Research and development guidelines

We are in the business of generation of scientific knowledge. This is serious business and a diligence plays a vital role. If care is not taken, we will waste lots of resources and will fail to notice any significant results that come our way. The following is a general set of guidelines that any research student in my lab is expected to atleast keep up.

• The following is necessary for documentation:
• A lab notebook to fill details when experiment is being conducted
• A ppt for each project which contains all relevant measurements, fabrication methods (success and failure) with date logs
• A detailed report which summarizes the research and development efforts that is compiled every month.
• All numerical codes - matlab, python, or any other coding language should be propertly commented with dates. Every month the code base needs to be backed up to the servers as well as to a cloud. Institute provides you 1 TB cloud space.
• Experiment conduct:
• Each experiment must be clearly planned. If its fabrication, the recipe must be frozen, noted and followed to a dot. Do not deviate normally. Any abnormal deviation must be document.
• For process optimization change atmost one parameter per trial and keep all other variables constant
• For imaging experiments (microscope/SEM/TEM) take multiple images at different magnifications at different parts of the sample. One image is not representation of the entire sample
• Electrical and optical measurements, take sufficient readings to obtain mean and standard deviation for each device. Multiple devices must also be measured for variance
• After each measurement, the corresponding plot my be prepared, documented in the PPT designated for the project as mentioned previously. A detailed analysis must be made by the student for each measurement
• If its a theoretical question, it is always imperative to benchmark your calculations against a known system. Always do sanity tests for simulations to check if your code is working well before you simulate a unknown system. Make small calculations, document the results and put it in the PPT before going in for final problem. As before you need to document all the steps, comment as necessary noting all approximations and assumptions.