Seminar: How to Write a Technical Paper

The task of writing your first, or even fifth, technical paper can be daunting to new graduate students. The reason it may be daunting is no mystery; most undergraduate students have not been properly trained by their undergraduate curriculum to tackle this new task.  This workshop will go through the following questions:

1. Do you have work that constitutes a paper and who would be your audience?
2. What are the roles and responsibilities of the first author (you), other authors on the paper, and editors and reviewers at the publisher?
3. What is my research accomplishment and how do I communicate it as clearly as possible?
4. My favorite books finish with a good plot twist.  Will my paper audience appreciate a plot twist as much as I do? 
5. I love this sentence (paragraph).  Why does my advisor say it needs a rewrite? 
6. What can we learn from those in Denney Hall? (Or, how can becoming a better writer make me a better engineering researcher?) 
7. What resources are available to help me become a better technical writer?

We hope this workshop will be valuable to new graduate students who are first endeavoring on technical writing and senior graduate students and post-docs who are trying to hone their technical writing skills. 

About the Speaker

Prof. David Hoelzle is an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Ohio State University. He received his MS and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007 and 2011, respectively, in Mechanical Science and Engineering and his BS from the Ohio State University in 2005 in Mechanical Engineering. Between his PhD and current position he completed a post-doc in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles and held the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests lie in applied control theory and dynamics for applications in additive manufacturing robotics and microsystems for mechanobiology research. Prof. Hoelzle is a recipient of the 2016 CAREER Award and the 2016 Society of Manufacturing Engineers Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award.