Research Practices in Engineering

Catalog description

This course is designed to help incoming graduate students prepare to conduct independent thesis research as part of a research group and become part of the broader research enterprise at Penn State. It introduces students to various elements in the research practices domain categorized as discovery and innovation, cooperation, governance, daily life, resources, and career. The elements of discovery and innovation are to: know the state of the art and knowledge gaps, know how to formulate a research objective, know the past literature, think critically and make connections, know what colleagues in your community do, create intellectual merit, and know what facilities are available. Cooperation entails: sharing information, cooperatively developing documents, developing modular procedures/codes, and being part of a team. Participation in governance involves: reviewing the work of others (publications and proposals) and knowing how to become part of professional societies and the review process for funding agencies. Daily life includes knowing the scientific method in general, how research groups function, documentation of progress, ethical norms, the forms of bias, safety standards, handling data and the associated ethics, protecting privacy, how to work with human subjects, humane treatment of animals, and reporting misconduct. Conducting research requires resources and knowing about funding sources, labor and material costs, and lab usage fees. Research practices are integral to establishing a career through planning, networking, dissemination of results, and incorporation of feedback into plans and documents. This course will introduce students to a range of good research practices in Engineering. Topics covered will include: the organization of a research group; a set of standard tools for performing research including writing, bibliographic organization, version control, data management and backups; tools and good practices for collaboration; good laboratory practices; responsible conduct of research. A large fraction of the course will focus on how to design and conduct research, including reading papers critically, developing bibliographies, writing papers, designing a research project, and writing a research proposal. Full participation in the course satisfies the university requirements for scholarship and research integrity training.