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Research experience before PhD

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

When students apply for a PhD program, their background and preparation for the PhD is considered mainly via the range of course work and performance in those courses. Letters of recommendation are also vital. However one thing which may make the biggest difference is demonstrating actual research experience. This can be

  • an impressive senior year project with some original research
  • a suitable project or survey in an advanced and directly relevant course
  • a summer working as an intern in an established research lab
  • research assistantship with an established researcher in the field
  • a research paper (even if it is in some student publication)
  • assisting in some large collaborative research project

The idea is that admission committees prefer candidates who have some idea about the well-motivated problems in the research area and have the maturity to formulate a research problem and come up with the ideas to solve the problem. These abilities are demonstrated more easily by actual research than course work. For example, any relevant preliminary research already indicates the research interests, writing skills and technical skills of a candidate. Such research is also a useful exercise for the applicant to get a feel of what kind of research they are interested in.

Familiarity with a research area can also be demonstrated by attending workshops and tutorials designed for pre-doctoral or doctoral students and going to relevant seminars. Similarly, one learns many useful things if one has already some research experience during the undergraduate years. One specially learns a lot by collaborating with more senior researchers. This makes the transition into a PhD program easier.

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End of the road

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Although I had submitted my thesis in mid-summers, I finally had my viva. My life is as a PhD student is now official over …thankfully on a successful note! Although I could dwell on a number of issues as I write my last entries on the blog, I think it will be best if I write down some of the lessons from the viva and last few months.

  1. Before submitting your thesis, take a week or two off so that you can review your thesis with fresh eyes and a fresh mind.
  2. Proofread again and again. When one can sometimes encounter minor errors in one’s 8 page published paper, there is always a chance of some kind of error lurking in the thesis.
  3. Treat the time before you submit the thesis as your viva preparation time. This mental attitude may help you look at the thesis more carefully. This is easy to say but hard to do because after three years, one may be exhausted with one’s line of work.
  4. Write less but make sure each and every sentence is defendable.
  5. I know some academics like to dress casually but viva is a time to show respect to the occasion and dress formally.
  6. Make lots notes on your thesis. Use sticky notes if they help. Your notes will help you in the viva.
  7. Vivas are not meant to make the candidate feel uncomfortable. Rather, they provide a chance to explain what you have been doing for the last few years. From what I have noticed, in UK, viva can be prolonged affairs where the examiners go through the thesis and ask relevant questions or seek clarifying comments on parts of the thesis.
  8. Do not be afraid to hold your own against the expert. It is unlikely that your thesis is deemed a flawless piece of work. Also, examiners like to do their job by looking at everything critically. However, a viva is not a time to get overawed by the expert but a time to have an intelligent conversation on a topic you are supposed to have command on.
  9. It is best to be polite even when disagreeing.
  10. Good examiners invest a lot of time in examining the thesis and giving valuable feedback. It is good to thank them for their effort and interest.

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Communicating knowledge report

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Research Information Network (RIN) and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) have published a new report Communicating knowledge: how and why UK researchers publish and disseminate their findings. The goal of the report was to study how research is communicated and what is the motivation behind using different channels of communication and publication. The report also examines how research assessment mechanisms impacts on which channels of communications are used. The main theme that researchers have many goals to balance including timely dissemination, esteems with in one’s research community, career rewards, impact beyond academic community. These aims pull the researcher in different directions.

Researchers’ perceptions and understanding of the messages they receive from funders and from universities may often be mistaken, but they influence what researchers publish and how, and they give rise to real concerns. Many researchers see a damaging tension between their desire to communicate via channels which enable them to reach and influence their intended audiences – often beyond academia – as rapidly as possible, and the pressures to publish in high-status journals.

So what is the conclusion? The report has various key findings. Firstly, researchers need more consistent and effective guidance on the value of different channels of communication. If policy makers want to incentivize innovative digital methods of dissemination such as podcasts, then they will need to clarify how this dissemination is valued. Secondly, the attribution and listing of multiple authors varies between disciplines and this act must be taken into account in assessment. Thirdly, citations patterns and motivations depend on the research discipline and researcher’s experience. These patterns are changing with new technologies. And most importantly, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is the most dominant factor in influencing which channels of communication are chosen and this is invariably geared towards established and traditional journals.

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The sum is greater than the parts

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

The Sum is greater than the parts. This is what came to my mind when I was aggregating my PhD research into a thesis format in the summers. Thesis writing involves much more than compiling your research. It is analogous to not only writing a manuscript but also be the copy editor of the manuscript.

Firstly, the university rules and regulations have to be met. These rules can range from having a certain width in margins to font sizes and thesis organization. These rules can be consulted from the university examination handbook.

The compilation of PhD research also induces various major and minor consistency issues. There may be repetitions of concepts which need to be weeded out. In mathematical theses, consistency in notation is another issue. Maintaining macros is not only good practice but almost a necessity. In such cases, type-setting software like Latex is very handy.

Other aspects of the thesis such as preparing outline of the thesis, table of contents, list of figures, lift of tables and the index can take longer than expected and are not entirely trivial tasks. The bibliography is another aspect which needs to be taken care of.  To makes the document, well-knit, references to definitions, sections and chapters within the thesis need to be input.  Even if each chapter has conclusions, concluding comments of the whole thesis are expected in the end.

A thesis is much longer than a paper. Therefore, gentle reminders need to be inserted to remind the reader about certain terms defined much earlier.

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Keeping track of latest research

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

In scientific research, the speed of new results is high so that not only one needs to obtain interesting new results but also make them public before some one else published them.  As a PhD student, I also witnessed this problem when a couple of research questions I answered (but did not publish) were published by some one else within a few months. This raises questions as how to keep up with the latest research, which problems to try solving and how to publish before some one else? Although, these are questions which more experienced researchers would answer better but the following are some observations:

  1. If one chooses a unique problem or uses a novel technique to solve a problem, there is less chance of big research teams working on it. This can also have a downside: if not enough people are working on it, it may mean that it is not as important
  2. Keep track of the latest journals publications so that one can work on recently posed problems or improve recent work.
  3. Journals can take longer to publish so it is useful to lookout for new papers in established conferences for latest developments.
  4. Certain researchers submit their working papers as archived reports much before they publish them. It is worth exploring such archives and getting notified about recent submissions.
  5. Even archive submissions may involve work done many months before the actual submission. It is worth talking to relevant people in the field in meetings/workshops/conferences.
  6. If one knows that certain researchers are working on a similar topic, there it may be helpful to exchange updates or even join forces.

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