CHIMe 21 Day #1: Takeaways for Undergrads & Early Stage PhD
CHI2021 — ACM CHI Virtual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Kartik Joshi, Undergraduate Student, Vellore Institute of Technology
Smriti Jha, Research Associate, Dalhousie University
CHIMe (CHI Mentoring) Symposium is designed to bring together, a unique, talented group of underrepresented students, industry scientists, and faculty doing research in HCI to provide a welcoming environment for mentoring and collaboration.
In this two-part series, we discuss key takeaways from the CHIMe’21.
Day 1 of CHIMe was a very informative one consisting of an exciting keynote speech by Dr. Deana Anglin followed by panel talks on Remote Work and Collaboration, Funding and What I wish I knew.
Keynote Speaker: Deana Anglin, Senior UX Researcher at Google and Adjunct Faculty Member at CMU
“Own your Ambition”
“Community Support is important, be proactive”
1. Remote Work and Collaboration:
- Moses Namara, Clemson University
- Aleshia Hayes, University of North Texas
- Jaelle Scheuerman, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
- Elissa Redmiles, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
- Moderator: Denae Ford
- Cold Emailing helps. Connect with Profs/Researchers whose work you like. Read about them and ask for a 30-min call. They could provide useful insights to your PhD research sometimes.
- Maintain Website, Twitter, LinkedIn. Keep it fairly professional but original. Resolve conflicts through DMs and avoid toxic hateful comments (not your fault)
- When in any conference, just talk to the researchers about their work. At that moment — you might feel like it’s just a talk but when you reach out to them over email after the conference — you might get a positive response in terms of potential collaborations. “We should really study Xyz and write a paper on it…”
- Seek mentors and sponsors. Be clear and precise when you reach out to such people. Be clear about your expectations and ask them about theirs.
Conference Talks are missed a lot these days (due to COVID). But also it has made us realize that meetings are not always necessary. You could communicate roadblocks once in a while but also make sure that collaborators have work life balance too. — A perspective that pandemic taught us.
2. Funding Sessions
- Keri Mallari, University of Washington
- Kianté Brantley, The University of Maryland College Park
- Moderator: Daniel Maloney
Apply to External Fellowships — getting internships that way becomes easier. Remember if you get a fellowship — you are lucky! Because the background behind getting one is very chaotic and noisy. You could be talking with company researchers but still might not get a fellowship. Sometimes it’s not in your hands.
Start applying to fellowships by reaching out to those who already have got one in the past. Kiante could provide important references for good and bad fellowship applications.
Reach out to industry partners: “Hey I just read your paper, are you looking for interns.?”
When you reach out to Profs. Skim through at least a couple of their papers so you know what they are doing and when in conversation — you could relate to it or see those words coming! It helps drive the conversation.
Approach Deans of your department if you are short on research money. Not a guarantee that you would receive funding. But they could help their best at their level.
Reach out to Profs outside your University who have got a grant. They might want to collaborate (if that is collaborative funding — say NSF, etc.)
When cold emailing, mention all your questions at once. Don’t keep the conversation slow. Get to the point real quick. Mention about who you are, who you are working with, what are your research interests and then BOOM -> bring them up — all your questions.
Writing Fellowship applications are especially important for students who are looking to join Academia as these would give you a fair bit of idea about writing grants!
Send your last 5–10 achievements to your advisor when asking them for LOR for fellowships so that they know your background. Remember, they are busy! Make their job easy. Ensure that they communicate your profile — the way you want it. (Busy + Chill Profs.)
2.a Fellowships and Taxes:
Twitter, Twitch etc. fellowship deadlines are in the fall.
Kiante:
- Even if you have 1 fellowship in hand, apply for others. Reject the one you’re not interested in and add it into your resume, Voila!!
- Search for how a winning application is crafted. → email them → “ Congratulations…Can you share your winning material, if you’re comfortable with sharing it? “
- Search for top confs in your space → get top papers in your area → reach out to their authors straight up
- “ People hire people, not papers you send them ”
External funding — gives you flexibility. Check out Sloan fellowship.
TA-ing: less time for research, go for it if you want to teach eventually
How to get external funding?
- Approach deans — give them the bait of press/blog posts about your work
- Find collaborators who have funding
Build your brand
How Keri got interviews from Spotify, Adobe?
- Cold email: “ Hey, I read your paper about XYZ. Would you be interested in hiring interns working on this? ”
Have a goal in mind and then backtrack from there.
Cold email: 1. Who I am, who is my advisor
2. Goal of the email
3. What I Wish I knew…
- Jalessa Trapp, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stephanie Valencia, Carnegie Mellon University
- Judith Uchidiuno, Carnegie Mellon University
- Moderator: Wendy Roldan
Research vs Classes balance: Don’t be in a hurry to finish off all your coursework. Have a research target (like 2 short/long papers) in a year. That would keep you accountable and make sure you are on your track to a dissertation. Judith had her courses till last semester and that helped with driving her research.
When stuck in research — reach out to your advisor. They will help you out.
When doing an external collaboration — make sure you inform your advisor so that she/he knows that you would be busy spending time on that as well. Remember you have TA/RA roles in Universities that pay/fund you over your PhD. So, that’s important.
Teaching is important if you are looking for academia.
If you have been publishing in conferences. And post 3 years of your PhD — you feel you are stuck…just pull all your publications and think of something to extend along those lines. It’s a PhD degree. Don’t think of the societal impact. Be practical. Be done with your PhD. Talk with advisors and people working on that domain — seek help.
- Don’t have many expectations. You would be disappointed when you would not be true to those.
- Health is important. It (Exercise, healthy food) will help you deal with anxiety, imposter syndrome, failed expectations, etc.
- Do things outside your research to stay humane
- For research ideas, attend talks.
- Maintain a notebook of ideas — carry it everywhere.
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These were the insights from Day 1. For Day 2 Takeaways, head on to:
If you have suggestions to improve this post, feel free to reach out to the authors at: smritijha0301@gmail.com and nckd.joshi@gmail.com.
If you are interested to contribute to the HCI4SouthAsia space then write an email at <hci4southasia@gmail.com>. To know more about HCI4SouthAsia visit — https://hci4south.asia/
