Research Advice

N.B. This list is a slightly chaotic. I will attempt to write some TLDRs at some point. There is a mix of application advice and actually doing the PhD advice. Naturally, these mainly apply to CS related PhDs.

• Patrick Kidger - What to learn for an ML PhD https://kidger.site/thoughts/just-know-stuff/
• Vitaly Kurin’s list is a very comprehensive meta-list about productivity in grad school. https://yobibyte.github.io/pages/productive-grad-school.html#productive-grad-school
• Karparthy survival guide http://karpathy.github.io/2016/09/07/phd/ - very useful
• Austin Z. Henley: https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/lessonsfrommyphd.html
• Effective altruism’s guide to a PhD: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/B7AQF7HNiLRbKMKJt/how-to-phd
• Fun illustrated guide https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
• How to finish in 3 years (if you really want to) http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pajdla/cmp/phd/phd-intro/
• Ronald T. Azu http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html
• Sebastian Ruder https://ruder.io/10-tips-for-research-and-a-phd/
• Hannah Wallach https://people.cs.umass.edu/~wallach/how_to_be_a_successful_phd_student.pdf
• Applying to CS PhDs http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
• Careers in Beneficial AI Research (EA) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RFo7_9JVmt0z8RPwUjB-mUMgCMoUQmsaj2CM5aHvxCw/edit#
  • Technical AI alignment: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7WXPkpqKGKewAymJf/how-to-pursue-a-career-in-technical-ai-alignment
• Applying to CS PhDs, mainly for US applications https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~justine/advice.pdf
• Questions to ask potential supervisors https://blog.ml.cmu.edu/2020/03/02/questions-to-ask-a-prospective-ph-d-advisor-on-visit-day-with-thorough-and-forthright-explanations/ and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o2ZTrUQYDXKbMlcmSH8lE-MW5vOX77PR/view
• PhD skills course http://yanivyacoby.github.io//harvard-cs290//materials/
• How to read a paper - the Three pass approach https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee384m/Handouts/HowtoReadPaper.pdf
• Tools for making research workflows easier https://github.com/sparks-baird/auto-paper
• https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/lessonsfrommyphd.html