Research skills

OUTLINE Mission and Vision What is Research? Ten Steps for Good Research Resources of Research Types of research Skills (Top_5 Skills) Top_6 Advices Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer, ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper References Q & A

Mission & Vision Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of a person, basically describing why he/she exists. Mission may be long term as well as for short term. Vision: Defines the desired or intended future state of a person in terms of his/her fundamental objective and/or strategic direction

Research Research is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information to increase our understanding of the phenomenon under study and/or new technologies. Summary: The process of searching – carefully – with a method to understand and/or answer a question

Research Flow Topic Idea Research(Co llecting Info) Simulati on and Analysis Results Report and/or paper

Ten Steps for Good Research STEP 1: Formulate your question STEP 2: Get background information STEP 3: Refine your search topic STEP 4: Consider your resource options STEP 5: Select the appropriate tool STEP 6: Use the tool STEP 7: Locate your materials STEP 8: Analyze your materials STEP 9: Organize and write STEP 10: Compose your bibliography

Resources of Research 1- The library and its resources. 2- The computer and its software. 3- Techniques of measurement. 4- The human mind.

Types of research 1- Theoretical – Theorems and proofs (Case study, Proposal..etc.) 2- Experimental – Hardware development, experimental results 3- System development (Combination 1 & 2) – Coding, testing, engineering, …

Skills and Talent? if one wants Most of the skills can be learnt or improved over time, if one wants Some talent is needed, but alone it is not enough – People with great talent and no skills obtain much less than what they could do

OUTLINE Mission and Vision What is Research? Ten Steps for Good Research Resources of Research Types of research Skills (Top_5 Skills) Top_6 Advices Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer, ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper References Q & A

Skill 1: Patience Good research needs time Don’t expect great results immediately – Theorems may be hard to prove – Coding may take more time that initially thought – Experiments need to be tuned to show interesting results and lessons Allow ample time to do either theoretical or empirical research

Skill 2: Problem formulation A problem should be formulated in a simple and crisp way Everybody, even non-expert people, should be able to understand it An unnecessary complex formulation may hide the essence of the problem and also its solution Talk to others, define your problem to them, get feedback

Skill 3: Look for important problems Working only on the details of your latest results or theorem can be useful for the next paper But devote some time also to think about the larger picture What are the important problems in my field? Read what others work on Discuss with other students, your supervisor, anybody you meet at the conferences

Skill 4: Review existing work Being able to find and evaluate previous work Look for what others have done before starting your research project It helps defining and tuning your problem May give you ideas on how to solve it Avoids reinventing the wheel and wasting time

Skill 5: Problem solving and adaptability Find suitable tools to answer a question or to solve a well-posed problem Be able to adapt yourself to the context – Turn a problematic situation into an interesting research problem Read, read, read Don’t get discouraged, a solution can always be found

OUTLINE Mission and Vision What is Research? Ten Steps for Good Research Resources of Research Types of research Skills (Top_5 Skills) Top_6 Advices Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer, ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper References Q & A

General advice 1: Work hard Given two people with equal abilities, the one who works 10% more will produce twice as much The more you know, the more (and faster) you learn, the more you can do

General advice 2: Drive and commitment You should be committed to your research This is not a 9 to 5 job It should not be a sacrifice, but an opportunity to do something you enjoy

General advice 3: Openess to other people Be open to others and to others’ work Read a lot Talk a lot with other people Open vs. closed office doors – People who work with a closed door produce more in the short term but obtain less, and less interesting results, in the long term

General advice 4: Collaboration Most great work comes out of collaborations with others More than one point of view Faster definition of the problem More and more knowledge

General advice 5: Trust your advisor He is largely judged by the success of his students He gets great inspiration by working with graduate students He can learn a lot from graduate students

General advice 6:Clear about our goal Our goal is to produce good research results, to make advancements in science and technology NOT to get a job, or to make more money, … If we do good research, these things will come, but they are not the goal, they are a side effect If we go for the wrong goal, good research will probably not come, and not even the goal

OUTLINE Mission and Vision What is Research? Ten Steps for Good Research Resources of Research Types of research Skills (Top_5 Skills) Top_6 Advices Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer, ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper References Q & A

Paper? Research Paper: is a type of academic writing that needs more theoretical, significant and methodical level of question Wikipedia

Paper’ Contents 1- Abstract (Index Terms): Gives you general idea about the objective of the research, tools and methodologies. 2- Introduction: Gives you general idea about the are of research, some previous works and “In this paper, we focus on….” 3- Related Works: Literature Review 4- Model and/or Problems formulations: Descriptions of the system and….

Paper’ Contents 5- How to formulate your problems 6- Some techniques used to solve your problems 7- Simulation Results

Types of Papers Paper Survey Technical Paper Without result With result

How to Read a Paper Survey Technical Paper Read from abstract to the last page including your selected references Do NOT Read the Paper Whole Read the first (4) pages Skip and go to Simulation part

Types of IEEE Papers IEEE Survey and Tutorials LettersMagazinesTransaction Do Read All the papers Do Read the first (4) pages and simulation part

References 1- Francesca Rossi, University of Padova, Italy “power point slides” available on-line 2- Wikipedia. 3- Paul D. Leedy, “Practical Research: Planning and Design”, (prentice Hall) 8 th edition,