A researcher who won a best paper award at EuroCrypt shares his opinionated framework for doing impactful research. While acknowledging that luck plays a role in awards, he argues that developing good taste in problems and having great collaborators are the two most important factors for success. The author, who received the award for a model stealing paper with five co-authors, breaks down his approach into four key areas.

First, he emphasizes that good taste is the single most important skill to develop. Researchers with refined taste pick problems that matter and take approaches likely to succeed before wasting months of effort. Teaching taste is difficult, but it comes from practicing research while constantly evaluating what works and what doesn't. Second, he stresses the importance of great collaborators who catch mistakes, push back on bad ideas, and bring complementary skills. He suggests reaching out to researchers with specific proposals rather than generic collaboration requests.

Third, he advocates reading all relevant papers to understand the current state of knowledge. He reads papers with specific intentions: to understand what's possible, to learn how to achieve results, or to get a sense of the field. Finally, he discusses the importance of writing compelling papers and what happens after publication. The key takeaway is that while luck matters, researchers can significantly increase their chances of success by focusing on taste, collaboration, and execution.