Month: August 2018
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How to create a research poster: FREE pptx poster template!
If you have to put together a research poster presentation and haven’t done one yet, it is way easier to start from a template. In this post, I share a research poster presentation template using PowerPoint. Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash I love poster presentations. You can get a lot of traffic and have more time…
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What’s a good school for astrophysics?
What’s a good school for astrophysics? I get this question from prospective college students. I did my Ph.D. in particle astrophysics at Ohio State University and went to college at North Carolina State University. During my college years, I worked on three research projects. These were in the fields of analytical chemistry and neuroscience, nonlinear…
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How to write a research statement for a postdoc fellowship
In this post, I share the research statement I wrote to become a finalist in a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship competition called the Owen Chamberlain Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley Lab. At the time of the application, I did not have any main-author papers published yet but some in the pipeline. If you are wondering what do…
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FREE LaTeX template for figures, tables, and equations!
In this post, I provide LaTeX templates for figures, tables, and equations by sharing content from a few chapters of my Ph.D. thesis. I hope this helps you to write your thesis! Template for a figure, group of figures, figures using subfloat, tables, and equations are provided below! To use LaTeX to typeset your thesis,…
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How to make a superconductor in two easy steps
Today I am sharing how I made a superconductor in college. It was for a class – senior lab – and I ended up having way too much fun as always. A superconductor is a substance capable of being superconducting at low temperatures. By low temperatures, I mean temperatures below 30 Kelvin. For my American readers,…
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Cover letter that led to postdoc interview at MIT
Sending out postdoc applications and some of them require a cover letter? Been there. I will keep it real as always and share with you the cover letter I wrote for a postdoc application at MIT – where I got the interview and had loads of fun visiting! Mirror selfie at the hotel before my…
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How much crying is normal?
I saw this question “How much crying is normal?” on Reddit under the GradSchool subreddit and decided to address it here as mental health is the main motivation behind starting this blog. On the one hand, it is totally OK to cry. On the other hand, if it is getting in your way of normal…
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The statement of purpose from a successful graduate school application
In this post, I am sharing my statement of purpose from a successful graduate school application. I wrote it over 5 years ago, so I definitely cringe at a few things now, but hey, it got the job done and I am still rather proud of it. At the end of this post, I have…
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How much do graduate students get paid as stipend?
Question from an undergraduate student: How much do graduate students get paid as a stipend? Just a day in grad school – I was cold! Great question! It is fairly standard for graduate students to be awarded a stipend in the form of a graduate teaching or research assistantship in the STEM fields. Thinking about your…
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Why you should ditch the paper and just be done with your PhD
Should you stay longer and make sure your paper gets published? I address this question from a Ph.D. student. Here are the details of the question: I want to transition to the industry as a research scientist. I have one protocol paper accepted, one second-author paper, and one first-author paper that is not yet submitted. I am…
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Free food in graduate school and its life lessons
In graduate school, my office was on the third floor of the physics research building. There was a big atrium in the middle of the building on the ground floor. There was a seminar room adjacent to it – this was where many events took place. Events that generated FREE FOOD. No, this is NOT…
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Why you should consider joining Cheeky Scientist
The moment before joining Cheeky Scientist, I was sitting in the dark in my bathroom. It was late one night in November 2017. I was worried about my future. The audio version of the post: What was my future? For a long time, I had been set on academia, but now I was not sure.…
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How to actually finish your PhD in a timely manner
Finish your PhD by being extremely strategic and following the steps outlined in this post. So you started a Ph.D. Great! You are doing lots of research, or maybe you are burned out. Either is understandable. Maybe your advisor loves you and wants you around forever. Or maybe they hate you and don’t want to…
