Here are some collected links to various "tips and tricks for success" (mostly for students, but possibly useful for old dogs, too).

General

Advice for Success in Grad School

  • Back in the 1990s, Marie desJardins wrote a short guide that described "How to be a good graduate student," that everyone seemed to be passing around via grainy photocopies. Over the years, this guide has been expanded and updated, and is now published as "How to succeed in graduate school." Find it at its official home online, or see this local PDF copy.

  • Stellar astrophysicist Jeff Linsky wrote up some Unexpected Advice for Beginning Graduate Students in Astrophysics for a book on Organizations, People, and Strategies in Astronomy.

  • There's a free e-book online titled Planning and Managing Scientific Research: A Guide for the Beginning Researcher, by Brian Kennett. I haven't read it yet, but it appears to "do what it says on the tin."

  • Austin Henley, an EE/CS professor, wrote some insightful Lessons from my PhD that are more about planning, communicating, and thriving in an academic environment, than about any one topic of study.

  • HERE is an excellent blog post on how to come up with ideas for future research projects. The examples from the author are from the field of ecology, but the top-level principles are much more broadly applicable.

  • On the other side of the desk, here's a very nice article by Penn State's Jason Wright on how to be a good graduate adviser. If I'm not living up to any of these precepts, please give me a good talking to!

Giving Good Scientific Talks

The links below take you to some informative articles that condense some useful "tricks of the trade" for giving effective presentations. I've tried to stick to suggestions by people in the physical sciences (mainly physicists and astronomers, but there's one by a chemist and one by a computer scientist) rather than more general "public speaking" guides from other fields of academia or business (which have different traditions and norms).

Scientific Writing

Scientific Reading & Peer Review

  • I've collected a few different resources and links on the general topic of "How to get the most out of the experience when reading a scientific paper" and have posted it here.

  • Most of the major journals in astronomy and planetary science don't provide detailed guidance about how to get started when serving as a peer reviewer for the first time. One nice resource is this online guide by Matthew Stiller-Reeve.

Meetings

  • Although this AstroBetter page is focused on "getting the most out of AAS meetings," I think lots of the advice therein is helpful for other conferences, too.

  • If you need lists of upcoming conferences, the main one for astronomy is hosted by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, and a comprehensive one for solar physics is hosted at helioanalytics.io.

Data Analysis

  • Would you like a 143-page "Beginner's Guide to Working with Astronomical Data?" THIS was written by Markus Pössel to get you started with image processing, spectroscopy, and modern astronomical catalogs.

Funding Sources

What follows is an extremely incomplete list of links and information. I hope to continuously augment and update it...

  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP): Application deadline usually in late October; awards announced in early April. Reference letters due early November. Eligibility: can apply only once, either in 1st or 2nd year of grad school. Must be US citizen/national, or permanent resident.

  • Overview of NASA student opportunities, including:

    NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science & Technology (FINESST): Application deadline usually early February. Eligibility: foreign students enrolled at US institutions are allowed to apply, but US citizens & permanent residents are given preference when all else is equal.

  • National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship: DoD opportunity for three-year support. Application deadline usually in early December. Eligibility: US citizens/nationals only. Connecting research to topics of national importance (e.g., space weather) is probably a priority. Apply in senior undergrad year, or have completed no more than 2 years of full-time graduate study.

  • The Department of Energy's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF) provides funding for PhD students in fields that use high-performance computing to solve complex problems in science and engineering. Applications are usually due in January.

  • Some postdoctoral fellowships:

    • Jack Eddy Fellowship (Heliophysics)
    • NASA Post-doctoral Program (NPP)
    • NRC Research Associateship Programs
    • NSF Atmospheric and Geospace Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (AGS PRF)

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