New year, New Beginnings, New promises !

Excrepts from my new year email to my students. 


Dear Younger Colleagues, 

Wish you all a very very happy new year.  I know its the second, but the new year gets serious only from the second, after the celebratory mood of the first. 

Review from last year and learnings: 

1) We published 17 papers. 3 PRL’s + 1 Nanoscale and 6 PRB’s amongst others.  

[More details can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/amitkag1/publications?authuser=1 ] 

This is a great performance by any standards. My belief now grows, that our group is at least as good as (if not better) any other group in India  for doing a Ph. D. The significance increases if you note that we did this  mostly with Ph. D students, without any postdocs. 

And I thank all of you very sincerely for all the hard-work and efforts put in by all of you. 

2) This has been possible because of our belief in continuous improvement.  We keep “stacking” small skills and after some time they start to produce formidable results. Another name for this is continuous improvement, or compounding. 

3) So this year as well, lets keep stacking on skills, and efforts, to produce even better results. There are two aspects to it: 1) We have to become better players (improve our individual skills - physics thinking, writing, presentation, planning and finishing projects, collaborating)  and 2) our better playing should result in big wins (PRB’s for starting players, and PRL’s for experienced players). 

4) Other highlights: 

— Ashutosh wrote a beautiful thesis, defended it, and joined Prof. Carbotte (in Canada) as a post-doc fellow. Very happy currently !

— Kamal wrote two long papers. I really liked this work, even though we struggled a bit. 

— Barun and Sougato visited Taiwan twice, with both visits being very productive and resulted in standing offers of postdoctoral position from very good group. 

— Krishanu had some medical issues and we faced lots of difficulties. While we get unlucky sometimes, this shows that our mental health and  the right mental attitude is our own responsibility. Get well soon Krishanu, and lets finish the pending projects and the Ph. D. 

— One postdoctoral candidate accepted our offer, and then refused to join later. While I do not know the reason (which may have been genuine), this is an example of things not to do professionally and ethically. 

— For the beginners: It is very easy to get distracted (stuck here, stuck there, this is sufficient, lets read everything and then do something, Pooja vacations, midsem exam etc.). The world is out there to distract you. 

I will try to help by putting pressure and deadlines, but It is your responsibility to maintain focus and be productive.  

If you want a published paper, there is no alternative to work your ass off. 

Let us all have a strong urging this year for: defining better problems, planning the project,  solving them nicely, writing them beautifully, and successfully publishing them. [Note that each of these is an important skill, which has to be practised continuously for improvement.]

Best regards, 

Amit