Dr.
Dilma da Silva, researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research
Center, discussed "Gaps in Research" in April 2012. Her rationale for
discussing this topic in her own words is, "one
very challenging part of graduate school research is to scope the work
appropriately.
Too much area coverage in your project and you may end up putting
moreeffort
than necessary to achieve the expected growth goals of your degree;
too
constrained of a focus and you can miss opportunities to identify larger
themes and connectionsand
to broad the impact of your work. Your advisor and thesis committee
will provide invaluable guidance,but
practicing the skill of finding the gaps is likely to bring large
benefits when you go to your next career
phase. As
a research leader at an industry research lab, a lot of my work
involveslooking
for research gaps and assessing which ones to target. I also
participate in dozens ofPhD
Committees, Program Committees and NSF panels every year, and routinely
interview a lot of recent PhD graduates. In this talk, I will discuss my
approach to assess gaps in research project proposals and results."
Session
url at http://bit.ly/ELA_da_Silva.
About the speaker:
Dilma
da Silva is a researcher at the IBM T. J. Watson Research
Center, in New York. She manages the Advanced Operating Systems
groupand
is also Principal Investigator in the Exascale Collaboratory at IBM
Dublin Research Lab. She received her Ph.D in Computer Science from
Georgia Tech in 1997. Prior to joining IBM, she was an AssistantProfessor
at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her research inoperating
systems addresses the need for scalable and adaptive system software.
Her current focus is on cloud computing. She has publishedmore
than 70 technical papers. Dilma is an ACM Distinguished
Scientist, an ACM Distinguished Speaker,a
member of the board of CRA-W (Computer Research Association's Committee
on the Status of Women in Computing Research), of the CDC(Coalition
for Diversifying Computing) board, a co-founder of the Latinasin
Computing group, and treasurer/secretary for ACM SIGOPS. More
information is available at www.research.ibm.com/people/d/dilma