I recently found out that when I gave my job talk at Oregon State University last year, I was being recorded. I was hesitant to post it, but I hope that, despite this far-from-perfect performance, it might be useful to those on the job market this year. Note that Oregon State is not a theory [...]
October 12, 2009
INFORMS on the Smart Grid
I hadn’t heard of the “smart grid” until I arrived in Oregon. Our department is pushing for a sustainability research collaboration initiative, SENERGI, and so it wasn’t long before I heard our former director, Terri Fiez, talking about the smart grid. Now, at INFORMS in San Diego, I’m listening to a keynote on the smart [...]
October 8, 2009
How to find a postdoc
While I hardly think I should be doling out advice … In algorithms, there have been a lot of postdoc positions advertising on the two main email lists, TheoryNT and dmanet. In my experience, many of the positions are in Europe. I’ve found that a lot of postdoc’s get their position by word of mouth. [...]
October 5, 2009
What theory should every non-theory Ph.D. student know?
I’ve survived my first week of teaching graduate algorithms and data structures. “Survived” really isn’t the right word. I’ve had a lot of fun and the students in the class are bright and interactive, which makes a 50 minute lecture go by in a flash. Since the time is going by so quickly, I realize [...]