Questions tagged [projects]
Questions regarding the academic projects including either thesis projects or other projects which may be done in the universities with support of academies and in collaboration with faculty members and students.
198
questions
49
votes
14
answers
12k
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Would adding paragraph about the motivation provided by someone who doubted me to my final year project acknowledgment be unprofessional?
In my final year project, and since it will be my last postgraduate year, I want to add a taste of truth in my Acknowledgment, where I think it's the personal part of the project, where you are ...
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39
votes
5
answers
7k
views
My significant other is a member of a research project that I coordinate. How to allocate funding?
I'm responsible for a large research project, with many members and some substantial funding for traveling to conferences. However, I'm now in a relationship with one of its members. How should I ...
- 4,082
38
votes
3
answers
5k
views
How do you manage to work on multiple research projects?
Things that make multiple research projects different and single project:
Inertia that sets in once I have spent a few weeks on single one of them. The 'switching cost' seems too high to me, and it ...
- 481
35
votes
8
answers
10k
views
What are the risks and benefits of being the first PhD of a new supervisor?
I am interested in a PhD project which will be supervised by somebody who has never supervised a PhD student before. In fact, this research group is not yet completely established. On their website ...
- 1,114
34
votes
5
answers
8k
views
How do I professionally communicate to a colleague that I am not interested in helping with his project anymore?
I'm a PhD student in a pretty large lab, and have come from a more theoretical background than the other members, so sometimes they ask me to help out with theoretical parts of projects. Generally I ...
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34
votes
5
answers
10k
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I believe my classmates plan to hand in a plagiarized project, how should I handle this?
In my class, we have project groups of 4 or 5 students. This period has everything to do with game development. The project is to build a XNA game for children at primary school.
Now, there is one ...
- 413
29
votes
6
answers
11k
views
How do project supervisors address the "freeloading" problem in group projects?
I am currently leading a three person team to tackle an undergrad engineering project that involves several parts. I am responsible for data analysis using sophisticated computer algorithms, another ...
- 11.5k
29
votes
2
answers
3k
views
How to quantify the loss in productivity due to time spent on writing proposals
During my PhD it bothered me how much time my supervisor had to spend on writing proposals to get funding to do science, which in practice pretty much meant that he had no time to do science because ...
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26
votes
3
answers
6k
views
What happens to a research group when a principal investigator (P.I.) dies? Is it common to have existing contingency plans?
Principal investigators (P.I.s) are not immune to things like traffic accidents, fatal diseases, or acts of terrorism.
Is it common to have contingency plans as to what will happen with funding, ...
- 9,056
25
votes
6
answers
6k
views
Is it morally acceptable to leave an academic project which brings value to thousands?
I am a university professor, Egypt, and one of my academic research projects five years ago, on which I spent a really long time, was to develop and evaluate an online community and library of freely ...
- 529
23
votes
11
answers
6k
views
Having team-members split the grade among them by their personal contribution
In a project-based class the submission is in teams of 2 (self-assigned teams).
In most teams, the grade is the same for both members.
However, in some teams, I suspect that most of the work was done ...
- 17.1k
22
votes
5
answers
7k
views
How to reduce negative consequence for the person I plagiarized my assignment from?
Due to some personal reasons, I didn't get to complete my semester end project. So I copied my friend's project and submitted it without major changes (I know I was a fool to do that). Now we are ...
- 287
20
votes
3
answers
2k
views
How do I communicate my research with a general audience more effectively?
I really enjoyed my research but it happens that whenever I tell somebody about it, I have the impression I'm making it sound boring, unimportant and not exciting.
Americans have a way of telling a ...
- 538
20
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How to abort one post-doc sub-project politely
Right after starting a post-doc, another post-doc in the new group came and invited me to collaborate in one of his projects (only a side thing; not my main research project; somehow independent from ...
- 853
15
votes
3
answers
988
views
In a grant application, how to address gender aspects when working in a highly technical field?
The guidelines for a certain funding source ask me to address gender aspects. This call is open to all scientist, but I work with pen, paper and computers and I see no gender aspects in my work (only ...
- 548
13
votes
6
answers
5k
views
How to argue with postdoc hired for a project, to work on tasks from another project
I have one postdoc hired on a H2020 project for 18 months. Fortunately, she worked rather well and all her tasks are going to finish soon (11th month of the project). I would like to reallocate her to ...
