Today, I listened a lecture about "How did I learn to do research, or did I" which was presented by Yi Ma, a professor from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I extract some important sentences from his presentation as follows:

@When he spoke about how to prepare for doing research, he said:

The only way you can improve yourself is to learn things that you are the most afraid of!

@When he spoke about what is research, he said:

Research is a game for which you get to set the rules, but it can not be a trivial one!

@When he spoke about how to do research, he said:

Research is not a job, and is more of an addiction.

@When he spoke about four levels of research, he said:

Knowing what to do is more important than knowing how.

@When he spoke about what is good research, he said:

You recognize a good research result if it keeps you up all night, feeling like your first date.

@When he spoke about what is engineering research, he said:

A good engineer needs not to be a good researcher; a good researcher needs not to be a good engineer.

@When he spoke about what does doing research feel like, he said:

Research is to have faith in you can make the world better!

Four levels of research:

@Research assistant

@Homework like research

@Formulate you own problem and solve it

@Formulate problems for others to solve

He gave some "avoids" in doing research:

@Think research is only for genius;

@Think yourself is a genius;

@Think you need to know everything about the subject in advance;

@Think you should wait for the most important problem to work on;

@Think a solution is correct just because you can not find anything wrong.