- Be open-minded. Always challenge oneself with intellectually stimulating problems.
- Pursuing
Ph.D. is to push forward the frontier of knowledge and develop new ways
of thinking. For an undergraduate, finishing programming/simulations,
collecting data, and plotting performance figures are the end of the
task. But for a Ph.D., these are not the end. The final result should
be original contributions that are somewhat surprising to the community
of science and technology.
- A Ph.D. in Engineering is
expected to apply fundamental approaches to solving practical
problems. It could be application of new approaches to new/old
problems. It could be application of old approaches to new problems.
To achieve this, mastering the related theories is critical.
- Memorizing
a theory does not mean mastering the theory. It is essential to
thoroughly understand the underlying principles, the way of thinking
and the insights of the theory. When the theory looks very natural and
logical to you, you are at the stage of commanding the theory. Then
you do not have to forcefully memorize it at all.
- The cornerstone of Ph.D. education is cultivation of independent, critical, and creative thinking.
- The
key to success is keeping yourself motivated. In my view,
long-distance running is an effective way to stay motivated and improve
mental toughness.
- Passion and enthusiasm are the best way for success.
- Insatiable curiosity is a driving force for doing excellent research.
- Put teaching, learning, and understanding ahead of any thought of impressing colleagues with the esoteric or the obscure.
- A good research paper consists of clean problem formulations, clean notations, and clean solutions.
- Many
practical problems do not have closed-form solution. So people resort
to numerical algorithms or simulations to get solutions. What
distinguishes a good researcher from the rest is not on nice numerical
or simulation results, but on how to analyze (mathematically justify)
the results and provide sound physical interpretation/insight/intuition.
- The hard part of doing research is to be a leader rather than a follower.
- Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and he'll take care of himself.
- To
some, academia is all about the disinterested pursuit of truth; another
view is that academia is all about politics. People with mature
outlooks fall into the realistic middle between these extremes.
- An important goal of education is to help students develop the learning strategies needed to acquire new knowledge and skills.
- Life is good. Life will become good if it is not good now. Do what you like. Like what you do.
- Jogging
is a life style. It can improve your health, de-stress your busy life,
release your frustration/anxiety/animosity/fear of uncertainty, and
make you more efficient/optimistic. Jogging may be the best medicine
for many of your problems in your everyday life.
- A way
to develop creativity: When you read a book, try to write another book
(which may be as short as one page); the new book may include your new
interpretation about the problem, new angle to look at the problem, new
methods to solve the problem, even new theory to address the problem.
- In system modeling, a model should be accurate enough to be useful and should be simple enough to be implementable.
|