#  Mentoring 

 



My goal for my PhD students is for them to become world-class researchers at the top of their chosen field. My students and I meet multiple times per week. My approach is generally that we are the most productive as a group by sync’ing frequently (even if just for a short time or quick slack message). Each week, we have weekly 1:1 meetings (on Mondays), weekly sub-group meetings (e.g., related to collaborative projects, including sustainable computing, phasor optical logic, densely integrated electronic-photonic systems), and weekly full-group meetings (on Fridays) where we do a “deep dive” into the technical details of one students’ contributions, as well as a review of upcoming papers, abstracts, or presentations. Starting in spring ‘23, we also started having DRT (pronounced “dirt” for Day of Research Together), which has continued each summer, fall, and spring since then. For DRT, my PhD students and I arrange a full day each week that we can work together in a single office; this is a day that no one has class, so I also try to clear my schedule so we can all work together in lab. DRT has been especially valuable for our growing research group, where we can share extended time together to work through detailed technical challenges, craft slides, discuss research directions, and get to know each other better. We have also been good about arranging activities outside the lab, mainly a group dinner to celebrate the end of the semester (we have been to The Mad Monkfish, Legal Seafood, an oyster house on Dunster street, Waypoint, and once to my house), or going to a Harvard football game.

   ![dinners](/sites/g/files/omnuum8181/files/styles/hwp_1_1__960x960_scale/public/nanodesign/files/dinners.png?itok=nrIL5-BW) 

 

*Group dinners at Legal Seafood (left, after the fall 2023 semester) and at The Mad Monkfish (right, after spring 2023 semester).*My approach to mentoring my PhD students is different than my approach to teaching. My teaching pedagogy, especially for undergraduates in EE, is to get students excited about EE, and to instill that while EE is challenging, they can become electrical engineers if they work hard. For my PhD students, I want them to be the best, and being the best is hard. I provide direct feedback to my PhD students, and continuously push for improvement until I am confident their work is of high quality. I am deeply proud of what my PhD students have accomplished and will accomplish.