Beginner's Guide

Read before you Leap

For the duration of your project you will become part of the MAVENs group. I discuss here our research mission, our way of working, the tools we use and provide some links to key scientific papers that relate to our research. This guide is always a work in progress and each project will have its own goals and dynamics. Still, generally speaking, I would appreciate if you have a look at the links and think about the issues that I raise here. Talk to me when you have questions or ideas to improve this document.

Research

Mission

Energy is the cornerstone of modern civilization. However, the present fossil-fuel based energy is a concern for two reasons:

Its depleting source.
It is a major source of pollution.

Another major source of air pollution in the form of green house gas is our cooling technology, that uses the Joule-Thomson effect.

We know these are not good for us, but we don’t have an alternative right now. Can we have a more environment-friendly source of energy? Can we get our house cool with an AC and keep the milk fresh in our fridge and not pollute the air we breathe in?

We thrive to give a materialistic solution to the problem:

We work on suitable materials for splitting water to get hydrogen out of it, as hydrogen is a very good source of energy.
We work on magnetocaloric properties of materials, which follows the same Carnot’s cycle but instead of pressure on the vapour, here we apply magnetic field in suitable materials.

Besides that, We also apply machine learning methods to get benefited from the huge work already done in this field.

Methodology

I will generally ask you to work on problems that I have not solved myself and you will not be able to find a packaged solution on the internet. Also, I may not be able to provide solutions to your questions. Actually, there may not even be a solution. Accept it, you’re doing research now. Find a simpler question that will put you on the path to an answer. Doing research is a continuous process of adaptation in both posing the questions and proposing solutions. In other words, if you can’t find the answer, change the question! Start with the simplest questions and simplest solution proposals and work your way towards the more relevant issues. For further information, please have a look at Hamming’s lecture on ‘You and Your Research’, video (1995) or html (1986), and think about how this relates to your work.

Expectations and Deliverables

Your project will likely be embedded as a building block in our research plan. I expect a professional attitude which includes that you conduct yourself as a team player. Be aware that this is your project, so you are responsible for keeping an eye on departmental regulations and deadlines. Stick to deadlines and promises or inform me ahead of time when plans cannot be maintained.

Understanding own specialization
- You should (strive to) have a deep understanding of the field/topic that you work on. A good way to get feedback on this goal is to explain to others what you work on.
Research skills
- It’s not enough to be smart and walk around commenting on the world around you. You should also ‘get things done’. Essentially, this issue is about your skills to navigate through your project by posing the right research questions (see the comments above on methodology).
Execution
- This issue is about professionalism. You need to adhere to strict principles of academic honesty and contribute to technical discussions in the team. Your technical opinion is always appreciated but play the ball, not the person.
Reporting
- All your ideas are worth nothing to society if they remain locked up inside your head. As an engineer, you must communicate your ideas well, both to technical and more general audiences.

If you are from another department, please find out and notify me of which departmental rules and regulations apply to you.

Workflow and Tools

First, at MAVENs, we proudly use open-source software. FOSS So, it is better for you to know a priory that your MS Windows is of no use. This might be a big cultural shock for you, but you need to know that these are a list of few things we use as our daily driver:

Linux

Yes, first and foremost, you have to have a linux installation in your laptop. This is a free and open source OS. We, the MAVENs generally use the fedora distribution, but you can use other distro as well…as long as it is Linux.

Though, you can do most of your regular work using the mouse, for your research work you have to get yourself comfortable with terminal and vim editor.

Spaces

Ideas are usually discussed in a space chatroom. Space stores a record of the chats, so our discussions are automatically documented for later use, such as getting newcomers in the team up to speed.

Git and Github

We use the git version control system to track the various developments of our code base and we organize our projects in repositories at github. It is important to become a smooth user of both git and github. We use git and github also to track all documents that we write ourselves, including your thesis report.

LaTeX

The project’s final report and intermittent presentations should be written in LaTeX. You must get familiar with LaTeX early during your project, because we start writing the final report very soon after the start of the project.

Zotero

After you join the MAVENs, you will also get access to our literature collection that we store online in a Zotero repository. This will help you get an overview of all relevant papers in our field.

Reporting Tips

Start working on the final report in the first month of the project. In particular, if you follow Magnusson’s advice to write backwards (start with the conclusions!), then you can turn report writing into a powerful research tool that reveals your next steps to pursue. I strongly encourage you to have a look at Simon Peyton Jones’ lectures on writing a paper (video and slides) and giving a talk (video and slides).

In general, if you work on a MSc thesis project or higher, I’d like you to make a (final) report update at least once a month. The final report should be in the form of a publishable IEEE journal paper. So, working on a project implies a monthly refinement of the paper until it’s ready for submission (or project time runs out). Use the process of incremental report refinement as a tool to discover what you need to work on next.

Your First Month

What should you focus on during the first month of your project?

In the first week:

Copy and paste in an email addressed to me the following text:

<—BEGIN EMAIL TEXT—>
I hereby declare that, besides and on top of SRMIST’s standard codes of conduct and rules, I will
maintain the confidentiality of all methods, data, results, and intellectual property.
dedicate
(For the project students:) minimum of ten hours per week to the project prior to the final semester, and forty hours per week during the final semester.
(For the phd students:) minimum of forty hours per week towards my project.
Adhere to the project timelines and milestones
Failure to adhere to this commitment may result in the withdrawal of supervisory support by Dr Banerjee.
– signed, your name and date
<—END EMAIL TEXT—>

Send me your CV and transcript by email
Provide me with your email address, tel number, and a photograph (for inclusion on web site, team presentation in slides etc)

Then, start your project:

You need to get your project goals sharp. Therefore, I suggest that you write your first draft for the project’s final report by the end of the first month, with focus on the conclusions (see previously mentioned reporting advice by Magnusson). This first-draft edition of the final paper may find dual use as your project proposal. We are well-aware that the actual project plan may change as the project unrolls due to unforeseen obstacles. Your final evaluation will therefore be based on balancing the realization of project goals versus your creativity in coping with difficult spots.
Next to the final goals, you need to understand your starting point. Please get familiar with our existing code base (at github) that you will be working with. You should be able to understand (y)our code enough to make a change confidently. This also means that you’ll have to start training yourself how to code in Julia and how to work with git (and github). Working with Julia, git and github is a process that you will gradually improve upon, but don’t postpone training yourself on these tools. If you have no experience with version control software, this may feel like a burden in the beginning, but it will become a major asset (for the rest of your career) once you make it a habit to record changes by version control.

Once you got your final goals and starting point clear, you can make an attempt at a project plan. The project plan is basically a list of intermediate goals (called: milestones) that you intend to complete on your way from starting point to final goals.

Finally, I will give you some literature specifically tailored for your project. You should start training yourself in Bayesian modeling and how to do Bayesian inference through message passing in graphical models.

Let me know if this guide helps you and feel free to suggest updates. Good luck and welcome to the team! We look much forward to working with you.