Profile

Jing, age 48, was born, grew up, and did his schooling in Taiwan. Two years after finishing his PhD, he emigrated with his family to the United States. A full professor, he has been faculty in the CSE department for nineteen years now and even served as department chair for five years. That will never happen again. He loves his research in cryptography and network protocols and is all about publishing and discovering more. Nothing is better than a surprising result.

He has won numerous best paper awards. He teaches only one course a year on cryptographic network protocols, which is mainly about reading his own papers. The course is also where he tries to identify graduate students that would do well for him. He holds a regular NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) to much applause by his department. The undergraduate participants are typically given a specific, concrete job and left on their own. Overall, he has very little contact with them and gives recommendations only with a form letter filled out by one of his assistants.

Teaching Load: 1 course / year

Problem Scenario

Although he has had numerous post-docs over the last fifteen years and large, well-funded lab, he typically has only 2-3 graduate students at a time and only sees them at a weekly group meeting. Many of his graduate students end up switching advisors and he does not understand why. He has stopped caring about this and just accepts it. He really prefers working with post-docs. Jing gets them and is viewed as an excellent mentor by them. He always goes out to dinner with his past post-docs at conferences when possible, and his previous post-docs actively encourage recent graduates to apply for a post-doc position with him. Some past post-docs even contact him later on for career advice, and he readily responds with his viewpoints.

Jing is focused on continuing his research work. He has been successful and will continue to be successful. He hates wasting time or exploring dead ends. Efficiency and productivity is what he demands from his students, his employees, and himself.

Jing likes working with post-docs because they already know a lot about the field and he doesn't have to explain every little detail to them. They are also better at navigating the research process. They are aware of what is going on in the field.

Jing probably loses graduate students because he expects them to know a lot already. He doesn't provide a supportive environment for them to do their work. He expects his students to grasp everything in his specialty by reading all his papers.

Activity Scenario

Jing needs a place to refer his new graduate students to be boot-strapped into computing research. He also needs a place where they can actively learn about the work he does, rather than just reading about it. This place would have articles about reading a research paper, lab etiquette, publishing, conferences, computing communities, how-to balance classes, research and a social life , a social network of other "new" computing researchers etc.

Ideally, some of the resources

-- IfiOkoye - 05 Jun 2008