Tag: Research
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What Motivates Me in An Academic Career?
The famous quote from John Muir – The mountains are calling and I must go. A typical academic career path would be like this – after 4-6 (or longer) years of Ph.D. training, fresh grads get into postdocs, and transitional positions, until finally apply and obtain a faculty position and achieve tenure. A big surprise…
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Absurdities in Nature
We are facing drastical ecological challenges as natural disasters at every level – locally, regionally and globally. Here, humans have encountered two absurd situations, is the nature so indifferent to our human beings when it shows its fierce and ruthless appearance or is the nature so overwhelmingly manipulated by us and we are simply having…
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Deterministic or Chaotic – where do predictions land?
We all love making predictions. From weather forecasts to financial markets, from astrology to psychology, we human beings are so fascinated, if not obsessed, with predicting things. Some people (scientific realism) may believe that, through physical laws, mathetics equations, and computer models, we are able to make all predictions and understand previous thoughts of “unpredictable”.…
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The wide spectrum of graduate supervisors and how to work with them?
During the Canada Day holidays, we had a small group seminar on the top of my friend Hongli’s roof (gorgeous view of the Canadian Rockies) and discussed academic research. One of the topics was about supervisors. I gathered some thoughts from all sides and came up with this post – hope it can be helpful…
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Ask the right questions
Zhe Zhang, Ph.D. of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan After the five-year journey of struggles, happiness, and achievement, I finally defended my Ph.D. thesis in Oct 2021. When all excitements, thrills, nerves, and anxieties faded away in the next few days, I started to reflect on this journey and asked myself: what did I…
Climate and Thoughts 