Manage My Supervisions at Cambridge University

Undoubtedly, the University of Cambridge is famous for its college and supervision systems. Both are quite unique and you probably cannot find other similar correspondences easily in other places. The longer you stay in Cambridge, the more attractive you will find about this amazing system. In some sense, this system leaves a strong Cambridge label on its students and makes them so unique comparing to other students. Sometimes, I must admit that I am more impressed by the undergraduates I supervised than by the PhD students (especially if he/she didn't do his/her undergraduate here).

The supervision usually takes place within a small group of two or three students with a supervisor. The form of supervision can be flexible and versatile, but there are usually a lot of discussions between the supervisor and supervisees.  Even though I had a long experience of doing TA (Teaching Assistant) in the University of Helsinki, I must say the teaching in Cambridge is much more challenging also much more fun. Of course, it has more financial benefits since the colleges pay you extra money for your teaching.

I was lucky enough to get affiliated with Queens' College (one of the oldest colleges) just after a couple of months' arrival in Cambridge, which gave me an invaluable chance to look into this system. Moreover, I also started doing supervisions soon after the Michaelmas term started. Herein, I will share some experience in doing supervision at the University of Cambridge, which might be useful for other newly joined Postdocs, especially those who did not have undergraduate experience here.

The university does provide a decent system (CamCORS) for writing final reports for students. However, there is no useful systems in practice to help in scheduling supervisions, a supervisor and his students need to handle the scheduling all by themselves. I was quickly overwhelmed by email exchanges for discussing a suitable time in Michaelmas term while I was taking care of 20 students (7 groups). In this Lent term, I need to supervise 27 students (10 groups) on two topics (Information Retrieval & Operating Systems), so I definitely need to come up something smarter.

Therefore, I wrote down the following email and send it to my students. Haha, now it is their job to do the scheduling and compete for the "CPU resources" themselves. So far, this works pretty well and has saved me from a lot of hassles.

Hello all,

I made a Doodle poll which provided a list of all my available time slots in this Lent term. These time slots can be the candidates of our supervisions in the following weeks. To reduce hassles and email exchanges, let's schedule together using the following rules (essentially a distributed algorithm with relaxed contention avoidance ;-)

1. Each supervision group makes one poll. Do not make another separate poll if your group already made one. So for all the supervisions of a given course, each group should only take one row in the poll.

2. When making the poll, the group name should follow the following convention: COURSE_NAME(crsid_1; crsid2; crsid_3) so that I can know which course and which group it is. We have two courses: please use OS for Operating System and IR for Information Retrieval. Here is an example: OS(lw525; mbt11; szuh233)  another example: IR(tzx234; xrt233; bgh512)

3. For OS, we have three supervisions so you need to mark three time slots in all the available ones (try to distribute them evenly in three weeks). You need to discuss with your group members first to agree on a time before filling the poll. Do not mark multiple time slots for one supervision. For IR, we have two supervisions, the same rule applies.

4. If you notice that a time slot is already taken by another group, do NOT mark it anymore. Essentially, each column in the poll should NOT have more than one reservation. if contention does occur (less likely), run your randomisation or back-off protocol to resolve the contention ;-)

Here is the link to the poll —> [link]

I hope you can finish the poll as soon as possible to make all of our life much easier. If you have any questions, please do ask me. Thank you very much.

Best regards,

Liang Wang

Computer Laboratory

Working Environment & Personal Career - My Fourth Week in Cambridge

My fourth week in Cambridge was filled with all kinds of work as usual. However,  the time spent on life-related or administration-related stuff has been significantly reduced, so that I can have much more time in doing pure research and reading books.

Looking back to what I have done lately: got scandex paper accepted and gave a talklet in the Lab; finished scoped-flooding draft; finished all the simulation work on different topologies; set up the website for N4D Lab; set up the website for ACM DEV; finalised the user scenarios in UMobile project; got familiar with docker system and started system design; even finished a history book, so on and so on. Working efficiency seems very high here in the Computer Lab, I do not know if it is because of pressure or I simply feel happy to work more.

