Advik Eswaran

Demystifying Big Data: An Introduction to Some Useful Data Operation Tools

Posted on February 10, 2025February 7, 2025 by Advik Eswaran

*A sample image of computer code that works with data*. *Photo credit: Markus Spiske.*

“Big data” and “data science” are some of the buzzwords of our era, perhaps second only to “machine learning” or “artificial intelligence.” In our globalized, Internet-ized society of plentiful information galore, data has become perhaps the most important commodity of all. Across all kinds of academic disciplines, working with large amounts of data has become a necessity: universities and corporations advertise positions for “data scientists,” and media outlets warn ominously of the privacy risks associated with the rise of “big data.”

This isn’t an article that discusses the broader, societal implications of “big data,” although I highly encourage all readers to learn more about this important topic. Instead, I’m here purely to provide you some (hopefully) broadly applicable tips to working with large amounts of data in any academic context.

In my own field of climate science, data is paramount: researchers work with gigantic databases and arrays containing millions of elements (e.g., how different climate variables, such as temperature or precipitation, change over both space and time). But data, and opportunities for working with data, are present in every field, from operations research to history. Below is an overview of some existing data operation tools that can hopefully assist you on your budding data science career!

Presenting at Academic Conferences: Tips and Tricks

Posted on February 5, 2025December 12, 2024 by Advik Eswaran

The author presenting at the American Geophysical Union 2023 Fall Meeting.

Imagine the following scenario: after months of committed, in-depth research on the academic topic of your choice, you’ve finally obtained some pretty cool and novel results. Your adviser is excited, and their reaction is enthusiastic—“Hey, what if we submit an abstract to an academic conference?” This was the situation I found myself in last year, when my advisers suggested I present my research on reconstructing past Antarctic snowfall patterns at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco. I felt honored and excited, but also a bit nervous. How was I, a lowly undergraduate, going to present my work to a massive academic conference the size of a midsized town?

Luckily, I was fortunate enough to receive a lot of great advice from mentors and peers, and in the end it turned out great! Now, I’ll try and share some of that advice with you all—I hope you’ll find it useful!

Diving into the “Scholarly Conversation” and Other Tips on Academic Writing

Posted on December 4, 2024December 2, 2024 by Advik Eswaran

A blank Google Docs document. — *A blank Google Docs file, with academic writing potential as of yet unrealized.*

Every student at Princeton lives their own unique experience, but if there’s one thing all Princeton students have in common, it’s that we all need to know how to write academically. The only required class for all Princeton students, first-year writing seminar, is a rite of passage. Later on, students of nearly every single major must complete independent work, writing their junior papers and senior theses; when writing these, knowing how to effectively communicate your findings is an essential skill. Here, I’ll talk about some strategies for getting a handle on academic writing, which I hope you’ll find useful!

Field Research on the Juneau Icefield: Living the Emersonian Triangle

Posted on November 15, 2024October 25, 2024 by Advik Eswaran

*A Terrestrial Radar Interferometry (TRI) station overlooking Echo Glacier — a field site used by NASA as an analog environment to the moon Europa.* *Photo credit: Advik Eswaran*.

Students across a variety of disciplines (or fields, if you will) have the opportunity to perform fieldwork at Princeton. In contrast to lab work—which involves performing experiments or analyses within a controlled on-campus environment—fieldwork takes place, well, in the field. Researchers venture out into the wide, wild world in pursuit of somehow collecting useful data from the vast webs of chaos that surround them. In my home department of the Geosciences, fieldwork is the norm: students go out to geological field camps or embark on oceanographic cruises to gather data about the raw Earth that surrounds us. However, fieldwork is truly possible in any discipline.

This past summer, I conducted my own fieldwork as part of the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP). For two months, I lived and conducted glaciology research with about 40 other students, staff, and faculty on the glaciers of the Juneau Icefield—an interconnected system of over 140 glaciers spanning 1500 square miles across southern Alaska and northern Canada. It was one of the most incredible—and intellectually rewarding—experiences of my life. Here, I’ll share some stories from my time on the Icefield, contextualizing them within some broader lessons I learned about how field research operates.

Surf’s Up: A Guide to Internet Surfing, and other Assorted Browsing Research Skills

Posted on October 16, 2024October 16, 2024 by Advik Eswaran

This image depicts a Google search of "What is research," which symbolizes the purpose of this post—i.e. figuring out how to research online. — *What is research? Perhaps we can ask the Internet…*

If you’re anything like me, you first thought that “research” essentially amounted to surfing the Internet. Back in the glory days of middle school, “research” meant the rewarded privilege of getting to use the laptop carts, productively using class time on googling information about our various project topics (and definitely not secretly playing games). Now, as the mature, worldly college student you now are, perhaps you think you know better. “True” academic research, the clever reader now knowingly tells themselves, is historians dusting through archival documents and scientists mixing frothy chemicals in the lab.

Yet there’s a missing part here: a crucial element that takes us back to our elementary and middle days of excited googling. To make any significant intellectual contribution to any field, one first has to understand the current state of knowledge in that same field. To borrow the term favored by the Writing Program, we need to understand the scholarly conversation. How do we know if we’re making a contribution to something, if we don’t understand what that something is? Understanding the current state of research in a given field is a crucially important skill—really, a prerequisite—for conducting your own effective research in that field.

Author: Advik Eswaran

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