Academia

Here is a non-exhaustive list of influential resources from my career. I have read some of these multiple times, while others were merely thoroughly skimmed; but I will continue to tell people that I have read every single word. Learn from my hypocrisy! They truly are incredible resources for finding mentorship, community, and a little bit of joy when the imposter syndrome kicks in.

1. Community

• Graduate Student Slack — A supportive, peer-led community where graduate students can share experiences, swap advice, and network.
• Future PI Slack — An invaluable space for postdocs and senior grad students navigating the academic job market and preparing for faculty roles.
• Robotics Worldwide — A widely used global mailing list for robotics announcements, job postings, and conference calls.
• Climate Robotics Network Slack — A dedicated community connecting researchers and roboticists leveraging technology to combat climate change.

2. Statistics

• Academic Salaries — A crowd-sourced database providing helpful transparency on university faculty pay and research stipends.
• Roboranking — A data-driven ranking tool to look up institutional research productivity and publications specifically in the field of robotics.

3. Design

3.1 Poster

Here are a few great resources to get inspired by:

• Poster Nerd
• Visualize Your Science: Poster Wall

3.2 Figure

• Pretty Figures by Saverio Bolognani

4. Career

4.1 Early Career Students

• How to Read a Paper? — A classic, highly practical guide detailing a “three-pass approach” to efficiently digesting complex scientific literature.

4.2 Late Career Students

• How to Get an Academic Job? — An article outlining the timeline, materials, and strategy needed to survive the faculty application process.
• Becoming a Principal Investigator: Designing and Navigating Your Academic Adventure — A thorough guide on transitioning from a researcher into a lab leader, focusing on grant writing, hiring, and lab management.
• Dual Career Options — Inspiring stories and advice on navigating the “two-body problem” and making career choices alongside a partner.
• Reshaping our relationship with our world through transdisciplinary collaboration — An ASU framework showcasing how to work across traditional academic boundaries to solve major global challenges.
• Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning — A national network dedicated to improving STEM education through evidence-based teaching practices and professional development.
• Lab Manuals — Examples of academic labs with explicitly stated expectations of themselves and their mentees in the form of written lab manuals.

4.3 Job Talk

In academia, a Job Talk is the centerpiece of the interview process for a tenure-track faculty position. It is a formal presentation (typically 45 to 60 minutes long, followed by a Q&A session) where a job finalist presents their research to the entire department hosting the interview.

• Find your Dream job – An amazing guide to help you identify your career goals and navigate your post-graduation job hunt.
• Faculty job talks: Tips from Faculty – Direct, insider advice from current MIT professors sharing exactly what hiring committees are looking for when you step up to the podium.

4.4 Mentoring

• National Mentoring Resource Center — An excellent hub providing evidence-based practices and tools to foster stronger, more effective mentoring relationships.
• Faculty Advancing Inclusive Mentoring — Framework strategies and resources designed to cultivate equity and support diverse student populations.
• Supervising PhD Students: A practical guide and toolkit — An actionable guide packed with strategies for effectively guiding, tracking, and supporting doctoral candidates.
• Resources for Writing and Requesting Recommendation Letters — A handy collection of templates and best practices for both requesting and drafting reference letters.
• The faculty-to-faculty mentorship experience: a survey on challenges and recommendations for improvements — A comprehensive survey study highlighting the unique hurdles and potential solutions for peer mentoring among university faculty.
• Avoiding Gender Bias in References** — A quick poster outlining how to avoid common traps rooted in unconscious gender bias when writing recommendation letters.

4.5 Surviving Academia

• How to be a happy academic by Clark & Sousa — A fantastic book focused on maintaining work-life balance, managing time, and finding genuine joy in an academic career.
• Successful research supervision by Anne Lee — A practical text exploring different models of supervision to help advisors guide graduate researchers toward success.