Research Resources for Students

• PhD Starter Kit

• Join Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (it's free for students!)

• How to be a mathematician

• How to not lose all hope when writing

• How to choose a research problem

• Gaining and keeping focus

• Handbook for math TAs (and graduate students)

Use version control - Git if you're working with me. Seriously. For LaTeX, for Matlab, for absolutely anything in text format. Extra points if you back up online. Accidents happen. Things break.

• Tutorial for version control with Git for academics

• Matlab-to-Python dictionary

• How to use Git

• Using Command Line

• LaTeX WikiBook - the shortcut to everything you need to use LaTeX (for a while)

• How to Write a Paper (Mike Ashby)

• How to write consistently boring scientific literature

• For style and grammar, start with Strunk and White (buy it!), especially if English is your 2nd language (as it is for me); these are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules.

• Arieh Iserles on writing papers in mathematics

Once you go beyond 4-5 papers, it becomes unwieldly to manipulate PDFs directly, especially if you are additionally writing a manuscript that references literature. My choice of reference manager is Zotero, because it is free and portable.

• Intro to Zotero

• Zotero and BibTeX

• Zotero videos for beginners

• Documents for Beginners

Poster presentation involves a visual (a poster) displayed among othe poster submissions. You typically give your presentation over and over, with 2-5 people at the time, in a conversational manner.

For most purposes, posters created in Powerpoint or Keynote are good enough. If you are putting a lot of equations into your poster, then perhaps using LaTeX is preferred

• Wonderful guide on posters by Justin L. Matthews

• Posters and Presentations for Mathematicians

• Posters printed on fabric - easy to transport

• Free poster templates (36“ x 48” is the most common size)

My suggestion is to use Keynote (Mac), PowerPoint (Win), or Google Slides for most talks that have an occasional equation. For notation-heavier presentations, the obvious choice is LaTeX with Beamer.

• Demos of Do-and-Donts for delivering talks

• How to give a talk (PDF)

• Top Ten Ways to Lose an Audience (PDF)

• Tell Them a Story (JPG)

Graduate students should have a research website. Nothing too fancy is needed at this point, but a bit about your research, courses you have taught, etc. is helpful, especially if you're considering career in academia.

• My website is built using jemdoc. It is extremely easy to use effectively.