Confessions of a researchaholic

Culture is the hardest thing to reproduce, adapt, or change for an institution. Thus, it is best to get it right in the very beginning.

As I am building my very first internal research group, the culture I want to instill is “have fun and be awesome“. I realized, through interviewing hundreds of students (within just one year) and working with my first batch of internal students so far, that it is the human nature to get attracted to the “fun” part much more easily than the “awesome” part.

Thus, I have to be rigorous in enforcing the culture, especially on “awesomeness”.
If I can affect my initial batch of students, they can in turn propagate the culture both spatially and temporally, such as other labs/schools and future students.
If I cannot, none of these will happen, and I might as well find something else worthier my time.

Expectation for my internal HKU PhD students

How I handle failed internal PhD students

(This post, as many others in this blog, was inspired by recent events and student questions.)

One of the most important principles for a happy life is to know what really matters. This can help you minimize efforts and maximize rewards.

If you are a PhD student, the most important thing is your research. So focus on getting good publications. There are other things that matter to some degree but are much less important, such as teaching experience for those who want to become professors, as well as those that are not important at all but made appear to be so by others for their own peculiar reasons, such as taking courses. None of these should take precedence over your research.

If you are a professor in a research university, what really matters is (again) your research. There are other things like teaching, services, funding, etc. that better not suck but should never take precedence over your research.

(June 2 2016 add on)
If you are a computer scientist, the most important thing is to build useful products. The ultimate measure of a research is its practical impact, not academic publications.
Publishing top papers is not easy, but we just need to convince a few reviewers.
Building top products is much harder, as we need to convince millions if not billions of users.
For my projects that have turned into both products and papers I am always much more excited about the former, and I care less about the latter as time moves on.

In summary, know what really matters, focus on these, and spend minimally possible effort for everything else (and have the gut to drop balls on these when necessary).

For undergrad/MS students

[Disclaimer: I skipped most of my classes since high school, because I found learning by myself much more fun and efficient.]

Focus on courses that can improve your math and coding, the foundation which can help you learn everything else.
Other than that, just choose courses you find interesting, subject to the school requirements.

For PhD students

As a PhD student, people care only about your publications, not the courses you have taken, including your GPA.
Thus, I would suggest taking courses in the following prioritized order to maximize fun and minimize pain:

. Necessity that is mandatory to fulfill your course requirements. Just spend the minimally possible efforts to pass the grades.

. Utility that you think can help your research. I recommend spending more time on these, as you will have to learn them one way or another.

. Fun – those topics that you find interesting and may provide inspirations for your longer term research.

In any case, focus on learning, not earning grades.

For those of you who need my approval for course selection: please come up with a list and we can start discussion from there. I believe it is better for your education if these decisions are made by yourself.