Research experience, Q&A, and AMAs

Questions that look simple deserve careful answers when encountered for the first time. Here are accounts of contacting faculty, reading papers, and developing judgment, alongside questions students ask directly in communities.

The main route is How to get started in research; practical outreach advice is under contact and collaboration.

Xiaoguang Han: What Makes Good Research

Han's post on Xiaohongshu contains 18 images.

• Original post
• Reference page providing the original link
• An earlier essay: Thoughts on Research: a Long, Candid Account.

Starting, mentoring, and communicating

• Michael Nielsen: Why are research skills so seldom taught? — why students are often expected to acquire research skills on their own.
• Jason Eisner: How to work with a professor — communication, records, asking for help, and collaboration.
• Stanford: Emailing faculty — writing a first email.
• Wenhao Chai: Junior FAQ — questions from beginners.
• Chris Olah: Research taste — judgment and practicing it.
• Andrej Karpathy: A Survival Guide to a PhD — doctoral experience and research advice from 2016.
• S. Keshav: Research hints — questions, records, and making progress.
• Andrej Karpathy: A Recipe for Training Neural Networks — training, diagnosis, and experiments.

Community questions and AMAs

• Reddit: How do you read a computer science research paper? — real beginner questions, including the experience of lacking mentors and lab resources.
• Reddit: What should an undergraduate do to build a strong… — an undergraduate asking about research preparation.
• Reddit: NeurIPS 2022 AMA — anonymous participants answer questions about research and experience.
• Reddit: Geoffrey Hinton AMA — historical questions on research and innovation.