Writing my Ph.D. Research Proposal live
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One of the requirements of the Ph.D. program in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo is the Comprehensive-II (Depth) requirement, which consists of a written research proposal and an accompanying oral presentation.
I have decided to write my research proposal live and online. Besides being a way to test out theories about electronic publishing as well as an excuse to experiment with the relevant technologies, I have a more personal reason for doing this.
Over the years, I have acquired a number of absolutely horrendous academic habits due to the necessity of hiding my studies from my parents, such as keeping a low profile and limiting my publishing. I would usually not even begin a project unless I believed that there was a chance I could complete it without being discovered, and would reveal it only after it was already a fait accompli… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
My academic and personal background
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I suspect that my background is rather atypical for an academic. While I was growing up, my parents not only did not support my scientific interests, but did everything in their power to prevent me from becoming successful as a scientist.
I first became interested in the connection between physics and computer science in elementary school, when I read about Richard Feynman’s idea of a quantum mechanical simulator. In high school, I obtained a University of Toronto library card with the help of Dr. John R. Percy, and spent a lot of time at the Erindale College library. (The Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto was called Erindale College at the time.) Through my association with the library, I was introduced to the arXiv, and also learned about the black hole information loss problem. The problem fascinated me, and I therefore set about studying what I could of quantum computation and quantum information. The arXiv also inspired me to think about how electronic publishing would affect scientific communication in the future… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]
Why my own website?
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There are already plenty of open notebook and collaborative science initiatives out there, so why roll my own website?
To begin with, I didn’t find any ready-made projects which exactly suited my needs. The most impressive, and the one which came the closest to what I was looking for, is OpenWetWare, but its focus is on biology and biological engineering. Chemists have also gotten into the act with UsefulChem, which is hosted on wikispaces.
I did not locate any project of a similar scope or scale for physics or, perhaps ironically, computer science… » [Expand post]« [Collapse post] [Permalink]