so i have this pool of potential supervisors who I am super interested in their research.  I have formulated the best introductory email - short, concise and relevant to their research- . No response! I sent back a follow-up email which had my old email in addition to my CV, still no response! I even called , but no one picks up the phone, and whoever picks up the phone is a clueless assistant who tells me to email the supervisor and ask him/her myself.   I even visited one the labs and spoke to one of the researcher's post-doc students who volunteered to edit my emails and told me it was a good one. But then again, no response.  how is that even possible ? I dont live in the university's city (Toronto) so I cant even stalk them in their offices.  any idea why is this happening ?   N.B   The time period is 2 weeks. I sent an introductory email, next week I followed up with another email.  EDIT- For those of you who tell me not to "harass" professors, it is not harassment so please use another word. It is the applicant's responsibility to secure a supervisor for Biomedical engineering program by emailing/calling potential PI . To prove my point on following up , one supervisor who works in a hospital told me that the hospital email service filtered out my email. If I hadn't called him to inquire about my original email, I wouldn't have moved on in my research knowing that his lab is indeed "full". Applicants are not expected to simply sit and wait for supervisors to "notice them" and hope for the best , I must put myself on the map. I don't see why professors don't get much heat -like I am getting in this post" from harassing sponsors for grants !
47755
Say a prospective PhD has a high reply rate (90-95%) to first contact emails with potential superviors. He/She has a well thought out e-mail, but a particular professor (here: USA) that is in the top preferences does not reply after two to three e-mails that were sent within a time frame of three months. I also followed the instructions on the professor personal website in the section "prospective PhD students". The student has already contacted some of the advisor students and has received positive feedback about the professor.  Should the student just give up and move on? Should the student keep trying?  Aside from the obvious "I have too many incoming e-mails to answer" or "I am out in the field", what could create a no response behavior from the professor?  I have seen the simplistic answer "move on, bad advisor, doesn't have time, etc". But this seems a contradiction in this case. The PhD students like the professor and say he/she is personable and no e-mail response after a few well written emails.
110779
I was fortunate enough to get a position as a researcher for the Mayo Clinic's SURF Program this year. My PI's lab focus is on the the immune system's role in CNS axonal and neuronal injury, specifically through the lens of how innate and adaptive immune effectors interact w/ infected neurons.  Although I do research under a professor at my college and I volunteered for a state university lab during the previous summer, this is my first REU/SURF opportunity, and I REALLY want to make a good impression. Here are my questions:  What are the do's and don't's in terms of being a skilled and efficient researcher?  Since I am still an undergrad, I know that I will be a less useful asset to the lab than a grad student or post-doc, but what can I do as an undergrad to not burden my colleagues and PI?  Thank you all for your help! Wishing you all the very best!
75630
[because this is potentially relevant, I'm a 37 y/o male]  Being the end of the semester, I've had a bunch of students come to my office hours to ask questions about things I'm responsible for. Among them, there have been a small number of female undergrads that have shown up wearing the kind of clothing that I think is inappropriate for a meeting with a faculty member. I'm not a prude (I hope), but I feel there is something amiss when a 20 y/o undergrad wants to discuss course validation from a neighboring university and then she goes and sits in front of me wearing booty shorts and a very see-through t-shirt (or a tanktop so skimpy that half her bra shows no matter what, or... take your pick). Before someone says anything to the effect, yes, it's summer, but it is not that warm (we're having a nice 20-25 C average these days).  In short, how can I tell these women, politely, that they should think twice about showing up half naked to meetings with faculty members?  Note that I'm not implying that I'm feeling sexually harassed or anything along those lines. Without getting into details, I'm old enough and happily married enough that I don't find college girls sexually appealing anymore. What I'm looking for is a way of telling them meetings with people higher up in the hierarchy have implicit standards, including some pertinent to what you may and may not wear that doesn't sound like a crude rephrasing of oh please why don't you cover up you filthy [censored].
44021
The school I will be working at is a low-ranked R1 university.  Some people said, "just enjoy and have fun right now. It would be the last time you would ever have such enough free time".  But others said, "You should do research as much as you can before the school starts because you would not have enough time to do research for the first year because you would be busy with teaching for the first time as an instructor. You should start thinking about writing grant proposals or turning your dissertation into peer-reviewed publications."  Both seem to sound right to me, but are actually very opposite suggestions.  What did you do before you started your tenure-track assistant professor job and after you graduated your PhD? What do you recommend me to do for this summer?
