Personal Websites for Academics
Kick-off Workshop for University of Tennessee's INFORMS Chapter
March 31, 2022
Websites used to be developed by groups of people to meet the needs of other groups of people. Today, as the internet grows more personalised than an encyclopedia of information, I argue we need more personal websites. Social media platforms are limited and occupational in treating your content. Your message might be curtailed by what LinkedIn allows or 280 characters on Twitter.
Academics, especially grad students, need it even more as few CV pages do not include most details. When looking for work, it clarifies uncertainties about the candidate.
Contrary to many think, maintaining a personal website is neither difficult nor expensive. Unfortunately, creating a website is approached as a “technology problem” to be solved. Projects are coloured from the beginning by enthusiasms for or fear for HTML, CSS and other fancy jargon — when it doesn’t have to be so.
In this talk, I will discuss why academics should have a personal website. I will also guide through designing a website and hosting it with a live hands-on example using Owlstown.
Poster
Example Sites
Here are some example sites.
Professors
| Name | Affiliation | Website |
|---|---|---|
| Dennis C. Rasmussen | Syracuse University | https://www.dennis-rasmussen.com/ |
| Jonathan Ochshorn | Cornell University | https://jonochshorn.com/index.html |
| Cynthia Rudin | Duke University | https://users.cs.duke.edu/~cynthia/ |
| Laura Albert | University of Wisconsin, Madison | https://punkrockor.com/ |
| Sean Willems | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | https://seanwillems.com/ |
: Examples of personal websites (professors)
Industry
| Name | Affiliation | Website |
|---|---|---|
| Hadley Wickham | RStudio | https://hadley.nz/ |
| Rami Krispin | Apple | https://ramikrispin.github.io/ |
| Debarghya Das | Glean | http://debarghyadas.com/ |
| Alison Hill | IBM | https://www.apreshill.com/ |
| Brett Wendling | Federal Trade Commission | https://brettwendling.owlstown.net/ |
: Examples of personal websites (industry)
Grad Students and Researchers
| Name | Affiliation | Website |
|---|---|---|
| Sander van Bree | University of Glasgow | https://www.sandervanbree.com/ |
| Neha Gupta | Duke University | https://nehargupta.github.io/ |
| Jared Colston | University of Wisconsin-Madison | https://www.jaredcolston.com/ |
| Sajjad Amrollahi Biyouki | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | https://sajjadbiyouki.github.io/ |
| Slim Lim | University of California, Berkeley | https://slim.computer/ |
: Examples of personal websites (students and researchers)
See Owlstown’s directory for more examples. See this Twitter thread 🧵for even more examples.