As I wrote in my previous post, I recently managed to Dock a Container Ship (i.e submit a proposal for a large, competitive grant as consortium lead). It has been a bit of a learning curve, to say the least.…
As I recently submitted a monster of a proposal, I have, as usual, spent some time navel-gazing over the experience. It was a massive project: 16 partners, a complex topic related to infrastructure resilience, and a highly competitive funding call.…
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
I'm not sure if quiet quitting is still a thing these days, but I have been thinking about the meaning and timeliness of leaning in recently. As a cursory comment: my feminism aligns much more with the ambiguity reflected by…
As I am working on getting funding for my next cycle of projects, I am reflecting on how I select my collaborations - both funded and unfunded ideas to work on. Here are a few questions I tend to ask…
As I have given a few keynote lectures over the past years, I wanted to reflect for myself on what has worked quite well with the audience. In general, I think keynote lectures are a different beast from general conference…
I gave my first keynote lecture (virtually) in early 2019 (on topics related to this blog), and my first bridge engineering keynote lecture (also virtually) in 2021. Since then, I have received more invitations to present as keynote speaker at…
Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Dr. Noelle Sterne (Ph.D., Columbia University) with a guest post on being an older PhD candidate. Noelle is a dissertation coach and editor, academic and mainstream writing consultant, author, workshop leader, spiritual counselor,…
I was recently asked what are some crucial steps one should complete before starting the writing process. My initial reaction was (as often): it depends... How you prepare for writing a paper, depends on how you write. Some of us…
As I have a fair number of presentations to give this semester, I have been reflecting on the time it takes me to prepare these, and the methodology I use to put these together quickly. Depending on the length of…
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