Wei Dong

Like many researchers, I believe one of the most important roles of a supervisor is to teach students how to become independent researchers. Beyond completing projects and publishing papers, I hope to pass on three skills that will benefit my students throughout their research careers.

• The first is academic writing. I spend a considerable amount of time working with my students on their writing, often through several rounds of revision. Although this can take more time than rewriting the text myself, I believe it is one of the most valuable skills I can pass on. I am deeply grateful to my mentors, Ke, Elaine, and Giulia, who spent tremendous time helping me improve my own academic writing in my early age.
• The second is academic reasoning and presentation: how to formulate a problem precisely, explain an idea clearly, and present technical results efficiently. A good result is not enough; we should also make it easy for others to understand why it matters and how it works. I am particularly grateful to Ke and Prof. Yufei Tao for teaching me a great deal about this.
• The third is how to identify valuable research problems. A good problem should be both hard and important. “Hard” means that prior work or straightforward adaptations cannot easily solve it, while “important” means that it addresses a fundamental challenge rather than an artificial one. I would like to thank Ke and Prof. Xiaofeng Wang for greatly shaping how I think about research problems.