The HDILab culture

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Below is HDILab culture. A culture is a principle about how we do everyday things. I hope that our culture shape our group in a productive way.

We learn by teaching.

Every week we will have a paper reading seminar where one student will teach a paper to other lab members. A pizza and a diet coke will be provided. You will have a chance to announce what you are working on nowadays in a friendly environment 30 minutes before the seminar. Currently the seminar starts on Wednesday 12:30pm.

  • After you have done lab seminar, add the slides and all materials into the Google drive here. The goal here is to make it easier for a new lab member to follow what we have done so far.
  • Also write one paragraph abstract for the seminar to summarize what you teach.
  • Add your call sign so that we can know who did the seminar. Students should answer the questions from colleagues.

Team play

There are focused hours in the lab where students are supposed to be at the same space and time. The main idea is to have an informal chat, update, questions and answers. The focused hours are currently held Mon, Tue, Wed 10am-2pm at ERB 205. Don’t be late. If you think you will be late, report it to the slack.

Sharable output

Students are required to maintain a lab journal and project journal Lab journal is for the general purpose work and project journal is for the project related progress. For example,

  • I set up the new server or hardware for the-> hdilab journal
  • I organized the inventory -> hdilab journal
  • I replicated the world model -> daivid journal
  • I read a paper -> a blog article for paper summary (This is an example )

Every work should be recorded and reproducible. Basically journal is for yourself. But write it well when others have to find something you did. When you accumulate enough work and progress, make them shareable and transferable chunk into three places:

  • journal how-to technical note When you create a new technical note leave a author call sign such as #deokgun so that I can find who wrote what. If you need to update it, add a call sign and date after the original author.

    Example 
Created: #deokgun 01/08/2019
Updated: #sanjay 01/09/2019

  • Personal homepage blog article

  • Github readme.md

One common mistake for the new member is writing a technical note about a topic that is already covered in previous technical note from other members. This is problematic in the two sense. First, it means that you did not search or read other’s technical note. A value of the technical note is how many times it is read by others. If no one reads others’ technical note, the value of our journal will be nothing. Second, you are creating an additional burden for the future readers looking for a solution for the topic. In that sense, you are creating a noise if you are creating a redundant article. So what we should do when we found that the topic that we would like to wrtie is available. Check the original post and if you have an additional content, just update the original post. If you are sure that you can write a better one by rewriting, replace the original post. The original post should be archived to the old technical note and referenced by the new article.

We share the open source code and how-to manual as a final output. We use GitHub as the main archive As a rule of thumb, I expect 50% of everyone’s time will be spent writing what you have done.

How to write a journal

  • Make the outline neat

  • If you click the View-> Show Document Outline button, it will show you the document outline. Make sure your writing follows the header rule. There is a shortcut key for selecting the paragraph level.

    cmd + alt + 1 makes the top level heading
cmd + alt + 2 makes the second level heading
cmd + alt + 0 makes the content paragraph, which is not shown in outline.

  • The Things to do next part is important. Your professor reads it often. Keep it tidy. When something is done, remove. Update it everyday. When you are given new goal, write it there. Make the thing you are working on now, the first item. Order them in the priority.

Communication is half of your job.

Your impact will be the multiplication of research and communication of the result. Try to report the progress whenever there is a progress Don’t wait until your boss ask your progress. Tell him what you are working on now. If you meet a barrier or decide to change direction, report it. When I ask you to do something, I usually expect to hear the progress report in a one or two days.

Being true to ourselves

You cannot deceive yourself. Being true to yourself is, in my opinion, a very good long-term strategy. For example, if you don’t know during the seminar, acknowledge that you don’t know and ask questions until you understand. Don’t be embarrassed or give up by social pressure. Academy is a few places where being true to yourself is tolerated.

Other good question to ask yourself is whether you are enjoying the research. Actually according to my experience, research is not for everyone. Probably about 5 persons out of 100 suit the academic life. Because of this, it is perfectly okay if you feel that the graduate study is not what you want to do. I recommend to get a SW engineering job in that case, which actually pays you better and provides better work-life balance. You might feel like a failure to quit the research at first, but if you are true to yourself, you may find it as one of the best decisions of your life later.

Similarly I will release you out of the lab if I think that you are not a good fit for the lab as early as possible. How I make that decision? First, I have to acknowledge that it is very difficult decision for me, too. It is not only emotionally difficult but intellectually difficult. Because nobody knows the future, one day the student I fired may get a Nobel prize.

I have to follow the lab culture which is my principle. For me, there are three characteristics for the academic career.

  • First is curiosity. The desire to know or find the truth is our strongest motivation and rewards.

  • Second is the self-starting. This one is related to curiosity. Because you want to know something, you start researching about it. This is usually observed when the student comes to me and ask an advice for something. It is the opposite of waiting for the order from me.

  • Third is the persistence. The journey is long and the rewards are sparse. If you are not persistent, chances are you give up. Persistence is measured by the shareable output. According to my experience, quantity is more important than the quality for measuring persistence. It means if you are producing lots of so-so blog article or technical note and low quality draft of academic papers, you have the persistence. Think about growing academic muscle by writing everyday.

student advice

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