- 2,194
12
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Department head said that group project may be rejected. How to mitigate?
I'm a Computer Science student in Bangalore, India, doing a part time MTech at an autonomous university.
My classmates were avoiding working with me, and formed their own groups. I tried approaching ...
- 131
12
votes
4
answers
3k
views
My hardware can't run the code I need for my research
I have started doing a project and I promised to report my results every week to my professor. At the beginning, he told me you should have a reasonably good laptop.
I thought my laptop could support ...
- 2,201
11
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Dealing with a slow moving project as a professional researcher
I have an undergraduate degree and I'm working as a medical researcher in a research lab, affiliated with a University. I've done very little since being employed, due to problems such as:
lack of ...
- 1,191
10
votes
3
answers
5k
views
What should I do if I messed up my pre-thesis project and I just want to end it as soon as possible and switch a group for master thesis?
I am currently part of a research group where members work on a wide range of topics, from nuclear model calculations to quantum entanglement SPDC. Our professor has a laid-back approach and likes to ...
- 101
9
votes
6
answers
2k
views
Hiring freelancers for research projects
Professors in research universities often rely on graduate students as research assistants who work on a variety of tasks including analysis, coding, experimentation, and writing. When funding is ...
- 238
9
votes
2
answers
2k
views
What are some warning signs that a PhD project will fail?
Professors looking for PhD students will often have several ongoing research thrusts that students can work on. These may correspond to different three- or five-year grant awards, for example, or they ...
- 91
8
votes
2
answers
4k
views
How to deal with toxic postdoc and have independent projects?
It has been three months since I joined as a postdoc. This is my first post doc position. I work along with another postdoc to set up pipelines for lab projects. This postdoc that I working along has ...
- 105
8
votes
3
answers
4k
views
How hands-on should an academic supervisor be? [closed]
I'd appreciate any resources describing how 'hands-on' an academic supervisor should be.
I've found in my own supervision that it has varied from quite high-level guidance to quite detailed guidance. ...
8
votes
2
answers
535
views
Should I inform other project's members about my work on an idea which they are not initially interested in
I'm a PhD student working on a research project consisting of 2 teams. My team (team A) is on the practical side, we provide the problems related to our research and evaluate the theoretical solutions ...
- 3,367
8
votes
1
answer
951
views
How to proceed when you are coordinating a project among several research groups and they do not contribute to the progress of the project
I am principal investigator in some project that involves other research groups from other countries. When I was writing the proposal, I asked them if they would like to joint the project, and they ...
- 2,194
8
votes
2
answers
651
views
How to tactfully "decommit" from projects?
As a young academic recently flown from the nest, I am starting to figure out my own research interests. I now feel like I have too many, though. During a postdoc where I struggled to fit in and ...
user108403
7
votes
3
answers
662
views
Refusing a research project and/or assignment because of personal convictions
Is there a general rule about what a postdoc or graduate student can or cannot refuse to do because of personal convictions?
I assume that there must be institution-specific rules, but also maybe ...
- 1,093
7
votes
1
answer
3k
views
My group members are trying to take credit for the group project that only I worked on. How do I stop this?
Two students (who also happen to be my friends) and I were assigned a fairly difficult (I spent over 40 hours on it) group project.
It felt like they didn't care about the project, and if you looked ...
- 73
7
votes
3
answers
16k
views
What are the best questions to ask a PI upon the first meeting to join some of his projects?
I'm planning to see a professor today, in our department, he is the director of one of the labs there and a PI of a couple of projects. I knew that, he's looking for some student to join his project/s....
- 950
7
votes
2
answers
2k
views
PhD crossroad: dealing with constantly absent supervisor and diverse workload?
I am in the first year of my PhD studies. Was involved with the same group since a while as a student, and then I was offered a PhD there.
Project work
The topic of my PhD is completely different from ...
- 3,046
7
votes
1
answer
799
views
How to work with a RA unwilling to work with me?
I've recently started a new role on a three year project. I'm a research officer and I've joined onto the project about 8 months in at new research institute, there are three CIs. I've been brought on ...
- 931
6
votes
3
answers
2k
views
How should I talk to my advisor about changing the research topic after already choosing one?
