RISc Lab Guidelines

Author: Adithya Pediredla
Prepared: January 1st, 2024

Below are some of the lab guidelines that I have written down so we can run the lab together smoothly, have an appropriate set of expectations, and execute our tasks as conflict-free as possible. These guidelines are based on my experience and understanding of the world on the day this document is prepared and/or edited. As I learn more about the world, both from my eyes and yours, I will update this document.

Research Direction
To measure is to manage. If we can measure everything in the world and can reason about every measurement with a mathematical or computational model, we have solved science. The leftover work to do after will be engineering, to control the world with the models we have.

Needless to say, measuring, modeling, and controlling are non-trivial tasks.

Currently, our lab is focused on building imaging systems that would allow us to measure everything. Building hardware systems is tough, so we build and use rendering systems to model the imaging pipeline physically accurately so we can study imaging systems even before we build them.

Research Philosophies

It is unscientific to blindly trust anyone’s statement, including my own. I am not infallible. Please don’t commit that blunder. Having said that, I have traveled the path you’re going to travel as a young researcher, and hence, the advice I give is most likely applicable to your case. Own your life and research, but do not ignore my (or that of your other mentors’) advice or ideas without thinking about them critically.
You are in charge of your PhD, project, and anything that pertains to you. You are responsible for scheduling weekly meetings with me, reporting your progress, and submitting and asking questions or asking for help when needed. I will help as much as I can with whatever means necessary, but it is your responsibility to ensure you succeed in life. It is yours.
“Salvation lies within” — Bible
I am not religious and do not like religious interpretations of this statement. I believe this statement says that the answer to your questions lies within you. No external entity can help you as much as you can help yourselves.
Henri Poincare, a great mathematician famous for the Poincare conjecture, once remarked, “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create better”.
Throughout your research career, you get to criticize the literature, your peers’ work, and your advisor’s ideas. When you criticize, do so to fill the gaps, to enhance the ideas, unless you have something better. Mere criticism (even your own ideas) without anything constructive leads us to nowhere. In the end, our goal is always to build great work that rarely requires destroying something that already exists.
“Without continuous mathematics, the study of discrete mathematics soon becomes trivial and very limited. … The two topics, discrete and continuous mathematics, are both ill-served by being rigidly separated” – Richard Hamming, known for Hamming distance, Hamming window, Hamming weights, etc.,
A lot of ideas in our field of research are easily derived in the continuous world. However, we implement them in a discrete world. What we do mostly is “Think continuous, and act discrete” (not my quote and most likely originated from Michael Unser)
“As a student, one’s job is not only to learn enough to be able to answer questions posed by other, but also to learn how to frame questions that might lead somewhere interesting” — Dusa Mc Duff
At least one project of your thesis must be completely led by you. Your question, your technique, your implementation, your paper with little input from anyone else. That would prove that you are truly an independent researcher.
“Discovery is the privilege of the child; the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else”. — Alexander Grothendieck.
You cannot appear smart without appearing stupid at least every once in a while.
“Although we human cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them” — Richard Feynmann
Be open to learning other fields of research. More often than not, ideas in other fields help us, and vice versa is also true. The research we build can help other fields significantly. DO NOT box yourself. You are not an imaging researcher, graphics researcher, or vision researcher. You are a problem solver, and any problem in any field that excites you and requires a solution—can be solved by you.
Please read: How to Do Research by Prof Freeman (MIT)

While publications are not mandatory to graduate (even for Ph.D. students), it is easy to perceive the contributions of your research by both the experts in our field and others if you publish. Publish in highly regarded peer-reviewed conferences and journals so everyone can easily trust and appreciate your work. Some highly regarded peer-reviewed venues include CVPR, Siggraph/Siggraph Asia, ICCV/ECCV, ICCP, Science, and Nature (Nature Comm, Nature Reports, etc but not scientific reports). Lack of publications for an extended period of time is typically the same as lack of research progress, at least quantifiable research progress.

Work hours

I do not care what time you come to the lab or office or where you work.
However, in case of a deadline, I expect you to work hard, even during late hours or weekends, to finish the work. If you prefer not to work late hours or weekends, the only way is to be proactive and complete all your work in a timely manner so you don’t have to compensate close to the deadline.
You cannot go on leave without explicitly obtaining my permission. You may work from home if the task doesn’t involve hardware, but I expect you to be in Hanover, ready to come to the office/lab if needed. International students should also be aware of visa rules so they don’t accidentally jeopardize their careers.

