🍕 Free leftover food in the kitchen – first come, first served!As a PhD student, those emails were great - I’d drop everything and sprint to the tea room. Free food - what's not to love!Two decades later, I still have that insti...

🎓 Did you know there are (at least) four ways to combine supervisors and PhD students for your regular meetings — and that each serves a different purpose?That's the topic of today’s 𝐇𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐚 video – and meeting type number thre...

🎥 New #HackingAcademia episode just dropped – and it's a sensitive but hopefully somewhat cathartic one, perfect for a Friday afternoon:𝐅𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬, 𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬🤯 “That guy sounds like a total fraud.”😠 “I have no idea how ...

They say you should see the forest for the trees 🌲🌳 - to understand the larger context rather than getting lost in the details without grasping this vital bigger picture 🧩That’s what today’s hashtag#HackingAcademia video is all about 🎥:...

There's a laundry list of phrases that trigger me in #academia and related professions: one of the most frequent ones is "I don't have time" / "They don't have time."The reason it triggers me so often isn't so much that the statement do...

When is having a good awareness of the "big picture" in a PhD or general research not helpful?When you need to focus in on the "little picture", to preserve your sanity, lower your sky high stress levels, and make some concrete, tangibl...

This week I had coffee with a new colleague and the conversation got onto the realities and challenges of recruiting, and retaining, the talent you want to work with and need to fulfill all those exciting research, industry and government proje...

This meeting is driving me INSANE 😡🤯I regularly take requests for my #HackingAcademia series: today's request was one of many about how to deal with meetings where you're frustrated beyond belief, and want to tear your hair out....

🤔 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐌𝐞? 🤷‍♂️ 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐌𝐞?In your career, you’ll regularly hit moments where your confidence doesn’t match everyone else’s.🤔 “Why Me?” Someone suggests nominating you for an award - and you think, “No way I’m worthy...

Time for an update on #ArtificialIntelligence, from my personal perspective in a professional context: my continued exploration of its intense usage in a day-to-day career (2 and a bit years and counting).Key concepts include:🧠

😩 Are you regularly stressed out, feel like you're in over your head, and wondering how you ended up working at 2 am on a Monday morning to meet a project deadline?You're not alone: I, and much of academia and research, have regularly fo...

🥣 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐫, 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 🥄 OR💼 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲!I thought a little bit about sending the wrong messaging with this image thumbnail (referencing Oliver Twist) about power dynamics, any ...

The Goldilocks Zone is the just-right distance from a star 🌞 where a planet can sustain liquid water 💧 - not too hot, not too cold, but ideal conditions for the possibility of life to exist 🌱.The Goldilocks zone is also one of three "con...

What would I tell my younger self at the point I was starting my leadership journey? 🤔👣That's the topic of today's Hacking Academia video 🎥 – I like to do the more philosophical ones on a Friday afternoon! 🧘‍♂️🌤️I, like most peopl...

🎲 𝐑𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 🎲I've been wanting to do this video for a while now, and thanks to Maceon Knopke's lovely 3D printed dice, here it is!This is also my 50th 🎂 Hacking Academia video 🎉🎉🎉 !!!A ...

LiDaR versus CamerasThe recent "Can You Fool A Self Driving Car?" video by YouTuber Mark Rober has 17.5 million views [1], is generating a lot of buzz, and is already the subject of a number of counter- and critique videos [2].I...

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦: 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐑𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦The Australian Research Ecosystem is the subject of at least two major reviews, that could result in the biggest change to how things like grants are assessed and enacted.

🚖 200,000 paid robotaxi rides per week! 🤖 Humanoid robots starting to roll out in larger-scale customer trials!The surge in excitement, interest, and investment in humanoid as well as general AI + robot plays is reachin...

Friday afternoon story time 🎉🍷🤔One of the most pivotal stages of my early professional (and for the financial and other benefits, personal) life was writing my first maths "textbook", Not a C Minus, at age 18, and establishing my first ...

I've long maintained a webpage [1] that details what a #PhD is really like on a day to day basis in #robotics or related fields and in the Australian PhD system, but a lot of potential students we interact with like to hear us talk it through v...

Rejection *always* sucks... but how it sucks evolves...After a brutal start to the year in terms of rejection after rejection, I wanted to post a Hacking Academia video on the nature of rejection, and how it can evolve, in a professional...

A #PhD can be an amazing journey for many, but it's also inevitably a time of significant struggle(s). What that struggle is can take a near-infinite variety of forms, from health issues to relationship breakups, and from home sickness to menta...

It's Friday afternoon, #CVPR2025 rebuttals are almost done thanks to amazing colleagues, and I have a massive backlog of #HackingAcademia topics to get to, both requested and from my own list.So the first 2025 Hacking Academia video (an...

All #PhD recruitment approaches vary by professor, but there are some common themes that are fairly typical throughout.In my newest #HackingAcademia video I shed some light on the #PhD candidate shortlisting and interview process we cur...