85251
I've attended a lot of seminars and lectures by now, and it's typical for the chair of the seminar to offer audience members a chance to ask questions of the speaker about their work after the presentation.  Most of the time, the questions seek clarification of some aspect of the presentation or focus on a more comprehensive understanding of the research involved.  However, occasionally, I've noticed that questions are purposefully designed to embarrass the speaker.  Things along the lines of "That method won't work at all for what you're trying to do.  Your results are completely invalid" or "So-and-so's group already did that work years ago.  Did you not read their paper?"  Perhaps more disturbingly (I just got back from a really large conference if you can't tell), is that women seem to be more harshly criticized than men, and over trivial issues.  For instance, in a few sessions I went to, female graduate students were given really hard times over their presentations while the male grad students were not.  All presentations were about the same quality.  I guess I'm a little shocked; I'd heard of sexism in academia but hadn't actually seen it (or noticed it) until this conference.  Oddly enough, I've observed that it's typically prestigious professors or researchers that are asking these ostentatious questions.  I suppose they figure they have enough "fame" or whatever that their job isn't in jeopardy, and there's no easy way to really prove they're being rude or sexist.  I don't know what's going on here, but it seems to me that these questions, even if they do have technical merit, should be held until after the seminar, where they can be discussed privately with the researcher.  My question here, specifically, is what can be done to minimize these (uncomfortable for everyone) instances?  My thoughts are that a session chair should remind the audience to refrain from questions that are accusatory in nature.  As a presenter, I'm not sure what can be done in advance to preempt and avoid these questions.  Any ideas?
44963
I hope to receive my PhD in Mathematics in May of 2015, so I am currently applying for jobs.  Due to life circumstances, I'm fairly certain that I will only be staying at my next position for about 2 years.  Does this mean I shouldn't even try to apply for tenure-track positions?  Will a hiring committee not even consider me for the position if I'm not willing to commit to staying with them for a certain amount of time?  I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college), but as I look for openings, a lot of them are tenure-track assistant professor positions.  Should I go through the effort of sending in an application, or will that be a waste of my, and the committee's, time?  Thanks for any advice you have!  Edit (to address Nate's comment):  My wife is currently applying for 2 year graduate degree programs in various cities in the US, so I'm applying for jobs in the same cities.  When she finishes her program, we plan to move outside of the US (Africa or Southeast Asia), where I do hope to remain in academia, teaching mathematics to college-aged students.
24260
I don't think  deserved to get  deleted as spam. Martin'Vobr vas Rebex linked to a product he makes as an example of a library to accomplish the task the OP sought, and did so in a way that made it clear that he is the creator of the library and therefore his word should be taken understanding that he is biased.  Do you think he did anything underhanded in his answer? Here's the "spammy" part, for those without ten thousand arbitrary numbers:     I would try the code from the codeproject and if it suits your needs stick with it. In case of too many parsing problem the commercial email component with decent support could be a wise move. I would recommend our  ($149 single dev) but I'm biased. Feel free to browse for you own favorite ;-). At least it will be (in case of any problem) someone who is paid for solving your mail parsing problem.   Ordinarily I would flag this for moderator attention but unfortunately I am not permitted to flag locked answers. Also, I'd like to know if I'm completely wrong about my understanding of what is and is not spam.  To me, this isn't spam. To six other people, it is. One of us has to be wrong, by the pigeonholing convention of '57. Can we figure this out? There are a lot of similar users to Martin who post their products, and a lot of them do it in a very spammy way. But in the specific instance of Martin I think he does it well. We can't outright outlaw all users who advocate their own libraries, can we? Those might be the only libraries that do what the asker wants, after all.
19727
I graduated with a Masters of Engineering, concentrating in digital signal processing, in particular medical and audio, almost two years ago. I've always been interested in research, but due to personal circumstances I could never commit a lot of time to working on a research project with a professor, and obviously didn't get a chance to publish anything. Now that I'm more settled and have much more time on my hands, I started getting involved in some open source projects and reading some technical literature (engineering, mathematics) that I couldn't get to before. However, I'd still like to find someone to to collaborate with on a research project who is already established in the field and publishes papers. Part of the reason I want to do that is to be able to eventually apply for a Ph.D. program in a good school, and having publications would be a great thing on my resume.  What I'm trying to find out is how I can work on a research project similar to those graduate students work on as a part of their studies if I'm not a student anymore? Should I contact my old professors from the university? Is it possible to find some "open research" team that accepts collaborators from outside? Do I have to do it on my own (quite frankly I'm not sure I can give myself a good enough quick-start)? In short, I'm willing to volunteer my time in exchange for a possibility of publication in the future. Can I do it, and if yes then how?
