Congratulations on completing your thesis, Tao! Your work on AI integration into nuclear command and control is groundbreaking. We’re proud to have supported your journey!
Effective Thesis
Karma: 124
Exceptional Research Award by Effective Thesis (ETERA): reflection
Thanks for the feedback Karthik! Agreed this is very general advice that isn’t applicable in all disciplines, departments, etc. and thank you for pointing out that we didn’t make this clear enough. We’ve added a caveat at the beginning that hopefully makes it clearer that this is intended to offer general guidance in contexts in which it is considered appropriate to reach out to supervisors independently, and that it’s important to check (e.g. with a university administrator, and/or people in the same discipline) that it’s appropriate to do so. Hopefully this addresses your main concern.
We think your comment also rightly points out the importance of us communicating our confidence in how relevant this advice is for different disciplines, what evidence we’re basing that on, and making it easier for people to judge that for themselves as well. We’ll make some edits to the post asap to try to do this.
Effective Thesis
This comment is on behalf of Effective Thesis. I (Joel) served as its director from July 2023 to August 2024.
How would Effective Thesis use extra donations?
Effective Thesis helps students align their academic work with the world’s most pressing challenges. We provide personalized coaching, a database of high-impact research questions, and a thriving community for students worldwide.
Here’s how we would use additional funding:
1. Expand Support for Students in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs):
Translate key resources into more languages to make our materials accessible to non-English speakers.
Run targeted outreach to engage students in LMICs who could benefit the most from aligning their theses with global priorities.
2. Enhance Personalized Guidance:
Hire additional advisors with expertise in areas like biosecurity, AI safety, and economic development.
Expand our weekly Office Hours to support more students in real time.
3. Grow the Research Question Database:
Add new, underexplored research directions and refine existing ones.
Collaborate with domain experts to ensure questions are relevant and actionable.
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Scale our Slack community and workshops to foster collaboration among students, researchers, and professionals.
Organize virtual events featuring researchers and policymakers to inspire impactful research projects.
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Over 500 students have received personalized one-on-one guidance.
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With additional funding, we can reach more students, particularly in underserved regions, and scale our support to empower the next generation of researchers to create meaningful change.
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