The Week in Review and 'The Craft of Scientific Writing'

The past week was one of the busiest in a long time. There were three very important events that took place: 1. My PhD committee meeting; 2. Meeting with our funding agency and all the PI’s (Principal Investigators) on the project and 3. Review of my first PhD paper from my Advisor.

Now, no 3. happened first and there was one thing I realized quickly after receiving the comments from my boss, and boy was it bleeding red, that I still could not claim to have conquered the domain of writing scientific articles’. Well, I was never under the impression that I had it all figured out but I thought I was definitely getting “there”, especially after that successful preliminary defense. But thanks to my Boss, I was brought back crashing to earth. I deserved it! Any way to cut a long story short, the entire week was spent adding, fine-tuning and reworking a good chunk of my ‘research paper’. Still some amount of work left to do and I hope to finish it by the middle of next week. The consolation is that the Boss liked the new look to the paper and thinks that the paper is improving! Always a good sign!

For any one reading this who wants to improve their Scientific Writing skills, here is a great book I recommend, which was gifted to me by my cousin last year: May be I need to re-read it myself :)

The Craft of Scientific Writing, by Michael Alley, 3rd Edition


I also spent a good chunk of my week working on two presentations. The first to my committee which fortunately was well received, lots of good feedback. Now, if there is one thing in this world I love to hear is ‘constructive criticism’. I don’t mind people ripping into me, so long as they tell me what would make my ideas/presentations/results etc. better. The other presentation to my funding agency with the other PI’s also went well; this unlike the previous presentation was not a one man’s show but a collective effort of a couple more students. I coordinated the presentation and everyone like it, so it was a great way to end the week.

Another eventful week coming up and I am gearing up for it. There is something about Sunday evening’s that I love when I get an opportunity to plan out my up coming week, I always feel good and think I get a head-start when the week begins Monday morning!

Good nite!

The Valuation of Technology

The title of the post is also the title of the book that was recommened to me recently. The book deals with 'Business and Financial Issues in R&D' and the author is Dr Peter Boer. I have only finished the preface and I already feel great about the info that I am gaining out of the book.

Here is a link for all those who might want to take a peek at the book. I was seriously debating on buying this book but fortunately the book turned up in our Engineering library.

Hopefully I should be able to attack this book with gusto once I finish the other book I recently started, "Snapshots from Hell" by Peter Robinson. I had a lot of MBA bloggers gushing about the book, but initial impression is that it is a decent book and the hype surrounding is misplaced. Just my take.

I have a PhD committee meeting coming up next week. I will be reviewing my past year's research effort for my committee and bringing them up to speed with my work. It should be interesting to get everyone's feedback and keep myself on track for graduating without too many surprises.

Till then....