Schedule

Pre-class Work:

• Create a slide to introduce yourself, answer survey
• Read and answer questions about:
  • The Fear of Publicly Not Knowing
  • What you should know about us (the course staff)

In Class: [slides]

• Meet the G1 cohort
• Discuss shared worries + implied assumptions about expectations
• What is research? What skills are necessary to do research? What is this seminar about?
• A brief guide to Harvard, and chat with G2s

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Read The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web
• Summarize the paper, reflect on your strategy for reading the paper

In Class: [slides]

• Why think about self-regulated learning
• How to read a research paper
• Practice skimming papers: (don’t read before class!)
  • Rx: Treating Bugs As Allergies – A Safe Method to Survive Software Failures
  • The Dimpled Manifold Model of Adversarial Examples in Machine Learning

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Skim How New Ideas Diffuse in Science and answer reflection questions.
• Find five papers related to your project (or a project you’d like to do) and read one.
• Reflect on your own literature search strategy
• Bring a problem statement for a current/previous research project

In Class: [slides]

• How to do a literature search

Scav Hunt Google Drive here!

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Review How to read a research paper
• Spend one hour reading and trying to get as much as you can out of Deep Learning with Differential Privacy. Note that the paper is too long to read entirely in one hour; use strategies like those from the paper-reading guide to figure out where to focus your attention and try to get as much value as you can in the hour. In particular, start with the introduction and try to understand what are the main contributions of the paper (both the high-level takeaways and the precise theorem statements), and then selectively delve into the technical sections as needed to improve your understanding and/or according to your interest.

In Class:

• Reflect on your own strategy reading more theoretical papers

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Read Section 2 of How to make the most of your PhD & answer questions.
• Skim What triggers imposter phenomenon among academic faculty?. Skim the introduction/related work (pgs. 1-3), read “Imposter experiences as a critical identity incident” (pgs. 4-5), the research question in italics on pg. 5, and skim the Findings (summarized in Tables 2 and 3, with more details in pgs. 8-14) & answer questions.
• Submit questions for the faculty.

In Class:

• Faculty panel about their expectations of students and experiences as students, as well as about their experiences as faculty
• Guests: Professors Nada Amin, Salil Vadhan, Elena Glassman.

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Submit questions for the panel.

In Class: [slides]

• Panel on managing advising relationships with: Usha Bhalla, Daniel Garces, Paula Rodriguez Diaz and Jake Ruotolo.
• Special note: no faculty present

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• In this class we will discuss and practice how to update your advisor(s)/collaborator(s) on recent progress. Please come to class with a topic in mind – a project (e.g. current or past research project, a hobby, etc.) that you have worked on but haven’t yet completed. The topic should be reasonably technical (your fellow classmates should only have a partial prior understanding of the topic).
• In advance of class, please read over communication in collaborative environments and answer reflection questions.
• Reflect on your own strategies for updating collaborators on progress.

In Class:

• How to communicate about weekly progress with your collaborators

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Follow this template in preparing a written “project pitch.”

In Class:

• Workshop project pitches with peers.

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Think through and list out your commitments for this semester (or next)

In Class:

• Guests: Meaghan Fallano, Assistant Director for STEM Support at Harvard Academic Resource Center (ARC).

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

• Special note: no faculty present

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

• TBD

Pre-class Work:

• No pre-class work!

In Class: [slides]

• Learn how to present your research to general audiences
  • Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling.

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Prepare a 5-min presentation (with slides) about your current research project, or a project you’ve worked on before, or a research paper you enjoy. Assume a general CS audience (e.g. your CS 2902 classmates, who come from a variety of subdisciplines within CS!).
• TBD

In Class:

• Practice presenting to your peers

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Read:
  • The ins and outs of reviewing
  • How NOT to review a paper The tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer
  • Mistakes Reviewers Make
• Answer reflection questions
• Sign up to read and review one of three papers (spend < 1hr on this)

In Class: [slides]

• Discuss, what makes a “good” vs. “bad” review?
• Simulate the reviewing process (e.g. the roles of the area chairs, meta-reviewers, etc.)

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

• Guest: Dr. Debora Walker from the FAS Research Integrity Office

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

• Guest: TBD

Pre-class Work:

• TBD

In Class:

• Student panel with panelists TBD

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Watch:
  • 1:15-14:50 and 36:05-45:45 of Professor Sapolsky’s lecture on depression
  • Why Do Depression and Anxiety Go Together?
• Read: pages 18-15 from Harvard’s Report from the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health
• Answer the reflection questions

In Class:

• Guests: Jordan Zimmerman and Gabi Ferris-Hamlett
• Special note: no faculty present

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

• Class will be held at the Learning Lab at 50 Church Street, Suite 308, Cambridge MA. Plan ahead to travel to Harvard Square!

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Prepare a ~8 minute lesson to teach to your classmates.

In Class:

• Teaching workshop in small groups.

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• TBD

In Class:

Pre-class Work: (instructions/submission on Canvas)

• Revise the slides you made for the first class to include a sentence about (a) something you learned about yourself over the past year, and (b) a direction you’re excited to grow in for the next year.

In Class:

• Reflect on the first year of the Ph.D., topics discussed over the course of CS290, and how we can continue building an inclusive and supportive community at Harvard and beyond.