99895
I  am a PhD student in Mathematics. I have found one advisor in my local University who does not know my research field at all, but  has allowed me to choose my own problems and solve them independently. Initially, I was quite happy as I didn't need to switch places (which I don't want at all). The problem started when my advisor could not assist me in solving the problems I chose. It even happened that I chose a problem to work on and when I told him about it, he said that's an excellent problem and I should solve it.Later on after meeting another professor  in this field he told me that it has been solved long before and hence I had no point working on that again. He does listen to me when I say something about the problems but fails to give me any critical feedback in my topic. I searched the web but there are so many directions of the topic I am working on, I am feeling puzzled which way to go. Moreover there is no research group existing in this field in my local University with whom I can discuss or get some inputs abut my problems. I am unable to answer the following questions of mine which is affecting my research considerably:  1.Has my decision to stay in my hometown and not go to reputed institutes and talking to experienced professors backfired on me? How can I come out of this situation? 2.Is  PhD done in this way only without any help from anyone ?At least my advisor says so.  Any comments/advice will be helpful.
64168
Recently, our group is trying to reproduce the result reported by a paper whose authors are from an Ivy league university. We are unable to reproduce the results because there are several implementation details are not mentioned in the paper. Hence, we decide to write the first author, who is now already a faculty member in another university, an email.  At first, we asked for the code, which we consider is perfectly fine, as the paper has been published. We feel the code in a published paper is no longer a secret in this transparent research era where reproducibility is highly valued. However, he simply ignored our email (3+ weeks, no response).  Then, we thought, OK, seems that he is reluctant to share the code, so let's just ask him to clarify several implementation details so that we can implement the thing ourselves and hopefully, we can reproduce the result. So, we sent a second email which very clearly asks for clarifications. Again, he ignored the email (1.5 weeks+, no response).  We now feel angry and start suspecting the authenticity of their reported results. However, we cannot accuse them of anything, since we are not able to prove that they cheated, which would be a felony if they really did.  We always feel that upon the publication of a paper, its authors, or at least the correspondence author, hold responsible for any inquiries regarding the paper, especially when the authenticity is being doubted. What they chose to do - ignoring our email - is really irresponsible.  What can we do?  Disclaimer  Thanks for the answers and comments! It is interesting that many start besieging me on my "bad" attitude in the email.   Just to clarify,    I wrote perfectly polite emails to the correspondence author; I have NOT questioned his results or whatsoever.
76772
I have been offered a PhD position with full funding from my backup university, however they gave me a deadline of April 5th to either accept or decline their offer. I am still waiting for replies from other more prestigious universities. What should I do?
95289
I recently finished a paper in which I received valuable feedback from two professors (neither supervisors nor coauthors) at some specific points, which ultimately leaded to localized significant improvements. I highly appreciated it and of course I added explicit mentions in the acknowledgements section stating their suggestions.  My question now is: I hardly will see again these professors for a long time. I thought about sending an email to them commenting on their inclusion on the acknowledgements... But then I thought that it should be something understood as obvious, without too much interest for them or even spammy. So, shall I communicate their inclusion in the acknowledgements section? If so, what will be the correct etiquette for such an email?  EDIT: As @StephanKolassa comments, another important and highly related issue is what is the best timing for communication, if this is considered adequate:   First submission Acceptance Publication (early access or traditional)
61819
I am putting together my application for a postdoctoral position in theoretical condensed matter physics. The position is not a fellowship and is a regular postdoc position. If you have gone through the process of applying for such positions a number of times, or, even better, if you have reviewed such research statement letters, what are the main points that are sought/you seek in such letters? Specifically, should I put more emphasize on my PhD research to demonstrate my "depth of knowledge" on projects I have worked on (past research), or dwell more on things that I want/am capable to do (future research)?
