I work hard and I expect my students to do the same. But the reason I work hard is that I like what I do...I do not think of what I do as work. Again, I expect my students to do the same. If you really enjoy robotics -- if you really have a passion for engineering -- if it's hard to distinguish your work from play, why not immerse yourself in it? I love to play and my work is play! I get paid to play -- the greatest job in the world! If you are not excited by the work I do, don't ask for an assistantship or to work in my lab. You will be better served by another advisor.

I expect my students to explore engineering and challenge themselves. I do not want students who wait for me to tell them what to do. I am an advisor. I give advice and direction, and I give detailed instructions when I think it is important, but it is not rewarding for me to list step-by-step instructions for mundane tasks. I have many students and it is generally easier, faster and more exciting for me to do the work myself than to have to explain every step. The exploration is part of the process. My goal is to teach my students to come up with ideas I never thought of and to learn to recognize the good research ideas from the not-so-good. Research is a journey, not a destination. The key to good research is exploring the path and recognizing when a fork in the road represents a good opportunity. As grad students, you will make many mistakes. Failure is the most important part of knowledge discovery because it reveals new and unexpected things. I do not want my students to avoid failure or to fear it -- but I do expect them to learn from it! Same is true for undergraduates.

I don't hire non-researchers. If you are a master's student or an undergrad, you are still expected to be researchers. You are still expected to be independent investigators: to explore and to be curious. You must be willing to run with your assignments -- own them -- completing them quickly and thoroughly, while simultaneoulsy letting your own curiosity discover new, better ideas. Although the expected level of performance varies from undergrad to PhD candidate, I am only looking for students who are willing to explore the unknown as peers and colleagues, not simply as hired hands looking for a way to fund their education.

As a Principal Investigator, I have contractual obligations to my sponsors. I hire students to complete certain aspects of the research I have been contracted to perform. I also hire students to explore new areas of research for future contracts. I do not hire students to get degrees. Degrees are simply part of the compensation package offered to students. You are free to get a degree on your own: you can pay your money, perform as expected, and get a degree without doing research. If you enter into a contract with me (in the form of an assistantship or hourly job), you are taking on a new responsibility. As a grad student, you are committing, first and foremost, to completing high quality research. You are making a conscious choice to make high quality research your top priority and to disseminate it. The degree becomes secondary; merely a perk for a job well done. (One that will bring higher salaries and better positions!) In fact, as a PhD student, if you don't perform good research, you likely will not get your degree. I will help guide you as much as I can, but I require you to find your way and to ask for help when you need it. If you are uncomfortable with this choice, do not accept a paid assistantship from me. I am willing to give you advice for nothing, but accepting pay is accepting high responsibility.

No researcher can be successful in a vacuum. You are expected to "stand on the shoulders of giants!" This means you must be willing and eager to learn what other people are doing; capitalize on their knowledge and learn from their mistakes. (This is particularly true of peers in my lab.) You must read relevant conference papers and journals, making comparisons to your own work. To do this, you must explore, on your own, various conference proceedings and publications to learn where the relevant papers are. You are expected to hunt down citations of other work in those papers to discover what other researchers think is relevant. You are expected to explain to your peers what other work is being done in your area and why your work is different (and better!) You are also expected to share your knowledge with other researchers through conference and journal publications of your own. Writing is our chief form of dissemination.

Publications are an important quantitative measure of research performance. Both the quantity and quality of peer-reviewed publications says something about your research productivity. These are fuzzy measures, to be sure, but they both have their niche and they indicate acceptance by your community. As a rule of thumb, I expect master's candidates to have at least one peer-reviewed journal publication to successfully graduate. Each journal paper is typically built upon the experience and feedback gained from 2 or 3 conference papers, so plan accordingly. It can take 3 to 4 months to get feedback on each conference paper. Some journal reviews can take a year or more to receive. PhD candidates are expected to have three peer-reviewed journal publications to graduate, so plan for a lot of conference papers! I expect my graduate students (MS and PhD) to want to publish and to formulate a plan to achieve or exceed the expected level of publications. To do so, YOU MUST START EARLY! Practice! Practice! Practice! Good writing can be learned!

Famous sci-fi author Ray Bradbury claimed to have written something every single day, since he was 12. It is said he told aspiring authors to "write a million words, then throw them away. Then you will be ready to write." [The advice is based on a quote from fantasy colleague, David Eddings.]

Conference papers are good practice for journal papers and are great opportunities for feedback from your peers. In all cases, it is expected that students develop an appreciation for quality in both the work performed and the presentation of the work. It is vitally important that all students develop an appreciation for American and international standards for academic integrity in publications, as well. This is gained through reading others' publications and discussing papers with your peers. It is also absolutely mandatory for students to participate in lab meetings and to work collegially with your student peers according to my expectations. Finally, while we have flexible work hours in the lab, everyone is expected to spend significant time in the lab, itself. This is important to build comaraderie with your labmates, contributes to the "Collective Genius" (see the book of the same name in the lab), allows you to give tours and be an "ambassaddor" of the school and the lab, and is part of the contract we have with Purdue to justify the space. During critical times, this may mean spending time in the lab every day of the week. If you are unwilling to do any of these things, you are not fit nor eligible for an assistantship from me.

The flexible work hours also means meeting deadlines is your responsibility and is a condition of employment. I think paper deadlines provide conveninent and practical milestones to maintain focus when faced with the open-ended task of a "research journey." If I want you to meet a paper deadline, I expect you to have a complete draft ready 2 weeks before the deadline, to get meaningful feedback and to ensure it meets grant requirements. But I will treat you as adult researchers and will let you manage your own time, as I do mine. However, paper deadlines are often immovable for the best venues! If you mismanage your time or you choose to operate in a manner that prevents you from finishing the paper ahead of schedule, I naturally assume that you have also chosen to abandon any personal desires and commitments to yourself or others in order to meet the deadline. Be mindful that many international deadlines range from Pacific Time to "Anywhere on Earth," which is from 3:00 to 7:00 am at Purdue. If you are unwilling to do this, you are not fit nor eligible for an assistantship from me.

Selling your work is important. During my own PhD program at Carnegie Mellon, Prof. Lee Weiss (eminent computer scientist) used to ask PhD candidates what the most important thing they learned from their research experience, besides the technical content. The most common answer was, "The importance of selling their work."

Updated: May 10, 2023

Notes on Senior Design