Tools for Searching the Literature

• Google Scholar

• Web of Science

• Engineering Village

• IEEE Xplore Digital Library

• AIAA Aerospace Research Central

Tools for Preparing Documents and Presentations

• Here is an extraordinarily helpful guide for writing technical papers by Joao Hespanha.

• For documents with any mathematical symbols and expressions, LaTeX is a great document preparation system.

  • To use LaTeX with Windows, MikTeX is a good option. To use LaTeX with OS X, TeXShop is a good option.

  • Both MikTeX and TeXShop come with good editors. For Windows WinEdt is another option with a good GUI for symbol insertion etc, but it requires a (relatively modest) license fee. Another option is TexStudio, which is free.

  • Many journals provide style files that make it easy to prepare articles compatible with their formatting rules.

• For preparing illustrations and/or geometric diagrams, Inkscape is an excellent tool.

  • Microsoft PowerPoint is often good enough for drawing block diagrams.

• For making presentations with lots of mathematical symbols and expressions, Beamer (a LaTeX class) is a good option.

  • That said, Microsoft PowerPoint is often good enough for nice, clean presentations. To sprinkle a few mathematical symbols and expressions in PowerPoint, KLatexFormula can be useful.