RESOURCES

The resources listed here, including articles, notes, and tools, motivated and assisted me throughout my Ph.D. studies. I hope some of this content will support you on your academic journey. 💪

Guides for Graduate Students

Guides for Academic Career

Guides for Research

What paper are you working on?
The importance of stupidity in scientific research
Guidelines for Reviewing
Designing an effective graphic abstract
Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review
Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper
Five Key Attributes of an Effective Title
Nature: Guide to Preparing Final Artwork
Figure design: color [ref 1] [ref 2] [ref 3] [ref 4]
Scientific Figure Preparation
A proposed process for writing a paper
Guidelines for Suggesting Peer Reviewers for Manuscripts – Prof. John E. Dolbow
What a $500,000 grant proposal looks like – Dr. Austin Z. Henley
Tools for science - Prof. Arjun Raj
Nature formatting guide

Courses and Notes in Mechanics

Courses

Books & notes

Prof. Zhigang Suo uploads many of his lecture notes on imechanica: Very useful content!

Lecture notes from Prof. Wei Cai: Link
Lecture notes from Prof. Rui Huang: Engineering Mechanics 388F: Fracture Mechanics

Research Talks Recordings

Tools for Research

Tools:

Networking

Besides excelling in your research field, it's essential to follow other prominent scholars in related fields. Here are several websites and tools to help keep you updated.

Google Scholar Alert - When searching for papers on Google Scholar, create a list of keywords related to your topic of interest. Google Scholar can then send you emails with related articles that have been recently published.
Feedly - Use this free (Basic function) news aggregators app to collect the newest published articles from all the journals of your interests. Check on Dr. Hyunwoo Yuk's blog about the tips for literature reviews.
Group website - Constantly check the group website of the PI that you are interested in.
IMechanica -A blog for mechanicians.
Twitter - Many scholars use Twitter for academic purposes only. Follow them.
Prof. Jonathan B. Hopkins lists many excellent scholars in the fields of Architected Materials, Precision Flexures, and Compliant Mechanisms. [Links]