I started an engineering PhD program this year with an excellent advisor that I get along well with. I just finished my first semester where students are mostly required to focus on coursework with ...
- 63
6
votes
4
answers
1k
views
What does 'open position for bachelor project' actually mean?
I am third-year bachelor student currently seeking a research internship in Germany and I encounter many group websites that say something like: “We have positions for bachelor projects.” I am ...
6
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Project websites - Increasing visibility or wasting time?
I'm from an empirical social science background and observe that several research projects build project websites, similar to job market websites of academics. Those that I am aware of are often ...
- 556
6
votes
2
answers
7k
views
What should I do if a group project member is not contributing anything but is also depressed?
I know these questions have been asked before but I would like some advice and perspectives on what I should do when mental health comes into the equation.
The context is: an undergraduate class with ...
- 163
6
votes
3
answers
956
views
How to work with teammates who shoot down ideas in order to avoid work?
I am working with two fellow graduate students on implementing some algorithm for data extraction. We are in the mid-phase of our project and we still have roughly a month (20 days to be precise) to ...
- 2,671
6
votes
2
answers
508
views
How to deal with a very perfectionist supervisor whose projects feel never ending and never get submitted?
I am a postbacc RA with several years of experience. I am paid by the PI's grants and there is no time constraints for the projects.
My supervisor is very nice but extremely perfectionistic, causing ...
- 331
6
votes
1
answer
275
views
How do I minimize the number of "unknown unknowns"?
There's a famous quote from a former US government official regarding the things we know, the things we know we don't know, and things we don't know we don't know. Likewise, there are many colorful ...
- 6,064
5
votes
4
answers
16k
views
How to present projects that will soon be published on CV?
I have several projects that will be published soon. I am the 1st author in two of them and co-author in 3 of them. How to present this in my CV?
- 1,996
5
votes
2
answers
2k
views
What happens if another PI puts me on their payroll?
I’m fairly new to the research world and currently working with a university research institute. My PI put me on a project for a lab he is collaborating with from another research institute. The work ...
- 51
5
votes
3
answers
422
views
Ad hoc work detracting from PhD project
Setting
I am a graduate student in a quant/informatics group (size = 2 people: my advisor and I) housed within a larger academic group that do wet laboratory/bench research. I have my own project ...
- 153
5
votes
1
answer
426
views
How should I email my graduate advisor if I did not hear anything?
I am a graduate student at a University and I am working on academic project under my advisor's guidance. I had emailed two weeks back about my project update (which helps him grade my project hours ...
- 153
5
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Is it ok to give your Old Assignments to others?
My friend wants an old assignment which I have done few semesters ago. I want to know whether it's ok to give the assignment to him and whether it's going to be a problem for me in the future. (I have ...
- 51
5
votes
1
answer
821
views
How do professors get to apply and work on industry projects?
Not necessary to have a research project but any project where professor can get to apply his theory and skills and work along with working professional in the industry - and also get to leverage ...
- 51
5
votes
1
answer
315
views
My project is being reassigned to a postdoc and I will no longer be involved in it out of a sudden. Please share your thoughts
I am a first year CHEME PhD student and I’d appreciate some feedback on my situation.
I recently developed a hypothesis and a concrete potential project. My advisor was also very excited about the ...
5
votes
1
answer
684
views
How to protect the timeline of my project when the supervisor is not willing to negotiate anything?
I am currently working on an 8 month final project, of which 1 month has already passed. Its for an Engineering Doctorate degree. I have one supervisor and one client (who is a Phd student).
...
- 59
5
votes
1
answer
980
views
Should I continue a project someone else started?
I think there are two situations where your supervisor might ask you to continue a project someone else started:
Someone produced some data, but never wrote a paper about it
Someone wrote a paper and ...
- 151
4
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Can I claim my assignment solutions as mini projects in my resume?
I am currently doing Master of Technology (M.Tech) in CSE from IIT Kanpur, and here each and every assignment is like a mini project in itself. For example in my Advanced Computer Architecture course, ...
- 549
4
votes
2
answers
563
views
Is it okay to request to do a reading project with a professor at a later time if he had politely denied it before?
I was planning to do a reading project with a professor in my institute and had asked him in the last semester whether it would be possible for me to do it under his guidance. However he had politely ...
- 213