Everyone in your group, ideally, should have a web profile with a photo.
In terms of length, profiles should be no more than:
- About 600 words for academic staff
- About 500 words for postdoc
- About 400 words for PhD students (probably a bit less if they’re new students).
An example outline follows: each of the paragraphs below should be about 80-120 words. Note that this format is in no sense required: good profiles can, and do, take many different forms. However, using this outline can help us to make sure the all the basic areas are covered.
If in doubt, include more information at this stage (overwrite) rather than less: we can always cut it later, so it’s more important to be comprehensive.
The main thing is that you should sound motivated, interesting, accomplished, and unique.
Vision (Academics only)
What is the thematic vision behind the work you have done over your career and why it has interested you? How has it evolved? Where do you see things going in the forseeable future?
Overview
For an academic: This is where you take the conceptual stuff from the vision paragraph and talk about the real projects you are working on now (or have done in the recent past) and how they relate to that vision. You would want to mention grants a little here.
For a student or post-doc: This is where you say what you are most interested in, what you (roughly) are doing now, and talk about how this fits into your interests. You can use project names here, giving a very rough idea of what they are about and also linking to project pages.
Contribution
This is where they give a really clear statement of what you have achieved (and/or hope to achieve).
For an academic: Two paragraphs summing up your most important contributions to the field, with the emphasis on recent work.
For a post-doc: This could be two paragraphs for a post-doc with the first being about the post-doc itself (the main thrust of your work at Imperial) and the second being about your PhD subject. However, this should only go in this section if the PhD is related to the current work. Otherwise it should go into the history section.
For a student: Just one paragraph about the PhD project, perhaps including earlier work (like a final-year or MSc project), if it’s related..
Other (academic) interests
Often people end up working on related projects that are interesting but not their main thrust, this is the place to talk about these.
History
Basic educational stuff, perhaps giving some kind of idea of how your intellectual interests have evolved (what made you interested in computing, in smart sensors, in OSs etc.). High school and undergraduate projects, time in industry, etc. might be mentioned here.