Category Archives: Perspectives

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

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Value of Meetings

Recent results from a study on how one hour of executives’ meetings propagates to hundreds of thousands of hours across the organization are not at all surprising, but its good to see the actual numbers beautifully visualized. The Guardian has … Continue reading

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Nike Will Stop Making Wearable Hardware

Oh, Nike, – really?! Nike’s Fuelband Hits the Wall Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware A company with such rich history of innovation surely could have tried harder to gain and preserve its strategic positioning … Continue reading

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Lessons Learned from Running Streaks

Running streaks – which I define as running at least 1 mile per day for a large number of consecutive days – are surely an interesting thing to be doing. My longest one so far has been 100+ days: I ran every single day … Continue reading

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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

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Running while Traveling: Finding Good Running Routes

Our recent cross-country road trip allowed me to add 4 (!) new states to my favorite running collection. The new items in the collection are Tennessee (Memphis), New Mexico (Santa Fe), Arizona (Page), and Nevada (Las Vegas – the glorious … Continue reading

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For Injury-prone Runners: Tips and Tricks

This post is prompted by a few recent discussions on how to prevent running injuries.  I am as injury-prone as runners come: a slew of biomechanical imperfections, a history of knee injuries, a comparatively larger frame, next to no sports … Continue reading

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Mentoring Students

While much is written about various approaches and activities grad students can use to keep engaged and motivated and to succeed (such as wonderful advice provided here, here, here, here, and in many other articles and posts), one particular useful … Continue reading

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Why are we Doing This? (1) Learning, (2) Growth.

Rob Margolies, a Ph.D. student in my research group, has recently written a great blog post about why Ph.D. students push themselves so hard. In short, it is because we really feel that we are learning and growing, in many … Continue reading

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Top 10 Reasons Students Fail A Ph.D.

I found a lovely summary of the typical reasons Ph.D. students struggle and fail. Well worth reading over for inspiration and reflection. My favorite part: “A Ph.D. is not the final undertaking. It’s the start of a scientific career. A … Continue reading

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