If you are new to this website, start here. Search for: Search Here are my latests posts: Send effective emails - Reading emails is too often perceived as a chore. Yet, sometimes you receive the perfect email—I don’t mean the one saying you won to the lottery and must send 50€ to receive your prize. You feel this email is effective and directly actionnable. The main problem with emails is their daily amount (300 billions a … Continue reading "Send effective emails"Working within my group for your MSc thesis - You start your MSc thesis in my group, lucky you, me and my group! I hope every thesis is a win-win situation where the supervising staff (the researchers in my group and me) learn from the student as much as the student learns from us. To create such situation, I think the best way is … Continue reading "Working within my group for your MSc thesis"Fat outline: put some meat on the backbone of your research - You want to convey your next idea to the world—or your supervisor—but you are lost on the most effective way. Very often, you would fall back to sending a rough table of content—the backbone of your research. Unfortunately, this backbone does not completely convey the motivation of the research, the logic you follow, and is … Continue reading "Fat outline: put some meat on the backbone of your research"Does ‘stacking’ work for displaying trends? Our vision on how to plot typical energy data. - The staked area graph is very often used to report energy trends... but is it effective? We use the data published in BP's 2018 Statistical Energy Review to show its shortcomings and we offer several alternatives to unveil the real value of the data.Reporting election results in an effective way - Last 26th of May European elections took place. In Belgium, people also voted for the Federal elections. The following days, the press bombarded us with graphs showing the results. But do these graphical displays clearly transmit the main messages? We suggest an alternative (and more effective) graph to display election results in our new post!Ready to try Agile for research? Join our upcoming study - Agile methodology has revolutionised project management in industry: but what is its potential for academia? We've joined forces with Laura Pirro and are looking for professors and students willing to try Agile for research. Learn all the details in our new post!Anthropomorphism or the art of humanising nonhuman subjects - By trying to be objective in academic writing, we sometimes attribute human actions to objects that cannot undertake them, like articles, reviews or experiments. Learn more about anthropomorphism and how to avoid it in this post.Passive voice in scientific writing: angel or devil? - Should passive voice be used or avoided in scientific writing?What if your PhD didn’t need to feel as long and tiring as a marathon? - In many ways, pursuing a PhD resembles running a marathon: long distance, loneliness and fatigue are seemingly insurmountable obstacles and nobody can hope to reach the end without adequate training. It might be difficult to remove fatigue from the picture; however, something could be improved concerning the other two ‘painful’ elements of this process: all you need to do is split up your marathon into a series of shorter-distance sprints and share the challenge with a team of running partners. Not in the mood to write? Why you should still show up, even if the muse doesn’t - A very common belief among scientists is that they need the right state of mind in order to be able to write. This might seem like an excellent excuse in order to procrastinate... but does motivation actually work like that? Find out how to chase your muse, reduce frustration and get your writing flowing in our new Road to Bootcamp blog post!Want to procrastinate less and be an effective writer? Start writing your articles early enough - If you ask researchers about their main issues when it comes to writing, procrastination always appears on top of the list. Why do we procrastinate when it comes to writing a scientific document? For multiple reasons, but many of them are related to the fear of the blank page, also known as writer’s block.Succeeding at your scholarship interview: Advice from Prof. Alessandro Parente - We interview Alessandro Parente, Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and frequent member of juries for the FRIA and FNRS fellowships. He talked with us about his experience as a jury member, and he gave us some precious tips for students preparing for such scholarships.Are your documents colourblind friendly? - Did you know that up to 8% of the population is colourblind? How can you produce graphs and presentations that are colourblind friendly? Find out in our new post!The forbidden pie charts - You want effective graphs? Replace your pie charts with these alternatives.You want to be selected, be specific - On a voting day, being specific is important. The same is true when you want to be picked in science. 9 laws towards successful MSc theses - MSc thesis is an important step for all students. Success is more than a set of rules but following these 9 laws might avoid many issues.Is your supervisor your best opponent? - One of my favorite time of the day, is when I discuss (read argue) with the PhD students I advise. This post includes a simple technique to challenge your advisor.Effective template to write your answer to reviewers - You have just received the reviews for your article. Even if this step is the most painful you should make sure to address effectively the comments.You want to write articles that get accepted? Do reviews. - At the end of my PhD, I started receiving invitation to review articles. At that moment, I felt honoured as if I had received the membership card of a very selective club. Later, as a postdoc and professor, the number of invitations increased while my time available for such type of tasks decreased. However, I … Continue reading "You want to write articles that get accepted? Do reviews."Get back from conferences with actionable notes - How many times did you come back from a conference with plenty of ideas and notes, having the motivation to act upon all these as soon as your were back in office?Are you specific without being comprehensive? - You plan the interview for a scholarship or the text for a proposal and you make a statement. Unfortunately, you are not sure if it is entirely true. Who never felt like that. I sure did! What do you do as a response? You drop a weasel word to protect yourself from future criticism.I wish I knew about these books when I started my PhD - This post collects all the books I wish I knew about when I started my PhD. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have found one that is not in this list.The authorship manifesto - Getting your name on an article is becoming more and more important in the “publish or perish” era. Although I believe writing papers is an excellent objective for doing research, deciding who should be on the paper can become tricky in some cases. Here is the result of an intense discussion during the team building … Continue reading "The authorship manifesto"How to double your work efficiency with a simple technique - Many people might say that multi-tasking is the one thing they do well. In this hyper-connected world, we could think that this is the only way forward. My personal experience and the many readings I have done recently indicate the contrary. If you want to cut your work time by 50%, change to single-tasking.Resources on effective presentations: from the idea to the delivery - This webpage gathers some interesting resources on effective presentations.How to keep your slides effective while providing extra information when sending them? - I know this is not useful in my slide but when I send my slides, I want people to have these extra pieces of information. You have probably used this excuse (used it myself too) when someone told you that your slides were a bit crowded with information.The evolutionary brainstorming: do it as your brain was wired to do it - You have probably been in many brainstorming meetings where you encountered one of the two following scenarios: “Dear colleagues, what are your ideas on this project…”, followed by a long silence, as if there was a brainstorming switch to turn on; You suggest an idea and immediately someone is saying: “No, this is not possible, … Continue reading "The evolutionary brainstorming: do it as your brain was wired to do it"Does your article address these important issues? - This post gathers the most common problems encountered in the articles I have to review.The graphs the way they should be: effective - The library for doing graphs the way I want them.Clear, accurate, concise writing - Some common sense to be remembered when you write anything.Boost your work efficiency with the following tools and techniques - Post updated regularly with the gems to boost efficiency.Do you have problems communicating or meeting with your supervisor? - Get in touch with your supervisor as efficiently as possible.Are you following these steps when submitting your paper? - A timeline towards having your paper submitted.Are you lost after the submission of your manuscript? - What you should do once your paper is submitted.Are you using these time-saving features of LaTeX? - Some tips to use LaTeX.Instructions for Master Thesis - Details about the Master Thesis.