12312
My earliest PhD graduation date is 10 months away. Funding permits me to stay 1–3 months longer, so the final date is still uncertain.  It is never too early to make contacts for possible post-docs. But how long in advance is too early to formally apply to post-doc job openings or funding opportunities? Depending on the bureaucracy, the path from applying to starting can probably be anything from a week up to a year — someone I know is applying with  which had the opening advertised in August, application deadline in October, will have interviews in December/January, and the commencement of work only in September, 13 months after the initial job advertisement. My personal guess is that the long time between interviews and starting is to create a level playing field between those who do and those who don't need to go through a visa application procedure.  If I'm too early in applying for a post-doc, a hosting institution might prefer someone who can start earlier and where the graduation date is more certain. For example, in my case the graduation date is still uncertain, so there is a risk in accepting even if they are willing to wait. Project funding might also require the money to be spent rather soon.  If I wait too long, there might be a considerable period where I'm between jobs. Having a long (>6 months) period between jobs is a disadvantage for me. Maybe it's also a disadvantage for a hosting institution (I'm not sure).  How do I find the balance? For example, considering the duration of funding and visa applications, does it make sense to apply e.g. ? Or is it in any case virtually inevitable to have at least several months before my PhD graduation and the start of a post-doc?
74235
I wonder how a researcher send an unsolicited email to another one asking for feedback to their work. I guess it will be something like this?  Hello Dr. X To introduce myself, I am Y, in institute Z. I'm sorry if this email is not convenient at this time, but my work about A is highly relevant to your work in B, so I think it will be interesting to you too. If possible, can you take a look at it and tell me what you think? Here is the link:  Thank you for your reading, hope you enjoy it.  I wonder if the summary/abstract should be included in the email too, since the principle for  is to show everything you know about it. Maybe it's not necessary, since the title of the link should prove its interestingness nevertheless? I'd like to have your confirm. I'm also interested in the case where Y has no Z, and the link is just a collection of observations posted in a blog, not a full paper with proper citation and literary review. It is possible that the observations may have been covered in the field, but Y isn't aware of that yet. I also think that if the link is interesting enough, then putting a tracking method in there is fine too? Even if they finds out, they wouldn't feel insulted either, because they find that the link is indeed interesting.  Related: •  •  •
42596
What should I do if I have lost faith in my PhD advisor (leadership, research direction, everything)? I have worked in this lab for three years and from my observation, none of my advisor's project work out and zero publications so far. Since I already had a gut feeling that everything would eventually go on a dead march, I have tried to propose to him an alternative approach but my advisor never listens (or only listens passive-aggressively). Guess what, my advisor ran out of funding, and he blamed us (the graduate students) for no publication. Now we all have to serve as TAs. I somehow manage to pump out my own project but my advisor didn't quite like it unless it's his idea. He told me he had no funding for my proposal and continue to gamble on his own project. (Come to think of it, no funding was a lie.) Recently, I am publishing my paper and the way he edited my manuscript is always cursory, mindless and pushy. I have a feeling that I am destined to fail the moment I joined this lab, any advice? Any experience similar to mine?   I joined the lab because his research topics are interesting but found out later that all his approaches to the problem just don't "hit" the point. For example, you know you need different tools to solve a problem but he just keeps using the same one again and again and my mind just get narrower and narrower. Also his work were simply a rehash of the previous one, like switching apple to orange, and everything else stays the same.
83347
I am currently a Master's student and planning to apply for PhD. Now, I have directly worked with two professors for research projects. Unfortunately, those two are the only professors I have taken more than one course with too. With no other professor I had two or more classes so they do not know me well. I could be able to convince one of them to write letters for me. But surely that's gonna be a canned recommendation like "I taught him this course and he's got an A". Besides as an introvert, I am not memorable at all. I don't drop by during office hours to have small chats or ask many questions in the class. On the other hand, I have a PhD student in my research group. He doesn't have the credentials or experience, but he can write a more personal and accurate recommendation letter for me. I have worked with him closely and he can give his opinion from both our personal and academic interactions.   Edit: just to be clear, the two professors I have worked with already agreed to give me LORs. I need a third letter.  Edit 2: I have another option. I have worked as a TA for one semester. The instructor can give me an LOR. But he is neither a tenured professor nor a Ph.D. degree holder himself. So I am not much sure about this option. Is it gonna "hurt" my application?  Edit 3: I collaborated with the PhD student before and we are co-authors of two papers.