Merlijn Sebrechts

It's my job as an advisor to say no

Over the past few months, I’ve had multiple conversations with PhD students around a similar topic: the fact that a significant part of my coaching involves critiquing their work and suggesting alternatives.

Our students can use AI for their master's thesis - the policy

During my day job, I teach a number of computer science courses in the Information Engineering Technology programme at Ghent University. The release of ChatGPT and GPT-4 has a large impact on our education because it can get grades of above 80% on most exams and can effortlessly write essays on complex subjects. Students are aware of this, and are thus increasingly using Large Language Models (LLMs) in their education for a number of tasks.

Open Google Drive and Google Calendar as a specific user

Quick tip: did you know you can open Google Drive, Google Calendar and more as a specific user? Just add ?authuser= and your URL encoded email address behind the address.

Ghent University address book in Thunderbird

UGent address book support in Mozilla Thunderbird Ghent University has an LDAP address book which contains all students and staff. Adding this address book to Thunderbird is non-trivial, though. Follow these steps to add it.

Who owns my research?

When I submitted my first paper, I realized I had no idea who owned my research! Was I authorized to transfer the rights to a journal or did I need someone else’s permission? After some digging, I found the answer and wrote it all up in a neat little document. So here’s the dusted off version, in case it’s useful to anyone else.