Category Archives: Career and Leadership

The Onion At Its Best: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method

The Onion spots a much-needed addition: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method. Quoting from the article: “After making an observation and forming a hypothesis as usual, the new third step of the scientific method will now require researchers to … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Creativity, Good reads, Humor, In the news, Ph.D., Research | Comments Off on The Onion At Its Best: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method

Projected Ending of Moore’s Law: Can Engineering Creativity Sustain The Rate Of Progress?

The projections of the ending of the Moore’s Law are nothing new — seemingly, they were being made for many decades. For example, back in 2009 an NSF director Jeannette Wing had the following graph in her ACM MobiCom talk … Continue reading

Posted in ASICs, Creativity, Hardware, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry, Industry trends, Research, Technology | Comments Off on Projected Ending of Moore’s Law: Can Engineering Creativity Sustain The Rate Of Progress?

Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

Quirky, an invention platform startup that created the magnificent Pawcet, a drinking fountain for dogs, is, alas, no more. After raising more than $180 million from investors and bringing more than 400 products to the market over its 6 years … Continue reading

Posted in Consumer technology, Creativity, Hardware, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry, Industry trends, New business models, Technology | Comments Off on Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

DARPA Project Experience and DARPA Project Leaders

Recent Wired Magazine profile of  Dr. Regina Dugan, formerly the director of Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and currently an executive at Google (Wired Magazine article available here) led me to a Harvard Business Review article by Dr. Dugan … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Good reads, Management, Ph.D., Technology | Comments Off on DARPA Project Experience and DARPA Project Leaders

PM Candidates: Ask Questions, Please

All job candidates, for all jobs everywhere, should know to ask questions of their interviewers when prompted. The answer to “Do you have any questions for me?” ought to be never be “no“, for any position. But especially for PM … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Communication skills, Industry, Management, Skills, Tips and tricks | Comments Off on PM Candidates: Ask Questions, Please

Do not Call People “Resources”

Managers: if you call your people “resources”, they get to call you “overhead”. Calling people “resources” must be one of the worst habits of the different kinds of managers. Yeah, that is the terminology used in the Project Management Professional … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Communication skills, Management, Skills, Tips and tricks | Comments Off on Do not Call People “Resources”

Data Empathy

I recently went to an amazing Data Science meetup which I highly recommend to all New York-based folk interested in all things data – Data Driven NYC, hosted (and generously catered) by Bloomberg in their beautiful 59th street office. Founder … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Data science, Industry | Comments Off on Data Empathy

Post-Ph.D. Job Market: Timelines

I recently gave a talk at a WimNet group meeting regarding my post-Ph.D. job market experiences and lessons learned. A version of the slides that is not Columbia-specific and applicable to many EECS students is available below: Slides from the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Career and Leadership, Data science, Graduate school, Industry, Ph.D., Tips and tricks | Comments Off on Post-Ph.D. Job Market: Timelines

Visualizations: my CV and my Research Statement as Word Clouds

As far back as I remember, I was a fan of clear, catchy, and entertaining visual data representations. Like those that often appear in the National Geographic or the Economist – the engaging ways of presenting scientific facts and data. … Continue reading

Posted in Career and Leadership, Consumer technology, Data science, Data visualization, Internet of Things, Mobile computing, Ph.D., Technology, Wearable computing | Comments Off on Visualizations: my CV and my Research Statement as Word Clouds

Beautiful Pervasive World: Wearable Devices

Having seen nothing but my dissertation in the last 6 months, I have been tremendously enjoying an opportunity to scale back on writing and to catch up with the state of the world of innovative pervasive and mobile technology. Oh, … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Consumer technology, Highlights, Industry, Internet of Things, Mobile computing, Ph.D., Wearable computing | Comments Off on Beautiful Pervasive World: Wearable Devices