The Art of Being a Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students and their Mentors / Edition 1

by Roel Snieder, Ken Larner

Overview

This is a hands-on guide for graduate students and young researchers wishing to perfect the practical skills needed for a successful research career. By teaching junior scientists to develop effective research habits, the book helps to make the experience of graduate study a more efficient and rewarding one. This book is an outgrowth of the notes for the graduate course, "The Art of Science," taught by the authors at Colorado School of Mines and highly rated and appreciated by students over the years. A sample curriculum, which parallels the curriculum followed in the authors' course, is available in the book as Appendix B, and as an online resource. This sample is offered as a possible starting point for instructors in graduate schools wanting to teach a similar course at their university.

Topics covered in the book include: choosing a research topic, department, and advisor; making workplans; the ethics of research; using scientific literature; perfecting oral and written communication; publishing papers; writing proposals; managing time effectively; and planning a scientific career and applying for jobs in research and industry. The wealth of advice is invaluable to students, junior researchers and mentors in all fields of science, engineering, and the humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521743525
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/23/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Roel Snieder holds the Keck Foundation Endowed Chair of Basic Exploration Science at the Colorado School of Mines. In 1984 he received a Masters degree in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Princeton University, and in 1987 a Ph.D. in seismology from Utrecht University. For this work he received the Vening Meinesz award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. In 1988 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Paris VI, and was appointed in 1989 as associate professor at Utrecht University. In 1993 he was promoted to full professor of seismology at Utrecht University, where from 1997-2000 he served as Dean of the Faculty of Earth Sciences. In 2000 he was elected as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He is also the author of A Guided Tour of Mathematical Methods: For the Physical Sciences (also published by Cambridge University Press). He has served on the editorial boards of Geophysical Journal International, Inverse Problems, and Reviews of Geophysics.

Ken Larner is University Emeritus Professor of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). He received the degree of geophysical engineer from CSM in 1960 and a Ph.D. in geophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970. During his final nine years with Western Geophysical Company (1970–1988), he was vice president for geophysical research, leaving to become the Charles Henry Green Professor of Exploration Geophysics at CSM (1988–2004). He served as president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) in 1988–89. In 1996 he received the SEG's highest award, the Maurice Ewing Gold Medal, and in 2003 the Kapitsa Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. What is science?; 3. Choices, choices, choices; 4. The adviser and thesis committee; 5. Questions drive research; 6. Giving direction to your work; 7. Turning challenges into opportunities; 8. Ethics of research; 9. Using the scientific literature; 10. Communication; 11. Publishing a paper; 12. Time management; 13. Writing proposals; 14. The scientific career; 15. Applying for a job; 16. Concluding remarks; Appendix A. Further reading; Appendix B. A sample curriculum; Appendix C. The Refer and BibTeX format; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"… a must for any graduate student.’ ‘I enjoyed your approach to academic planning, problem solving and personal development. I will certainly recommend your class to other students!’ ‘… I learned a lot of things that will carry into my future research."
Comments from students on Professor Snieder and Professor Larner’s course

"… this book will be an important resource for students considering entering careers in science, and I would definitely encourage students to read it."
Kurt Haas, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

"… conveys a healthy balance between research as a passion and as a practical reality. It contains a wealth of positive and useful advice that should be of great benefit to young researchers."
Frits van Oostrom, Utrecht University, Emeritus President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

"… so full of useful, considered and well-balanced advice that … the main thought provoked by it is 'why wasn't it around when I was a graduate student?' … littered with relevant and interesting quotes from a wide range of sources … the chapter on communication should be mandatory reading for all scientists, young or old."
The Leading Edge

"Graduate students will find [this book] particularly useful and will likely consult it throughout their academic experience and beyond; it will be valuable as well to undergraduate students as they consider graduate school ... It should be an excellent guide for graduate school mentors, particularly those who endeavor to offer more comprehensive training to their students."
Renee Diehl, Physics Today

"...valuable to students and their mentors in all sciences, hard or soft, and engineering. ...Recommended."
CHOICE

"If only I had seen this book when I did my Ph.D. Or when I started supervising graduate students. … This book discusses choosing a university and an advisor, then moves onto choosing a topic and asking questions to drive one's research. It covers such topics as research ethics, reading the literature, writing papers and the thesis, time management, skilful communications, writing research proposals, looking for a position at the end of the degree, and much more. It's unlikely that the authors will have omitted anything that anyone might ever have wondered about being a graduate student. … I strongly recommend this book. I believe that every potential graduate student or mentor should read it. Reading it ‘late’ is better than not at all, but the greatest benefit will come if you can read it before you start in your role."
International Statistical Review

"The writing is approachable and conversational, with a deliberate, endearing use of the feminine pronoun to describe the graduate student. In short, this "hands-on guide" is a solid reference for an undergraduate or early graduate, to be consulted as needed throughout her graduate career."
Susannah Moore Dickerson, PhD Candidate in physics, Stanford University for CSWP & COM Gazette

From the Publisher