Mário M. Freire
       Full Professor (Professor Catedrático)

       Department of Computer Science, University of Beira Interior
       Rua Marquês de Ávila e Bolama, 6201-001 Covilhã, Portugal

       E-mail addresses: mfreire(at)computer.org  or  mfreire(at)acm.org  or  mario(at)di.ubi.pt


Home  |  Edited Books  |  International Patents  |  Articles in International Journals  |  Theses and Dissertations  |  Student Supervision  |  Multimedia SP - Covilhã Group  |  Useful Links

Supervision of Graduated Students
"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. (...) And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.(...)
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. (...) Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

Steve Jobs, Commencement address at Stanford University, on June 12, 2005.

• I am often looking for motivated and dedicated students willing to perform outstanding research work. Students interested in performing research work under my supervision, within a post-doctoral programme, a PhD thesis programme, a MS dissertation programme, or within a R&D Project, please drop by my office or contact me by email.

• Presently, my preferred way for a student organize his/her PhD thesis is the one in which each chapter (which the exception of the first and last chapters) is a research article published in an international journal listed in ISI Science Citation Index. Each thesis should have typically a number of articles between 3 and 5, most of them should be published or accepted for publication at the thesis submission phase and some should reach the A/A+ level in the CORE Ranking of Computing Journals.

• MS dissertations with a strong research flavour should also be organized in such way that each chapter (which the exception of the first and last chapters) is a research article published in a top-level conference or journal. Each dissertation should have a number of articles between 2 and 3, most of them should be published or accepted for publication at the dissertation submission phase and at least one article should reach the A level in the CORE Ranking of Computing Conferences.

• For theses/dissertations not organized by articles, students shoud read:
How to Organize your Thesis by John W. Chinneck (Carleton University, Canada).
How to Write a Dissertation by Douglas E. Comer (Purdue University).
PhD Thesis Structure and Content by Christopher D. Clack (University College London, UK).

• Guidelines for writing a thesis statement:
Writing a Thesis Statement (Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, Cambridge, MA).
Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements (Purdue University).
Thesis and Purpose Statements (University of Wisconsin - Madison).
Guide to Writing Thesis Statements (University of Washington).
How To Write a Thesis Statement (Indiana University).
Thesis Statements (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

• All my graduated students should read:
How to Read a Paper by S. Keshav, in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 37(3): 83- 84, 2007.
Editor’s Note: How to Write Research Articles in Computing and Engineering Disciplines by Ivan Stojmenovic, in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 21(2): 145-147, 2010.
Editorial on How to Write Research Articles in Computing and Engineering Disciplines by Ivan Stojmenovic and Veljko Milutinovic.
Writing Technical Articles and Common Bugs in Writing by Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University).
Tips for Writing Technical Papers by Jennifer Widom (Stanford University).
How to Construct a Nature Summary Paragraph.
How to Give a Good Research Talk by Simon P. Jones (Microsoft Research, Cambridge). See also: How to Give a Good Research Talk by Simon P. Jones, John Hughes, and John Launchbury, ACM SIGPLAN Notices 28(11): 9-12, 1993.
Oral Presentation Advice by Mark D. Hill (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
Plagiarism Policies: See Identifying Plagiarism (IEEE); ACM Plagiarism Policy; Self-plagiarism in Computer Science by Christian Collberg and Stephen Kobourov, in Communications of the ACM 48(4): 88 - 94, 2005.
Double Submissions – Publishing Misconduct or Just Effective Dissemination? by Henning Schulzrinne, in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 39(3): 40 - 42, 2009.
Notes on the PhD Degree by Douglas E. Comer (Purdue University).
How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia by David Patterson (University of California, Berkeley).
The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity by International Center for Academic Integrity.

• Students should avoid deadline-driven publications with least-publishable material or something incremental. Instead, they should invest in preparing complete and mature contributions that significantly advance the frontiers of the knowledge.
See also the following discussion about publication culture in Communications of the ACM: Journals for Certification, Conferences for Rapid Dissemination  |  Reviewing Peer Review  |  The Role of Conference Publications in CS  |  Time for Computer Science to Grow Up  |  Program Committee Overload in Systems  |  Scaling the Academic Publication Process to Internet Scale  |  Conferences vs. Journals in Computing Research.

“One of the problems of being a pioneer is you always make mistakes and I never, never want to be a pioneer. It’s always best to come second when you can look at the mistakes the pioneers made”.

Seymour Cray, Public Lecture at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories on the introduction of the CRAY-1, 1976.

Last update: 2012/02/15 | Home