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Orientation

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Welcome

🙌 Welcome to MLE5003! 🎉 This survival guide will make you success in MLE5003!

Lab location

Our lab is located at E4-07-11. You are welcome to come and chat with colleagues.

Important information about lab space
  • Due to limited space and lots of MSc and FYP students, we can't assign everyone a dedicated desk. Postdocs and PhDs get priority for lab workspace.
  • You're welcome to come work in our lab (E4-07-11) anytime. Just grab an empty seat! Please remember that you can't permanently occupy a desk, and while you can leave your laptop, we can't guarantee its safety.
  • Since the lab has card access, please come during office hours (9am-6pm) so someone can let you in.

Rules

You should first read the Rules to understand expectations and policies with regards to working procedures.

Setup your computer

Install softwares and setup development environment as suggested by computer guide. We use the Linux command line environment.

  • If you are using a Windows machine, you can get a Linux command line environment through WSL, please have a look at WSL.
  • If you don't know much about Linux, please have a look at Linux Environment and Learning.
  • We use venv for Python packages, please have a look at venv. If you don't know much about Python, please see Learning.

NUS VPN has to be installed to access data when you are not on campus.

NUS IT

NUS IT provides support for IT related issues. They also provide services such as HPC and server hosting. You can submit a ticket on nTouch.

Register NUS-HPC account

You will use computational resoures provided by NUS HPC. Please register an account here.

Registration Template 
Template registration form (only enter the required field.) 
Position*: student 
Matric Number*: on your student card (start with A, generally) 
Department*:  Material Science and Engineering 
Project title/Course name*: If not decided, just pick a random one. 
Supervisor/Course instructor name*:  Zeyu Deng
Software license restriction*: Yes I agree,   
Software used: Own Fortran 
Reason for using HPC resources*: Running scientific calculation software as indicated above  
Research objective*: Use the project information assigned to you. If not decided, just pick a random one.

Do a quick tutorial

After you finish registering the NUS HPC account and got approved (generally take a few days), follow the tutorial to get your self familiar with the works.

Setup your backup and read data security

You must have a backup of your most important data on a cloud drive (OneDrive). See Backup for more details.

Intra-group messaging, coordination and sharing

We use a number of messaging and document-sharing apps for internal-group communication platform.

  • Microsoft Teams: Teams is an internal-group message app used for research discussion or private messages. Channels are created on a specific topic or project, which is easy to keep track of.

  • Microsoft OneDrive: For paper and other document sharing, we use OneDrive Business as provided by NUS with 1 TB storage. Different projects are stored in different folders. Both student and staff have access to it.

  • Microsoft Outlook: Schedule our meeting in Outlook calendar. You can also use it for email.

  • Zotero: For reference management, we use Zotero extensively and exclusively to enable collaboration and sharing of references.

  • GitHub: For data version control and storage.

Tip

Student and staff can register the Github Education Pack by verifying your educational email addresses and get free access to features such as unlimited private repositories and Copilot. Copilot is very powerful.

Schedule meeting with your supervisor(s)

Please schedule a recurring meeting with your supervisor(s). You can use Outlook calendar for this purpose. If you have any problem, please feel free to ask your supervisor(s) or colleagues.

Searching & Managing Literature

You should use Find Full Text: Proxy Bookmarklet for accessing literature. For reference management, we use Zotero and you can find the guide for Zotero by NUS Library.

Learning

You can use ChatGPT and Claude to learn and assist your programming (not for writing your report!). As a student, you can get free student developer pack which includes Copilot if you're using VS Code.

Don't go too crazy!

You shouldn't go too deep in this part. You can always go back check and search. The best way to learn is through project.

Finish

🎊🥳 Congratulations! You have finished this guide! You can start your research now!