It’s Christmas! Time for celebration! Time to write your EGU abstract! Time to unwrap your presents! And for some, time to start writing yor PhD dissertation! Rudoplh is one of the lucky ones! But he has a question: How should I start on my PhD dissertation? Dear Rudy, What better time to get started on your dissertation than during the Christmas holidays? I recommend to start writing during ...[Read More]
In June 2020 I made (my first!) blog post for the EGU blog on the topic of teaching, describing what I learned by for the first time teaching a full class on my own. It was at the time when teaching suddenly had to shift from in person to online teaching. Last quarter I was teaching again, but now the situation was the reverse. We had to move from online teaching back to in person teaching. In thi ...[Read More]
Iiris is a bit indecisive. On the one hand, she wants to get as much science as she can into her thesis. On the other, she wants to actually finish her thesis in time, before unemployment inevitably comes knocking. She sighs: Should I do that one extra research project for my PhD, or just start writing the thesis? Dear Iiris, Definitely go for the extra research project. One cannot have too many. ...[Read More]
The first hybrid AGU meeting has everything one expects from the AGU – a long line to the registration desk and, a mile walk between the two ends of the conference hall, a large exhibit hall with NASA and their most-desirable calendars at the nexus, and our favorite poster hall to “network” with others – but with an added confusion, palatable emptiness, and no beer in sight! This week is a short b ...[Read More]
In a previous post I gave a cristal-clear explanation on what to write in a “teaching statement”, an essential document in your tenure-track application package. In this post I shall offer invaluable insight on an even more obscure document required for academic job hunters, by answering Inessa’s question: What should you include in your “diversity, equity, inclusion statem ...[Read More]
This week Dunyu Liu a computational scientist at the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, shares his tips, tricks, and best practices for painless code development. The scientific world is becoming more and more computational, with numerical methods and models being critical to many disciplines such as geodynamics, earthquake dynamics and climate modelling to name a few. M ...[Read More]
It’s the first time Stella is organizing a session at the upcoming, 2022 EGU general assembly. Tantalized yet nervous due to the possibility of a forced merger with another, uninspiring session, she exclaims: How do I get people to submit abstracts to my session? Dear Stella, Why don’t you write a post on this very blog? Oh wait, you’re not the first one to do that. Ugh. How uncr ...[Read More]
Observing the Earth’s changing surface is the only thing solid Earth scientists can do; we simply cannot drill deep enough into the Earth and look at the processes that occur at very high temperatures and pressures. We must combine surface measurements from various disciplines to infer that specific surface imprints are caused by specific processes at depth. The sinking of oceanic plates into the ...[Read More]