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What do you wish you had known before starting your PhD? (43)

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Starting 15 pts 0 followers
Manipal Institute of Technology · Posted
Photonics & Optics Data Science

Background

I have been an Assistant Professor for three years now. Looking back, the most valuable thing in my career so far has been the research network I built.not my publications, not my grants, not my teaching record.

Here is what actually worked for building that network as a new faculty member:

  1. Email cold introductions after reading someone's paper.specific, about their work, not a generic 'let's collaborate' message. Response rate is surprisingly high (~40%) if the email shows you actually read the paper.

  2. Conference conversations.not the formal talks, but the coffee breaks and poster sessions. I have gotten more collaborators from standing next to someone at a coffee station than from any structured networking event.

  3. Reviewing papers.every paper you review is an invitation to learn what leading researchers in your area are working on before it is published.

  4. Social media presence.LinkedIn for professional connections, Twitter/X for research community discussions. One thread I posted on my research got picked up by a researcher at Cambridge who is now a collaborator.

What has worked for others?

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16 Replies

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Chirag Mehta Starting 15 pts · Accepted answer

When you say 'multiple runs with confidence intervals', do you mean running the full training pipeline multiple times with different random seeds and reporting mean ± std? Or something more statistically rigorous?

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Replying to Shiva Prasad
Kiran Yadav Growing 130 pts · Accepted answer

Highly recommend checking out the PMRF portal for the actual numbers.they update the stipend structure annually.

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Lalitha Mohan Active 230 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.

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Replying to Shiva Prasad
Sanjay Kumar Growing 145 pts · Accepted answer

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

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Replying to Shiva Prasad
Asha Pillai Distinguished 880 pts · Accepted answer

Strongly agree with the point about choosing venues carefully. One paper in NeurIPS > five papers in obscure workshops.

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Replying to Shiva Prasad
Pooja Nambiar Growing 115 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Priya Nair · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Bindiya Thomas Growing 65 pts · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?

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Ashwin Murthy Distinguished 560 pts · Accepted answer

Thank you for this detailed answer! A quick follow-up: when you mention cosine learning rate with warm-up, are you warming up the LoRA parameters specifically or the entire model including the frozen backbone?

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Replying to Ashwin Murthy
Wajid Khan Growing 110 pts · Accepted answer

This is really helpful context. One more question: for the ethics committee approval, does the institution where the data is collected or the institution where the analysis is performed need to be the primary ethics approver?

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Replying to Ashwin Murthy
Yogesh Pandey Growing 70 pts · Accepted answer

Check whether your institution has a Springer/Elsevier waiver agreement.many NITs and IITs do.

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Replying to Ashwin Murthy
Meena Sharma · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Priya Nair · Accepted answer

Highly recommend checking out the PMRF portal for the actual numbers.they update the stipend structure annually.

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Priya Nair · Accepted answer

Just to make sure I understand the Zotero workflow correctly.is the .bib file synced to Overleaf automatically every time you add a new paper, or do you need to trigger an export manually?