Research Reflections on rkempe’s blog

(Computer-)Scientific Abstracts, As Analyzed by a Confused Undergrad

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 19:42:17 -0400

I recently decided I wanted try presenting my work at an academic conference, so I had to write and submit an abstract for my proposed presentation. The problem, of course, was that I had no idea how to write a scientific abstract, which was a bit of a problem. Most of the advice I received and could find online was too vague for my taste, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and deconstruct some abstracts to see how those authors did it. And I’m really glad I did, because it was very enlightening.

Quick Thoughts From the First Academic Conference I Attended (Like, a Year Ago)

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:39:19 -0400

I think the best thing to do as an undergrad at a conference is to be observant, since it’s pretty low-stakes at that point. Part of doing this is to see how academics interact to see whether or not you want to do this. What do people wear, how do they speak, what do they talk about, etc.

If you can, ask questions of the speakers after talks! Asking good questions during sessions is powerful (it gets you noticed!)¹

There seems to be a rough heuristic that you have to be a decent-ish speaker to become a professor.² (Virtually all of the professors I listened to were strong speakers; the grad students and post docs were a mixed bag.)

If you can, introduce yourself to people and join conversations; try to fully be a participant.

What Doing My First (Short) Math Lecture Taught Me

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 13:02:46 -0400

For context, these are some things I learned in the process of putting together and delivering a guest lecture to a first-year discrete math course last summer. The talk was about the research I was doing at the time, and I was allotted about half an hour for the presentation. Again, I meant to write and post this last year, but clearly that didn’t happen.

Lessons I Learned During My Undergraduate Research Internship

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 23:37:43 -0400

I really meant to put this list up sometime last fall… whoops. (This is yet another incredibly overdue article.) Anyway, here are a whole bunch of things I learned while attempting to “do research” last summer, whatever that means. The big theme here is to make life easier for future you, who will have to wrangle together your several months of chaos and exploration into a rigorous and coherent narrative. Present you can help by being organized and breaking things down into smaller, documentable steps.

You Need to Be Proactive

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 11:29:39 -0400

One of the things that has been repeatedly drilled into me over the past year or so is the fact that if you want people to do things for you, you’re most likely going to have to harass them. (I don’t mean literal harassment, by the way – please don’t commit a criminal offense and say I encouraged you.) This is true especially when working with highly busy people like managers and professors. If you want something, you can’t just assume they’ll intuit that and give it to you – you have to ask (and assume they’ll forget, then ask them again). If you need them to do something for you, you’ll need to remind them, and inform them of the deadline, likely multiple times. Everyone has their own problems to worry about and the thing you need might not be top of mind. The burden of remembering is on you.

Some Things I Learned From Writing My First Research Report

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 20:24:12 -0400

Last summer, I was tasked with writing a report about the research I completed and submitting it to my supervisor by the end of the summer. I, of course, had never done this kind of writing before, so I learned several lessons. The hard way. The learning process was super painful, but it did come in handy when I had to write two other research reports in my classes last fall. Here are a few of the lessons I learned.

Research Papers Shouldn’t Be Read in Order; or, How to Read a Research Paper

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 13:44:15 -0500

I just finished a blog post where I discuss things I’ve recently learned about how to read research papers. I almost included this as a point in that post, but I think it’s important enough to warrant its own article.

Here’s the idea: you absolutely should not be reading the sections of a research paper in order.

It took me a while to learn this one – I can’t remember if I first read this advice somewhere, if someone told it to me, or if I reverse-engineered it from advice I got about how to write papers. It doesn’t matter which one came first, really – my point is that I only found this out in a roundabout way through googling and trial and error and harassing people with questions.

Research Reflections: On Reading (Math and Math-Adjacent) Academic Papers

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 23:51:14 -0500

Last summer, I spent a good chunk of my time doing an undergraduate research project during which I worked on a project largely by myself, under the supervision of a math professor. I then took a graduate level course in a related area this fall, where I investigated the theoretical underpinning behind my summer project. I had no idea what I was doing or what I had gotten myself into. As a result, I learned a lot, and tried to keep note of the various things I had learned. This is the first installment, on what I learned from trying to read math and theoretical CS papers.

How to Watch a Technical Research Talk (or Workshop, or Tutorial) Recording (and Make the Most of It)

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 22:13:50 -0500

When I’m trying to approach a highly specialized topic for the first time, one of my tactics is to find a recording of a research-geared workshop about it and watch it as my introductory crash course. The benefits of this are as follows:

I am learning about the subject from (hopefully) a credible expert in the field.
Workshops and talks usually try to be self-contained, which means basic background info will likely be given and I won’t have to pore through 10 different research papers, searching for an obscure definition, in vain.
Talks typically have the benefit of including visuals and informal intuition conveyed by the speaker, which generally won’t make it into academic papers, because they’re not rigorous. However, the visuals and informal statements and intuition are invaluable for gaining a better understanding of the information.
The speaker will generally include a bibliography and mention related works, which is a great jumping off point for further investigation and saves me from having to figure out what the seminal sources are myself.

However, there are also some drawbacks: