RTFM: Read the Faculty Manual

We believe our community has come a long way in acknowledging that junior researchers need as much mentoring as they can get to prepare them for future jobs and help them succeed. The PLMW workshop series has made it possible for us to talk openly with students about the challenges and stresses facing graduate students: problems with advisors, paper rejections, mental health, and career planning. However, the same can’t be said about the challenges of being faculty: many junior faculty don’t feel comfortable discussing their doubts or asking for advice about how to manage a research group or build a tenure case, and not every junior professor is lucky enough to have a suitable mentor at their own institution to ask for help. In effect, junior faculty are expected to “read the faculty manual”, except that it doesn’t really exist.

The goal of the RTFM workshop is to try to rectify the situation by providing a forum for full-time academics to comfortably share their experience in non-technical aspects related to faculty life. Not all such experiences are positive. Sometimes things don’t work out: PhD students change advisors, grants are rejected, topics go out of fashion. We believe many members of the PL community (both junior and not so junior) would love to learn about how “the magic is done” in other research groups, and what are the non-technical ingredients that enable long-term successful research and a happy work environment.

This workshop will feature several panels and invited talks by mid-career and senior academics on the non-technical topics of their choosing related to building an academic agenda, leading a research group, and coping with the challenging aspects of the faculty job. The workshop is targeting academic faculty of any seniority level, as well as senior PhD students and postdocs.

This is the 2nd edition of RTFM. The 1st edition took place at PLDI 2024 in Copenhagen.

More detailed program information about talks and panels will become available soon.

Talks and Panels

Attending the Workshop

Speakers and panelists are invitation-only.

The intended audience of this workshop are full-time faculty, as well as senior PhD students, postdocs, or research fellows who are preparing for academic jobs.

If you have any questions about eligibility and attendance, please get in touch with the organizers!