Onboarding Guide

Onboarding Guide#

This onboarding guide is meant to serve as the first stop for new students and postdocs joining the group.

Computing devices#

  • Select computing devices for your research, including a Macbook Pro (the 14” model is a great choice), keyboard and trackpad, a monitor (e.g., DELL P2723QE), a SSD Drive (e.g., WD 4TB My Passport for Mac) and other accessories. Try using official Apple and Dell websites with which UH has a contract. Amazon is a good alternative.

  • Email Mingjian a list of your chosen devices with links to the product pages for approval.

  • Contact Manjunatha Shenoy (director of engineering computing) to obtain a quote, and then ask Nicolette Solano (department administrative assistant) to help with purchase. Only send Apple and Dell products to Shenoy for quote; other products can be purchased directly by Nicolette.

  • Configure your laptop for computational research, following Setting up Mac or Setting up Windows instructions.

Meetings#

  • Schedule with Mingjian a first meeting to discuss and plan your research projects.

  • After the meeting, make a Pull Request here to add your headshot and a brief intro of your research to be put on the group website.

  • Schedule with Mingjian regular meetings to discuss your research progress and get feedback.

Misc#

  • We use Teams for swift research discussion, seeking help, sharing awesome papers and such. Ask an existing group member to invite you to the group Teams workspace.

  • Contact Nicolette Solano to request for a key to the group office.

  • After obtaining your Cougar Card, check with David Dawlearn and ask for access to the building and other offices.

Coding#

  • We use Unix-like operating systems and the command line interface (CLI) for most of our work. Get comfortable with the CLI by doing the Software Carpentry Unix Shell tutorials and referring to the Command Line Tools page.

  • We mostly program in Python and use other languages (e.g., C++ and Rust) when necessary. Get yourself familiar with Python by waking through the Programming with Python tutorials. Another great resource is the tutorials by The Python Guru.

  • Setting up Conda environments for your projects is a good practice. See Conda Environment.

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