Communication Philosophy

Communication is a bridge between your audience and you. It should be built from the listener to you and not the other way around.
Documents sent to others should have names that make it easy for the receiver to store them directly.
Eg. If I send my resume to the department chair and name it as resume.pdf, the chair has to rename it as adithyapediredla_resume.pdf. If not, the chair can confuse it with anyone’s resume. So, I should send him as pediredla_resume.pdf
The above rule is true for anything in general. Don’t name overleaf documents as ICCP-paper. I have no idea which one. Be specific. “ICCP2024-Z-splat-paper”. Or, meetings named “Weekly meeting” should be “AO-Vision: ASU+Dartmouth”, which are more informative.
When you are trusted with a task, it is your responsibility to follow up if you encounter any difficulties executing it and ensure that the task is completed.
For example, at least a week before the paper upload deadline, you should send the final version of the paper and follow up with all stakeholders to upload everything in a timely manner. If the paper is given to me or other PIs at the last minute and we did not consent, you cannot upload it, and it will be rejected automatically. The blame will go to you and not the PIs who are not given enough time to respond.
Do not use fancy acronyms or “millennial/GenZ” language. It only adds confusion. It is OK to use the most common acronyms, including ok (okay), brb (be right back), sg (sounds good), np (no problem), thx (thank you). Use the full abbreviation if you are unsure what a common acronym is.
Be mindful of implicit biases
Be respectful, and treat others how you want to be treated.
Do not use obscene language.
Be objective. Understand that there will be conflicts no matter how much you try.
When conflicts arise, try to resolve them amicably. Communicate clearly on how you can solve the problem. We are not here to make enemies, but we are here to have fun progressing science and our careers. If you cannot resolve the conflicts, please let me know, and I will try to resolve them or refer you to someone else who can resolve the miscommunication.

Volunteering
The lab is a community resource. Running it is a group effort, and all of us have to volunteer for a few things to do it successfully. Don’t fall for the tragedy of commons. Keep the lab safe, clean, healthy, inviting, and functional.

If someone in the lab is not treating the lab as a community resource, please ask them to correct their behavior and report to me if they do not correct their behavior.

There is only one exception to this rule. Safety. If anyone compromises their safety or that of others in the lab, tell them sternly to fix their behavior.

Prioritization
You will have several responsibilities at any given time. Please prioritize them based on their importance and urgency.
In the end, a graduating PhD student should have enough contributions in their resume to all the following:

Research (the highest priority).
1. Core area. Always think of the job talk you will give. It would help you strategize your next project. You should have a core theme for your research.
2. Collaborations: you need multiple letters of recommendation, and the best way to get them is to write papers with multiple PIs.
3. Diversity in the research portfolio. Diverse research papers show that you are not a one-trick pony and can easily work in any field.
Mentoring: Junior PhD students, Masters, and UG students. Showing that you can lead teams and can be a PI.
Teaching: For your teaching statement. Teaching a course would be killer but quite hard. Guest lectures are the best; TAing diverse courses also helps.
Leadership in various roles, Outreach, Volunteering (at the institute level or better, for reputed conferences), and other contributions to DEI.

Safety
If I catch anyone violating safety norms, all the lab occupants will be reprimanded. Students WILL lose lab privileges if they repeatedly violate safety norms, even if it results in losing an important paper or project.

For serious violations such as laser safety violations, if you do not turn off the soldering iron after use or leave wires in a way that causes tripping hazards, you will instantly lose lab privileges.

Conference travel

If we have grant money, you will be supported in attending conferences or workshops.
If you have a publication at the conference, your registration, travel, stay, and food are covered within Dartmouth rules.
If I have extra funds, I will strongly consider sending you to your first relevant conference even without a publication, and close to graduation, I will strongly consider supporting your travel to conferences so you can network.
Please minimize the expenditure (by sharing hotel rooms, booking inexpensive flights and hotels, and using non-lab monetary resources, including Guarini support, travel grants, etc.) so we can support more students.

Purchases

I must approve all purchases more than $100 in a month.
Immediately after the purchase, fill this document, place the receipt in the "RISC Lab/Purchase Receipts" dropbox folder. Place only the invoice and not the order copies.
Julia Ganson will process the receipts either biweekly or monthly based on her convenience.
In case of reimbursements, please email Julia along with filling out the Excel sheet and placing the receipts in the Dropbox folder. This will ensure that Julia can file reimbursements as soon as possible and you can receive the money sooner.

Grades
If you submitted a first-author manuscript or played a significant role in submitting a manuscript, you will receive HP. If you did not make any meaningful contributions to the project, you will receive an LP. In all other cases, you will receive a P.
This philosophy of mine, including everything else, is subject to change.