Research 101 Workshop

The workshop has been concluded on Oct 16th, 2014. All slides are available below. Feedback and suggestions are welcome.

What?

An introductory workshop covering a set of topics that are essential for those interested in conducting research. A week-length workshop, one session per day, 1 hour per session (except the last one: 2 hours). Sessions discuss independent separate topics.

Why?

Information in those topics is scattered. Compiling it in one workshop will help interested people in grasping the ideas!

Who can attend?

  • All current MSc and PhD students (specially new students)
  • Undergraduate students who are interested in research
  • Whoever is curious about what research is

When?

Sunday Oct 12th to Thursday Oct 16th, 2014. (check exact times in the schedule below)

Where?

Qatar University, Male’s Campus, Engineering Bldg. (check exact rooms in the schedule below)

How?

Please RSVP (check links in the schedule below).

Schedule

Session 1: Research? A Gentle Introduction (by Dr. Tamer Elsayed)

Wondering what research is all about?! Before you dive in the deep ocean of research, we offer you some hints to ease your way in. We will be discussing these main ideas: What’s (not) research, why research, introduction to research methodology and the scientific method, and research opportunities in Qatar.

Session 2: How to Read a Research Paper (by Dr. Tamer Elsayed)

Join us to learn how to read a research paper following a 3-phase approach. And if you are tired of managing the papers you are reading, we will also give a quick introduction to reference management systems (e.g., Zotero) that can do most of the work for you!

Session 3: How to Pick a Good Research Topic (by Dr. Nasir Rajpoot)

Looking for a good research topic and can’t decide what factors to consider? Want to choose a thesis topic and not sure where to start?
In this session, we will present some guidelines to get you on the right way of finding a good research topic that intrigues your inner researcher!

Session 4: Research Issues You Must Know! (by Dr. Tamer Elsayed)

While conducting your research, there are some critical issues that you need to keep in mind as they define your integrity as a researcher! Some of the main issues we will be discussing are: peer review, citations and self-citations, plagiarism, authorship and contribution, and research misconduct.

Session 5: (Hands-on Session) LaTeX: Writing Professional Scientific Documents (by Eng. Maram Hasanain)

Have you ever suffered from a situation where your current text editor failed you (e.g., nicely aligning an image or writing big equations maybe?). If so, this session is for you!

In this session, we try to convince you to use LaTeX when writing research papers, since it is specifically designed to support scientific writing. We know that change can be hard; this is why we design this as a hands-on session so that you can experience the best of LaTeX yourself!

Please send us such bad experiences with your current editor and we promise to demonstrate how LaTeX solves these easily!