The atmosphere in the Lab is really nice. The Computer Lab in Cambridge University is the biggest computer science department I have ever seen, and is well-known for its System Research Group. In terms of working environment and infrastructure, however, I must admit University of Helsinki certainly wins, maybe because of its much smaller size. As we (system scientists) know, scalability issues generally applies to every system. University of Helsinki is so generous to its employees that you can hardly find a competitor for it. However, having good infrastructure is not sufficient condition for being a top university. In most cases, "software" can be as important as "hardware", and we researchers, are the software who are continuously contributing to university's research outcome and build up its reputation.

In my opinion, a good lab/institute should at least have the following characteristics:

• Trust - You simply cannot work (efficiently) in an uneasy environment. Pressure and tension kill the creativity.
• Fairness - Reward people for their achievements, not matter big or small. Being mean can simply kill people's motivation. 
• Collaboration - moderate level of competition between even within a group is fine. However, the collaboration is more important since nowadays excellent work can hardly be done by one person.
• Promotion - it does not necessarily mean an increase in salary or change in position especially in academia. It is more about opportunities. Well, it might be a big problem for Finnish universities, and hopefully not for here.
• Flat - having a flat structure makes communication very efficient. However, it is not going to be the case in Cambridge due to its super long history. But the good thing is that the university is at least very liberal and democratic.
• Be nice - Last but probably the most important one. Good universities (should) never treat its researcher like slaves, especially for those with high throughput of incoming and outgoing scholars. Building up a network is the key to boost both personal career and institution reputation.

So far, the Computer Lab seems doing a great job from my own perspective. I do hope my following years here is going to be productive, and more importantly - happy. :)

My first talklet on service caching in the Computer Lab of Cambridge University. The audience were quite nice and gentle to me during the talk, probably because I am new and junior in the Lab :)

Walking Around in the City and History - My Second and Third Week in Cambridge

Three  weeks passed, I bought the bike, got the simcard, opened a bank account, received my first month salary, even did a business trip to meet UCL folks in London. I think I really settled down into Cambridge. Except occasionally, I applied very bad Scandinavian humour untimely. I think I am getting more and more familiar with every thing here, even with that peculiar accent.

Beside always being overwhelmed with research work, I finished a very thick book on British history. The book is in Chinese, almost 400 pages and covers the history from 6000 BC to 2000 AD. Due to this large time span, the book cannot really dig into details. Luckily, the author is a very good storyteller. Instead of stating "cold" fact, she narrated a lively and coherent story. It is quite funny that history used to be the subject I hated most when I was in the middle school and high school. I remember clearly I complained to my mom every day that when I had to remember so many names and why we had such a long history. However, things started changing as I am getting older. I realised you simply cannot get rid of history, and history itself, always repeats itself. I sometimes made fun of myself in front of my colleagues -- "Well, you know, maybe it is because I am becoming part of the history now ... fading away ...."

Except the Friday's happy hour (which is a long tradition in the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge University) when I usually go and grab a pint, I did not really visit pubs or bars. But I did visited Fitzwilliam museum and King's College and its famous Chapel. Recall that I have told you the importance of your university card in my previous post. Because of the card, I am not only able to visit the place for free but also can take two guest free of charge. Lovely!

Fitzwilliam museum and a corner in King's college.

Magnificent view of the King's College and its famous Chapel.

People are punting on the famous river Cam in such a lovely weather.

I certainly have to mention my first visit to the Cambridge University Library. In total, the Cambridge University has over one hundred library and every faculty may also have its own library. The main university library is very close to the lab, less than five minutes bike ride. To get into the library, you need a university card. I think the public can also get in as long as they apply the card from the registration office. I was completely impressed by the historical atmosphere at the moment when I set my foot in the hall. Such a sharp and strong contrast to the Kaisa library and Kumpula library which are the exemplars of the modernism and functionalism in Scandinavian design.

