Background

This project started in Fall 2006, when the two of us were asked to prepare a course for incoming Ph.D. students at Georgia Tech to help them become exposed to research methods early in their career.  After agreeing to take on the preparation of this new course, we quickly discovered that, while there is a wealth of knowledge about research techniques and methods, and many thoughts on skills for creative and critical thinking, this material had not been aggregated or distilled into a single document or course.  We spent the next five years developing a course at Georgia Tech, "CS 7001: Introduction to Graduate Studies", refining the concepts, methods, and assignments each year.

On this site, we will codify the modules from the course.  We have also made our course notes available on this site, for the benefit of both other Ph.D. students and for faculty at other universities who may choose to use this course as a model for similar courses at their institutions.

We created this site in Fall 2013 to add blog post material to the course content that already existed, to make the research advice and course exercises digestible for a broader audience.

We are working on adding all of the content to this site.  Meanwhile, please also feel free to peruse some of the previous course offerings (e.g., 2008,  2009).

We will welcome feedback on the material as we post it.

Thanks!

Nick Feamster, University of Chicago
Alexander Gray, IBM

Note: Both Nick and Alex have left Georgia Tech, so this course is no longer offered at Georgia Tech in its current form. We will continue to maintain the blog as a space for posting research advice.  We welcome guest posts!