Hacking Academia

Rejection *always* sucks... but how it sucks evolves... After a brutal start to the year in terms of rejection after rejection, I wanted to post a Hacking Academia video on the nature of rejection, and how it can evolve, in a professional academic and research career.  In the video, I cover the transition from rejection feeling very personal early in your career, to rejection generating concern ov...

A #PhD can be an amazing journey for many, but it's also inevitably a time of significant struggle(s). What that struggle is can take a near-infinite variety of forms, from health issues to relationship breakups, and from home sickness to mental health. But beyond these relatively well known challenges, there are other types of struggles that affect a significant proportion of PhD candidates,...

It's Friday afternoon, #CVPR2025 rebuttals are almost done thanks to amazing colleagues, and I have a massive backlog of #HackingAcademia topics to get to, both requested and from my own list. So the first 2025 Hacking Academia video (and the 44th overall) is on: The Importance of Timing ⏱️ ‼️  "Timing is everything" they say, and timing and cycles can play a key role in professiona...

All #PhD recruitment approaches vary by professor, but there are some common themes that are fairly typical throughout. In my newest #HackingAcademia video I shed some light on the #PhD candidate shortlisting and interview process we currently use, in the hope to demystify it for potential PhD candidates. Some key points I cover include: ⭐ that what we're looking for is just as much about fi...

Last week at the 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (#IROS2024) in Abu Dhabi, Cyrill Stachniss and I were invited to give a tutorial on "Writing Papers People Love to Read" by Julie Stephany Berrio Perez on behalf of the IEEE Young Professionals. Now, to give a proper, comprehensive treatment of all the ins and outs of paper writing really requires s...

In  academic and research careers, so much can feel so far out of your control. But there's one way I've found very useful, both for myself and those I mentor, to pull back a little bit more control of your fate, and that is the concept of: 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞 And that's the topic of today's Hacking Academia video and podcast - the 40th in the series!!! 🎉🎉...

It's Friday, and, given my life currently, it's a great time to talk about pushing to, and beyond, your limits, and managing as best you can the associated risk of burnout. For a while now, and likely for a while into the future, my professional career has been largely focused on two amazing, potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunities: one in the strategic research space, and one in th...

It's late on a Friday afternoon here in Brisbane, so it's time for a fun story about a prank my PhD labmates played on me two decades ago, and how it unexpectedly led to my most highly cited and awarded research work. 📚🤓 At the time, I was working on our  #RatSLAM system - a neurally-inspired robot mapping and navigation system that performed SLAM - Simultaneous Localization And Mappin...

𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐚!!! 👀📚 The concept of success rates (and by extension, rejection rates) is something that comes up a lot in research and academia. 🎓 Grant schemes and publication venues have typical success rates that you can easily find online, but these numbers can obscure how success rates can play out at an individual level. 📉📈  Likew...

Of all the advice that is dispensed in academia, one of the most varied is about whether you should focus narrowly and deeply, or diversify and broaden your repertoire. The reason for this variety of suggested approach is of course, circumstance and the individual: the ecosystem you find yourself in, and your personal aspirations, risk appetite and other factors determine what is "best for yo...

Tips for Writing Compelling Grants

I'm excited to release my first Hacking Academia video and podcast for 2024, "Flying Close to the Sun... and Why it Can Be Exhausting!". The basic premise is that if you're pushing hard in your career, you're going to inevitably land some opportunities and responsibilities that stretch or are even outside your capability and capacity... cue a bunch of on-the-job learning a...

📌 (0:00) Opening Scene 📌 (0:09) Introduction to Lifestyle Crafting Work Activities  📌 (0:43) For People Who Want to Be a Bit More Deliberative  📌 (1:07) A Process for "Just Say No" 📌 (1:21) Career Relevance and Applicable Scenarios 📌 (1:43) Check Your Assumptions 📌 (1:55) Don't Pursue Assumed Requirements Irrationally 📌 (2:25) Don't Take On Obviously Risky Endeavours 📌...

 For those who travel for work, one of the challenges they must grapple with is how to balance the work that they would normally be doing back at home, with the activities associated with the trip. Here I highlight some of the key concepts, tips and tricks to pull it off, and highlight some of the pitfalls to be careful of.  🕒 Timestamps are as follows: 📌 (0:00) Introduction to Working Whilst Tr...

It's conference paper writing season for #roboticists ! With the 2024 #IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ( #ICRA #ICRA2024 ) deadline just around the corner, I recently ran through a walkthrough of the typical structure and components of a robotics conference paper with our research group. The Title, Abstract, Introduction, Background, Approach, Experimental Setup, Resu...

I've spent much of my adult career in roles where I was on the younger side what is "typical": this has led to a range of interesting experiences, learnings and insights. In this Hacking Academia video, I run through four key concepts relating to the experience of being relatively young for your career stage: ✳ Systems and work culture are not set up for people who are substantially...

In any research career where you are responsible for conducting or leading a program of innovative research, your success will depend on your ability to generate good research ideas – a process known as ‘ideation’. In your career, you may have already met or worked with researchers who seem to have a near infinite source of exciting ideas for research projects, or can come up with endless new idea...

Leadership... In my newest video, "Leadership Principles and Pitfalls", I delve deep into the core concepts, misconceptions, challenges and pitfalls of leadership. I cover misconceptions around leaders being the most eloquent or best at the activity they're leading and the whole nature versus nurture issue; the relationship between leadership and its less glorious partner management...

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door??? Just because you do great work, doesn't mean that work will have the impact and achieve the benefits it could. The chances of your contributions having the impact you desire will often also depend on your profile, and who knows what you're doing. In my latest video and podcast, "Public Profile Building: Why, Wh...

In professional careers we tend to focus a lot on what we're do at work - but what we do *outside* of work can be just as important. This is a well known phenomenon in other endeavours in life - for example in athletic endeavours it's not just the training, but the quality and quantity of recovery and sleep you get that's just as important. Taking breaks, both short and long, is a k...

Do you manage the discretionary budget for a large research group or centre? If yes, then you know budgeting can be a challenging yet crucial aspect of your work. ⠀ My most recent Hacking Academia release walks through the theory and practical aspects of budget management for research entities like a centre. In Part 1, we dive into key concepts that shape how you manage a budget, explore how fundi...

I’ve been meaning to get my thoughts on the recent developments and likely disruptive impacts of #Artificialntelligence into a video, and to do this free of any constraining context, as most of my keynotes, workshops etc. over the coming year will be specific to certain contexts or domains (e.g. #education, #tech etc.). So here it is: a free form video where I discuss why I think recent #AI develo...

So you’re writing a robotics conference paper? Here are some practical tips to maximize the clarity, specificity & overall quality of your paper, so it gets accepted into a top #robotics #conference venue like #ICRA or #IROS . Please reshare if you find it useful! Tips are available in both text form & video! Timestamps: 📌 0:00 (Introduction) 📌 0:08 (Types of Papers and Approach) 📌 1:12...