Policy note. This handbook is a living document and does not replace official NMSU, College of Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Graduate School, funding-agency, immigration, employment, or university policies. When conflicts arise, official policies and written funding/appointment letters take precedence.
Purpose
This handbook is the practical companion to the public Abeshu Hydrosystems Intelligence Lab website. The public website presents who we are and what we work on. This handbook collects the shared knowledge that helps lab members work well together: expectations, workflows, technical recipes, writing guidance, reusable templates, and professional development resources.
The handbook should grow with the research lab. When a process, tutorial, template, or recurring answer would help future lab members, it belongs here.
Structure
The structure follows the same useful logic as strong research lab handbooks: start with values and identity, then move into practical onboarding, research workflows, computing, writing, and career development.
- About the Lab introduces the lab mission, values, scientific communities, and first actions for new members.
- How to Edit This Handbook explains how to improve the handbook through normal website edits.
- Onboarding lists first-week setup steps and common access needs.
- Graduate Studies Matters collects guidance for milestones, advising, and academic progress.
- Advising Philosophy and Expectations outlines mentoring norms, milestones, authorship expectations, and professional development support.
- PhD Progress Rubric defines competency expectations across research, teaching, coursework, and professionalism from Year 1 through defense.
- Research Workflows covers project organization, reproducibility, meetings, and archiving.
- General Programming covers computing environments, Git, notebooks, and code quality.
- Writing and Reviewing covers manuscripts, proposals, talks, peer review, and internal feedback.
- Lab Software will document lab-developed tools and repositories.
- Other Software collects external tools used across projects.
- Data Visualization captures plotting standards and figure design habits.
- Job Search supports fellowships, academic jobs, industry roles, and applications.
- Templates stores reusable project, meeting, review, and writing templates.
- Posts and Resources points to tutorials, blog posts, and reference material.
Lab Repositories
Shared GitHub repositories for the lab, collected in one place:
- hsi-lab-template-code — Starter template for new Python research projects (structure, CI, tests, reproducibility).
- hsi-lab-template-presentations — Branded talk and poster templates (PowerPoint and Overleaf/Beamer).
- hsi-lab-curated-research-tools — Curated directory of research tools across AI/ML, geospatial, remote sensing, modeling, writing, and computing.
The template repositories also appear under Templates, and the tool catalog under Other Software.
Contributing
Treat the handbook as a shared lab asset. Small edits are encouraged when they make a process clearer, remove outdated information, or add a reusable resource.
Good handbook entries are specific, short enough to maintain, and written for a future lab member who is trying to get real work done.