Research Skills

CSC 595, Fall 2025

Lectures: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 11:30am - 12:20pm, CLE A320
Instructor: Nishant Mehta. Office hours: by appointment

There is no textbook for this course

About the course
This course is all about how to do great research. You will learn fundamental research skills, including learning how to recognize great research, the traits of great researchers, how to review papers and think criticall about ideas, techniques for coming up with good research problems and techniques for tackling those problems, strategies for creative thinking, the value of cross-disciplinary approaches to research, and how to write great papers and prepare/give great talks. But that's not all. You also will learn skills for time management, how to stay motivated, and (very importantly) how to have fun during graduate school. This course is closely based on a heavily refined course from Nick Feamster and Alexander Gray. You can find their course materials here.

Project
Details about the project

In the schedule below, any information about future lectures is just a rough guide and might change.

Lectures
Date Topics Lecture Slides and Additional reading Notes, Resources
9/3 Course Overview Lecture 1
9/5 Why do a PhD? Lecture 2 Mini-Assignment 1 released (due Wed 9/10)
9/9 and 9/10 Recognizing Great Ideas Lecture 3
9/12 Case Study in Great Ideas Lecture 4 Baran: interview, video interview, paper
9/16 and 9/17 Great Ideas #1: Scientific Revolutions Lecture 5 Kuhn
9/19 Case Study in Great Researchers Lecture 6 Hamming (required reading)
9/23 and 9/24 Great Ideas #2: Great Researchers Lecture 7
9/26 Time Management Lecture 8 Griessman
9/30 National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (NO CLASS)
10/1 and 10/3 Generating Ideas #1: Research Patterns Lecture 9
10/7 and 10/8 Generating Ideas #2: Creativity Lecture 10
10/10 Generating Ideas #3: Cross-Disciplinary Thinking Lecture 11
10/14 and 10/15 TBD
10/17 Motivation
10/21 Fun around Victoria (Panel)
10/22 and 10/24 Research Ethics
10/28 and 10/29 Communicating Ideas #1: Writing
10/31 People skills
11/4 Mock PC Session
11/5 Communicating Ideas #2: Speaking
11/7 (slack)
11/11 and 11/12 Reading Break (NO CLASS)
11/14 Nishant in Japan 🇯🇵 (NO CLASS)
11/18 Elevator Pitches
11/19 Grad School Survival (Panel)
11/21, 11/25, 11/26, 11/28, 12/2 Mini-Conference (Project Presentations)