People In Control

The best section of the IEEE control magazine is People in Control. The magazine interviews researchers in control area and seek their opinion on research, teaching and even hobbies. It could be the magazine got such idea from Time Magazines ten question for somebody. The nice thing is: It gets the readers immediately familiar with these people. And networking is important to a researcher. Starting from the beginning, one needs an adviser. In long run, the keep up research, one needs collaborators.

The impressive interviews I can remember include the following people: Vidyasagar, the author of nonlinear system analysis; Murak, a UC Berkley researcher. Regarding teaching, Vidyasagar said traditional way can invoke thinking and gets into the depth. Agree. Regarding control applications in finance, Vidyasagar said: nope, that is not an application worth to do. Morally correct. In the case of Murak, his teaching philosophy: less is more. Cannot agree more. Fundamentals are the most important things to teach. In fact, from a syllabus, one can judge if an instructor is an expert in this area or not. An inexperienced one wants to cram everything in the course lecture without emphasis. An experienced one knows where is the emphasis.

Murak in google scholar has citation numbers reaching 3000 or more with H-factor i-10 factor above 30. Well, his hobby: reading New Yorker and hiking.

Maybe, I should resume reading of New Yorker and start to hike daily in the campus. Why? Apparently these are sound hobbies to make one a good researcher.