Research Skills

There are many individual skills and tools that are used to be a successful and efficient computational scientist. In most cases, the time investment to learn a new skill is quickly rewarded by an improvement in the quality or efficiency of your research. You are encouraged to use your research time to pursue new skills, computational or otherwise, that will support your overall research progress.

In particular, you should place a priority on the particular skills than enable you to be independent in pursuing your own research. For example, understanding the details of compiling and installing software packages in the various computing environments where you need them, whether developed within our group or elsewhere, is an important skill.

Specific skills to consider

(Suggest new skills here.)

Compiling and linking code

When working with compiled code (e.g. C++), it is valuable to understand the steps

• How the compilation process works for C programs
• The Four Stages of Compiling a C Program
• How does the compilation/linking process work in C/C++?

Unix command-line

Text-based interface for managing computational tasks

• Software Carpentry Lesson

Literature review

Finding and carefully reading journal articles helps to build a deeper understanding of our science

• Keeping current in the literature
• How to Read a Paper
• How to Read a Scholarly Article
• Receive an email every time a new issue of ANS journals is published
• Setting up alerts from ScienceDirect for Elsevier publications (e.g. Annals of Nuclear Energy)

Writing

• UW Writing Center

Version Control

Managing revisions to source code with robustness and intention

• Software Carpentry Git Lesson
• Git "Oops! How do I fix this?" and common operations