Cambridge University main library, feels like in Harry Potter movie.

Last thing, a side note, the water in Cambridge is really really hard. The moment I opened the kettle lid in the kitchen, I was impressed again, like I was impressed before by the library. I made fun of my British colleagues - "Are you growing (sea) fish in the kettle, this definitely looks like coral ...." However, I have been drinking it anyway since all others are drinking it. You know, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".

Settling Down into Cambridge

During these four years struggling with my PhD research, I had always been planning that I would take a long holiday after I got my PhD hat. A at least 3-month holiday, without doing anything just keeping my brain blank and relaxed, or maybe travelling around Europe. But life always surprises you. After I passed my PhD defence, I got only about one-week break, then hastily moved to Cambridge, UK to start my postdoc research in the Computer Laboratory.

Finding an accommodation is Cambridge is not difficult, but finding a good one with reasonable price is quite tricky. Eventually, I got a bedroom in a family and the rent costs me about 550 EUR per month. The downside of living with a family is obvious -- privacy. Since I am not social and life is rather simple (maybe even a bit tedious and boring), so privacy is not really a problem for me. On the other hand, the advantage of living with a family is also significant, you always have someone to ask and it is faster to get familiar with the local society. My host family, Mr and Mrs Kell, are typical middle class,  gentle and kind. Mr. Kell gave me a lift when I first arrived in Cambridge, and even kindly invited me to their Easter dinner.

First week is always difficult. I was totally overwhelmed with all kinds of administrative and work-related stuff. Though the HR office in Computer Laboratory did a great job in assisting me to settling down, there were still a lot of things that had not been written on the instruction but required me to handle. In the following, I will list some important things you might want to know before moving here, so that your migration will be much more smooth than mine.

Transportation

Cambridge is not big at all, especially the university area. In fact, you can just go everywhere on foot if you do not mind 30- to 40-minute walking. Walking is definitely OK in the first couple of days. But eventually, you will need a bike. There are many bikers in the city, but some roads do not really have a 'well-defined' bike lane. So you need be very careful especially before you get familiar with the town. My landlord told me local driver did not really like bikers. For the bike, I got mine from a shop in King's street, 135 pounds with three-month guarantee. It is second-hand but seems in a good condition. Later, I noticed you could also get pretty good and cheap ones on Amazon UK.

Bank Account

If you come to Cambridge to work as me, a bank account is definitely the first thing you want to have. The university needs your bank account number in order to give you salary. I almost missed the deadline of my first month payroll. In order to open an account, you need to have a current living address in UK, the department will issue another document including your current address and the information showing you work for the university. Besides, it is better to have a UK phone number. Which bank to choose? They are more or less the same. I chose the one recommended by both my landlord and the department -- Barclays.


National Insurance Number

You need to apply for a national insurance number if you want to use the local health service. First, you need call the centre to have a short interview, then they will send a paper application via plain mail. You can find the their phone number [here]. Remember you definitely need a UK phone number before calling them, since they require that in the registration. The paper application form will arrive within 10 working days, fill the form then send it back. There is a pre-paid envelop in the application package, so you don't have to pay. This part is pretty easy.


UK Mobile Phone Number

This part really depends on what kind of user you are. If you are not an active user, you can just order Pay as You Go which does not have any monthly fee. For myself, I am a heavy Internet user. So I chose to use giffgaff which is considered as cheap solution in UK. Of course, BT is also good in the sense they really have a lot of wifi hotspot in the city. You can always use BT's free-wifi if you are their subscriber. In general, the price is not very expensive, but it is definitely cheaper in Finland. :)


University Card

You will get the card from the HR, so you don't need to do anything except emailing them a nice photo of you before coming here. Note that this is not just a card to let you open the door, you will realise how useful it is in the future. As my landlord told me, Cambridge university is (arguably) the most powerful and influential entity in this town. ;-)


Then What Now?

Well, it totally depends on you now. For me, I will focus on my work, do interesting research and enjoy the life in the No.1 European university. :)