<aside> ✍️
This page is designed to serve as a central hub which collects the useful information and links to smooth your transition into a research role as part of @s.hadfield’s group at CVSSP. This content is adapted from https://gitlab.surrey.ac.uk/simons-diamonds/misc/induction-info/-/wikis/home, with minor formatting adjustments and broken links fixed.
</aside>
At the start of your role, you will likely go through a number of induction activities. Some of these are run centrally by the university, and some are specific to CVSSP.
Of particular note is information relating to the Compute cluster.
I have heard very positive things about the courses offered by the Research Software Engineers, which cover many useful tools like checkpointing, conda, git and visualisation (see here) They also offer drop in sessions where you can turn up with a model or code etc and they can help fix problems or get things running (see here).
Since you are reading this, you have presumably been added to the CVSSP wiki. If you can think of any induction information that may be useful for future researchers in your position, please feel free to add it to the wiki.
You will also need to have your account registered to the cogvis SLURM group (so you can get priority access to the group's servers). If I have not yet sent an email to IT about this, please remind me. You should also make sure that I have added you to the Microsoft teams groupchat, and reading group.
If you aren't sure what is expected of you as a PhD student, then take a look at my version of Expectations of a PhD student (adapted from Richard Bowden's original). As outlined in the expectations document, you can expect to meet with me for at least an hour a week, but you are free to drop by more as appropriate. For regularly scheduled meetings, I expect you to produce a meeting brief in advance using this template. If you are not familiar with latex you can find more information in the "Writing papers" section below.
I expect every student to take notes during meetings (the admin team will provide notebooks and stationery if needed). It's all too easy to forget a good idea, simply because it wasn't written down. After the meeting is completed, I suggest you immediately transcribe your notes into the "previous meeting summary" for next week's meeting brief.
For information about milestones and reviews see [[Research Milestones|here]]. Failure to meet the expectations above, or the technical objectives of the project, will result in the instigation of Unacceptable Academic Progress procedures at the next milestone.
It is worth noting that, depending on the teaching timetable, I generally try work remotely 1 day per week on proposals/teaching prep. If you want to discuss something but can't find me, send a message on MS teams and I'll be happy to discuss.
A PhD is a stressful thing, and although I expect people to work hard, I don't want anyone to burn themselves out.
In addition to university closure days, you have around 25 days of paid leave per year. If you wish to book a holiday (for example, following a conference, while you are still in an exotic location) then well in advance of the holiday, you should ask the admin team for your leave sheet, bring it to me, and I will sign it.
If you are feeling anxious or stressed, you can always talk to me about it. I can offer my advice; However, I am not a trained therapist, and it may be of limited value. The University's Centre for Wellbeing offer a range of services, including confidential counseling, that are freely available to you.