On November 28, the Second Virtual Interview and Virtual Cognition of the Department of Information Management Science was successfully held. Zhichao Ba and Guoxiu He, schoolfellows of the SIM, as the invited speakers. Professor Lu An, Deputy Director of the Department of Information Management Science, presided over the event, with more than 100 students from various majors participating virtually.

Zhichao Ba, teacher of the School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The title of his sharing was A Good Idea May be from Your Notes! He came straight to stressed the importance of taking notes during postgraduate and doctoral study. And pointed out: "Notes is like external auxiliary equipment, and one should take notes while studying to help remembering." Then, Zhichao Ba introduced the method of taking scientific research notes in detail. He pointed out that in the postgraduate level, one should take notes with the help of document management software, and classify the documents according to the categories of required documents, classic documents, idea documents, follow-up references, etc. Print out important articles, read them as intensively as possible and sort out ideas. In addition, one can also use software to build personal academic template library, such as icon library, title library, a glossary of specialized vocabulary, model library, program library and so on.

Later, Zhichao Ba explained how to write quickly based on idea. He believed that fast writing can be divided into five steps as followings: Firstly, collecting articles and relevant information, and extensive reading in the shortest possible time. Secondly, determine the shortcomings of existing research, the innovation, feasibility and target journals of idea. Thirdly, intensive reading of relevant documents of targeted journals to determine the framework of writing. Fourthly, complete the experimental part and evaluate it. Finally, perfecting the framework and writing based on personal academic template library. Furthermore, one can build one’s own writing style in Chinese writing.

Finally, Zhichao Ba shared his experience in Chinese writing, and suggested that students should be diligent in practice, actively communicate, actively study and remain modest in scientific research.

Guoxiu He, teacher of the Department of Information Management of the Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University. He brought the theme sharing of Persistence and Choice -- A Tortuous Path of Pursuing a Doctor’s Degree. Based on his personal experience, he reviewed his experience and thought changes during doctoral study. He talked about the first difficult problem faced in the road of scientific research -- the choice of research object. With this question, he successively took over two tasks of image recognition and question-and-answer matching, and gained the job opportunity at Alibaba DAMO Academy. During this period, he conducted in-depth technical exploration, but still worried about papers.

When working at Alibaba DAMO Academy, he maintained a diligent attitude towards learning. After repeated submission and revision, he finally published his research results in SIGIR'19 and SIGIR'20. After getting the achievement, Guoxiu He met the second difficult problem: Follow his tutor to the United States for further study or find another way out? After careful thinking, he decided to apply for a new university. After unsuccessful application of famous universities in Europe and America, he remained undaunted and finally succeeded in receiving the offer from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Guoxiu He concluded:"In the process of struggle, we should have the spirit of ‘Just bite the bullet and do it’, there is no gain without practice. We should also learn to discover the beauty and touch around us to balance the boring and hardship that scientific research life may bring. As long as we persist in our initial intentions, the trade-offs in the road to study will eventually be rewarded.

During the Q & A session, the teachers and students actively spoke on the shared content. Aiming at the problems of icon library construction, how to balance intensive reading and extensive reading of articles, etc., Zhichao Ba reproduced the process of building his own icon library, and introduced the method of printing papers and comparing them with his own research direction before choosing them.

Finally, Professor Lu An summed up the lecture with the sharing of two schoolfellows, and encouraged the students not to be afraid of difficulties, be brave in starting, and completion is more important than perfection.

About Zhichao Ba and Guoxiu He:

Zhichao Ba, teacher of the School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. He has published more than 20 articles in authoritative and important journals at home and abroad such as SCI/SSCI and Journal of Library Science in China, published one academic book and presided over one youth program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Guoxiu He, teacher and Chenhui Scholar at the Department of Information Management of the Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University. His research results were published in CCF A/B international top conferences such as SIGIR, ACL, AAAI, EMNLP, etc., and he served as peer reviewer of JASIST, AAAI, ICJAI, etc.