Advice for senior grad students and post-docs (slides).

I recently presented a seminar at UMBC relaying some lessons learned and tips from my experience as a post-doc at UMBC for improving your CV after grad school by increasing the scope and reach of your research endeavors. The seminar was entitled “Cultivating Collaborations for Research Success: Colleagues and Publications” and was sponsored by the UMBC Office of Post Doctoral Affairs. For those who choose (or are required by their field) to spend some time as a post-doc before going out on the tenure-track market, this time period is a critical growth stage during which you should be maturing your research agenda and broadening it beyond your dissertation. A good way to achieve this is to launch collaborations, beyond simply those with your post-doc mentor, which you can continue after leaving your post-doc for a more permanent position.

Much of the advice in the talk was geared to my own field of human-computer interaction research within computer science, but many of the take-away points also apply more generally, or I point to places in the talk where folks in other fields should seek specific advice from their mentors. Sometimes just knowing the right questions to ask can make a difference in learning about requirements, norms, or standards for research success in your field.

For those who may find the slides helpful, I’ve uploaded them here. If you are a student or post-doc and have any questions, or if you have any advice you think I left out, feel free to leave a comment!