In 2015, there was a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, claiming the lives of 16 (including the two perpetrators) and injuring 24 others. The incident was a terrorist attack, and a tragedy. It also surfaced a longstanding debate on the role of security and privacy-enhancing technologies in society: the…

Let me start by saying reviewing papers is a nigh-sacred duty that we should all treat with respect. The gold standard for scientific knowledge generation is peer review; if we skimp on our duties as reviewers, we cheapen the value of the work we all do. So “reviewing quick” should…

Edit: An earlier version of this article was not fair to people I care about; I tried to make my experience more than what it was. I do believe that we should normalize the pursuit of life over academia sometimes. Anyway, I’ve significantly re-written this to focus on the just…

I was awarded a NSF CAREER proposal recently, on my second attempt [1]. In the process of putting my materials together, I was fortunate to be able to learn from successful proposals written by friends and colleagues [2]. I was also fortunate to get feedback from mentors [3]. Trends emerged…

This is the fourth and final installment of my public facing Ph.D. starter package. In the previous three posts, I tried my best to distill my personal experiences and conversations with friends and mentors into insights that I hope will help you navigate your Ph.D. or, at the very least…

I’ve talked about how getting your Ph.D. is going to be challenging, that it’s fraught with emotional lows, and that you are not alone in harboring feelings of self doubt. I’ve painted a bleak picture. You might be feeling anxious. Maybe I’ve taken some of the excitement you were feeling…

Emotional labor is what makes getting your Ph.D. different from many of the other educational experiences you might have had up to this point. Wikipedia provides a good definition: “Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job.” The work you…

Just over a year ago, I shared a brain dump of all of the advice I had received about being a professor. That post went semi-viral, garnering tens of thousands of views. …

You’ve probably seen this graph. This is a popular graph known as the Gartner Hype Cycle: it is a graphical representation of the lifecycle of new technical innovations as they gets introduced into society. It’s a simple concept: new technologies, when first introduced, typically get a lot of visibility as…