for conference papers. by Gail Kaiser.
• How to have your abstract rejected, by Mary-Claire van Leunen and Richard Lipton
• How to get a paper accepted at OOPSLA (panel)
• How to Get a Paper Accepted at OOPSLA (93)  How to Get Your Paper Accepted at OOPSLA (91)      
• Guide to Successful Papers Submission - CHI 2001
• William Pugh - Advice to Authors of Extended Abstracts (POPL)
• Advice for 1996 POPL submissions
• How to Increase the Chances Your Paper is Accepted at ACM SIGCOMM
• An evaluation of the ninth SOSP submissions -or- How (and how not) to write a good systems paper
• What kinds of papers does USENIX publish?
• ACM UIST 2003 Author's Guide
• Why don't more non-North-American papers get accepted to CHI?
• Writing Good Software Engineering Research Papers by Mary Shaw
• What Makes Good Research in Software Engineering? by Mary Shaw
• Writing Good Papers and Presentations by David Coppit
• Phil Koopman's how to Write an Abstract (tailored for Computer Engineers)
• ACM SIGPLAN author information
• Richard Stallings on writing a technical report  
• Veljko Milutinovic, The best method for presentation of research result
• Advice slides:
• Daniel Jackson's Hints on Research Strategy slides  slides  Class
• Jeff Offutt's Hints on Writing slides
• Effective Technical Communication slides by David Coppit  CSci780
• How to Have a Bad Career In Research/Academia (David Patterson).
• How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia by David Patterson
• Others:
• Experimental Studies in Empirical Software Engineering by Sebastian Elbaum 2001 ACM Crossroad
• Hints on Writing Technical Papers and Making Presentations by Victor Li 1999 IEEE Trans. on Education
• Guidelines and Requirements for Writing a Research Paper by Hossein Saiedian U. Kansas (article)
• Knuth's Mathematical Writing book
• Paper Writing and Paper Reviewing (article)
• Technical Writing Guide by Fenton (article)
• How to do Research At the MIT AI Lab (article)
• Writing Technical Articles (article and collections)
• You and your research, by Richard Hamming.
• On Being a Scientist booklets
• A primer on mathematical writing, by Steven L. Kleiman
• Hints on good mathematical writing, by David Goss
• Summary of useful rules.
• Common Errors in Technical Writing (particularly in LaTex)
• Collections:
• Some guidelines on good writing style
• CMU Advice on Research and Writing
• Tips and Resources for Writing Systems Papers (Resource collections)
• Collected Advice on Research and Writing
• Advice on Research and Writing 
• Researching and Publishing (collections)
• Qingfeng He - Research - Advice on Research and Writing
• Information on doing research in CS
• How to do research: some hints (collections)
• Doing Research: Some practical advice
• Advice on Research and Writing
• Research - Advice on Research and Writing
• Research tips   Research-tips
• Some tutorials on how to write and how not
• Austin SE course writing resources   Examples of IEEE formatting for references
• Technical writing resources
• Technical writing course at U Mass
• General writing books:
  • Book: (Online) Strunk, W., Elements of Style Strunk  (Easy to read, very useful as the first writing book to read)  American Heritage^® Book of English Usage.   Bartleby Reference 
  • Book: BUGS in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose (Also easy to read, like a manual for checking different issues)
  • Book: Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (This is not a book for easy reading, but it can be very helpful in improving writing style)
  • Book: The Handbook of Technical Writing, Seventh Edition (This can be a good reference book to put on your bookshelf)
  • Book: Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective Communication 
  • Book: The Chicago Manual of Style: TThe Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers
  • Book: Mathematical Writing book by Donald E. Knuth
  • Book: A Few Rules from "A Handbook for Scholars"  Scholars  

Technical reviewing/referee advice:

• Course: Teaching reviewing to graduate students by Jens Palsberg
• Course: Scholarship Skills by Andrew Black OGI MockPC
• Teaching Reviewing to Graduate Students, Jens Palsberg and Scott J. Baxter, CACM 45(12), December 2002.
• John Ousterhout's Hints for Reviewing Papers via Armando Fox
• Jeff Offutt's Reviewing Papers slides
• Norman Ramsey's Resources for Writers
• The Task of the Referee by Alan Jay Smith, IEEE Computer 1990
• Parbury: “A guide for new referees”,
• Experience in literature review
• Michael J. Hanson and Dylan J. McNamee,“ Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology ”
• Resources about Reviewing Papers (from Wilson)
• Some sample review forms: PPoPP 99, PLDI 01.
• A Guide to New Referees in Theoretical Computer Science by Ian Parberry
• Paper Writing and Paper Reviewing
• Chairing a Conference Session
• Suggested guidelines for finding "related work" for conference papers. by Gail Kaiser.

Advice for faculty:

• CRA Academic Careers Workshop 2004  Slides  Career Mentoring Workshops Booklet    
• New Software Engineering Faculty Symposium (NSEFS)  NSEFS 03 slides
• Prof. James Hendler's slide show on "how to obtain funding".
• Chairing a Conference Session
• Guide for Writing a Research Proposal by Joseph Levine.
• Research/Writing Resource
• Setting up a Research Agenda at the New Software Engineering Faculty Symposium at ICSE 2003 by Barbara Ryder
• CRA Mentorship workshops on Collaborative Research by Barbara Ryder
• Life After Attaining Full Professorship at FCRC 1999 by Barbara Ryder
• Writing a letter of recommendation from Michael Ernst's advice for faculty
• Writing an NSF Career Award proposal from Michael Ernst's advice for faculty
• Running a conference or workshop from Michael Ernst's advice for faculty
• How to Be a Good Graduate Student/Advisor by Marie desJardins
• Ways to obtain tenure in a university by Douglas Comer
• How to stump students on an oral qualifier by Douglas Comer
• How to insult a Computer Scientist by Douglas Comer
• A CRA report - Evaluating Computer Scientists and Engineers For Promotion and Tenure
• Research proposal template by David Coppit
• Book: Advice for New Faculty Members by Robert Boice
• Guide to working with Norman Ramsey expectations and obligations as an advisor.
• Teaching-Oriented Academic Jobs Panel
• CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop with reports and resources
• CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop 2003 at FCRC with slides 
• CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop 2003 at SIGCSE with slides
• CRA-W Career Mentoring Workshop 1993/1995 with scripts
• Postdoctoral Teaching: Opportunities and Resources
• Applying for Jobs in Academia, by Luis Gravano.
• The Ph.D. Job Hunt – Helping Students Find the Right Positions - Edward D. Lazowska U Washington
• Computing Research Association Effective Teaching Resources
• CRA-W's publications page contains resources such as their "Career Mentoring Workshops Booklet".
• Information on software engineering education and the importance of mathematics to software engineering
• Tomorrow's Professors  Tomorrow's Professor (an excellent collection of articles by Richard Reis, author of a book with the same title.
• Tips for a Massive Academic Job Search
• Being a computer scientist in Hong Kong
• Interview with Steve Reiss from Brown U.
• Scientist: Four golden lessons
• On Being A Scientist: Responsible Conduct In Research
• UCIrvine ICS 280: Seminar in Information and Computer Science Research Methodology for Software

Job hunting advice:

• Tips for a Massive Academic Job Search by Ellen Spertus
• U. Utah John Regehr's advice for academic job candidates based on doing a two-body search in Spring 2003
• MIT Career Office  For Graduate Students: Creating an Effective CV  CV guide
• UC Davis' Academic Career Help Links
• Preparing Your Application Resource Links
• A Guide for UIUC Mathematics PhD's Seeking Jobs
• Postdoctoral Teaching: Opportunities and Resources
• Michigan Engineering - Research Statement Guidelines
• Landing an Academic Job by Jonathan A. Dantzig at UIUC ME
• Ten Golden Rules for Teaching Computer Science by Andrew S. Tannenbaum
• The Ph.D. Job Hunt – Helping Students Find the Right Positions - Edward D. Lazowska U Washington
• Getting a job by David Notkin
• Getting an academic job (popular) by Mike Ernst
• Interviewing during a tight job market, by Qiong Luo and Zack Ives, SIGMOD Record Sep 2002..
• Applying for Jobs in Academia, by Luis Gravano. 
• Book: Programming Interviews Exposed   How Would You Move Mount Fuji
• Programming Interview Questions techinterviews  MS MS  MS MS
• Testing: blogs  blogs2 chappell  Test Outlook express
• UW CSE Job information
• Tips for a Massive Academic Job Search
• JobHunt
• Career Opportunities, etc. (maintained by ACM)
• Jobs in Computing Research (maintained by CRA)
• ASEE - Profiiles of Engineering Colleges
• Tomorrow's Professor(SM) Listserv. A mailing list that provides twice weekly essays and tips on obtaining, preparing for, and performing well in faculty positions. "Desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year".

Misc. advice:

• Michael Ernst's Advice
• David Notkin's advice 
• AnHai Doan's advice
• Mark Leone's Advice Collection
• Indiana.edu's advice
• Big advice collection on Research & Career
• Douglas Comer's advice   
• Jason Hong's Advice Collection
• Mir Farooq Ali's Advice Collection
• Georgia Tech Ph.D. Advice
• Wilson Hsieh's Collection
• Reading list for Computer Scientist
• Academic Succeed Advice Links
• Information resources for the Graduate Student
• more links
• A talk by Zhang Wuchang  
• Green card apply   article
• Advice for Graduate Students

English learning advice:

• Grammar/Article usage: 
  • English Grammar I and II
  • RPI handouts  Articles for ESL  handouts  tamu handouts
• Dictionary:
  • Good dictionary: OALD  Good dictionary- Cambridge Good dictionary- dictionary.com
  • Webster oed  Dic iTools errors  logo Computing yourdictionary bartleby EC Dic CE Dic
  • How to buy a good English dictionary  Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (available in store) 
  • Chinese dictionaries
• University writing resource:
  • UW Writing Center     Engineering Writing Center  Student Research & Writing Guides  Style in Scientific and Technical Writing
  • UW Dept. of English Writing Programs    Online English Language Program  UW Online Program
  • Information on Writing Programs and Courses   
  • UW Libraries Writing Guide   Writing Resources   LLC online English resources  Bonnie's Surfing Page
  • Principles and Activities For Improving English
  • Streaming audio sites that use Shockwave or Real Audio   
  • Purdue Online Writing Lab  Writing Resources [Indiana University]  Indispensible Writing Resources  Writing Assistance [ASU]
  • English learning for Chinese
  • ZHANG Wuchang's writing advice  stevenxue Chinese English teaching  Learning English in US  US Slang  
  • Writing technical paper
  • Tips on research and writing, by Renée Miller. .
• General writing books:
  • Book: (Online) Strunk, W., Elements of Style Strunk  (Easy to read, very useful as the first writing book to read)  American Heritage^® Book of English Usage.   Bartleby Reference 
  • Book: BUGS in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose (Also easy to read, like a manual for checking different issues)
  • Book: Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (This is not a book for easy reading, but it can be very helpful in improving writing style)
  • Book: The Handbook of Technical Writing, Seventh Edition (This can be a good reference book to put on your bookshelf)
  • Book: Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective Communication 
  • Book: The Chicago Manual of Style: TThe Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers
  • Book: Mathematical Writing book by Donald E. Knuth
  • Book: A Few Rules from "A Handbook for Scholars"  Scholars  

Send email to taoxie@cs.washington.edu