Resources
Designing websites requires a lot of time. So far this section is quite basic. I hope that in the future, it will get more useful.
Resources for research
Writing scientific documents:
- The first thing is to know how to write in English. The Elements of Style is a short book that will show you the way (a well-known professor, who is also an excellent person, says that it is a piece of art).
- The second thing is to know how to write scientific documents. There are many tips and recommendations in the web. Among the best are the ones at Prof. Bertsekas' website.
- The third thing is to know how to prepare slides for a scientific presentation. I have not found a good website for this yet. Please, feel free to contact me if you have any suggestion.
Software that is useful:
- Matlab and Mathematica are a must, but I assume that you have those two. (If you do not have Mathematica, Woldfram has an online integrator).
- CVX is a tool that makes convex optimization easy to program. It works over Matlab and can be installed in less than two minutes. Prof. Boyd has a very nice introductory tutorial. If you visit his webpage and do not know much about convex optimization, take a look at his book.
- I am a proud user of Windows, so that Winedt, Miktex, Ghostcript and Ghostview are a must too. To type latex formulas in PowerPoint you can use either Texpoint or Iguanatex (free).
- Managing references is a mess!! What about using a reference manager? RefWorks is good enough for me, but you can take a look at their online tutorial and decide by yourself. If you are very interested in these things and want to make sure that you use the software that fits best your needs, you can visit the web of, e.g., the UoM Library, for additional information.
Useful links
- IEEE Signal Processing Society.
- IEEE Communications Society.
- IEEE Computer Science Society.
- Upcoming (SPCOM) conferences (Prof. Heath's list).
- Webs on optimization: convexoptimization.com and its wiki.
- Webs on network science: Prof. Barabasi's Lab (make sure you take a look at their NetSci book) and Complex Networks (Cx-Nets) a webpage that collects the work of several groups working on network science (including A. Vespignani's). You will find papers, tutorials, upcoming conferences, supporting material, applications to draw networks. Take a look!
Resources for teaching
Most books today have online supporting material which can be freely accessed. In fact, many books are also available online. If not, you can always use Amazon (I am a proud premium member) and Google Books to take a look at them. Math and Science e-books are on the rise, but they are not easy to read yet (and annotations are a problem!!)
Online courses can be very useful. If you are interested, you can begin by visiting the one who started the revolution OpenCourse (MIT). These other two compile many of the good courses available AcademicEarth or OpenCulture. If you are also interested in seminars and talks, visit Video Lectures If you do not find what you are looking for, you can just use google to find the course (but do not forget to check what other people say about it). BTW, if you are interested in online education, check edX and Coursera (I took a course and I managed to finish it!).
Other stuff
One of the things that I have fun with is American politics. Two websites (blogs) that I read everyday are: FiveThirtyEight and The Fix (@WP).
You can also take a look at the Hall of Innovation at Prof. Lozano's website.
I almost forgot! If you are a Ph.D. student (or you are thinking about that), you should visit Ph.D. comics.
