Casey Kennington - Reflections on How to Fail at Research

Casey Kennington
Associate Professor
Boise State University

Reflections on How to Fail at Research

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Biography

I earned my PhD in Linguistics from Bielefeld University. Since then I’ve been faculty in the Department of Computer Science at Boise State University. I lead the Speech, Language and Interactive Machines research group where we focus on spoken dialogue within human-robot interaction.

Abstract

Research has its high points and its low points. When we look at someone’s CV, we usually see a listing of all of the high points, but what about the low points? In this talk, I chronicle some of the low points of my research path including projects that didn’t work, papers that didn’t get accepted, proposals that weren’t funded, and other setbacks and challenges. More importantly, I talk about how to handle low points, misgivings, and frustrations, and how those are necessary stepping stones to get to the high points.