Download as PDF, PPTX
Uploaded byTom Mens
How to be(come) a successful PhD student
The document provides comprehensive advice for PhD students and their advisors, detailing essential skills, responsibilities, and practical tips for success in academia. It stresses the importance of perseverance, time management, and collaboration, along with practical steps like planning ahead, maintaining a work-life balance, and engaging in networking opportunities. Additionally, it addresses common challenges faced by PhD students, offering strategies to overcome them while emphasizing the significance of publishing research and applying for postdoctoral positions.
More Related Content
Similar to How to be(come) a successful PhD student
How to be(come) a successful PhD student
- 1. HOW TO BE(COME)A SUCCESSFUL PHD STUDENT TOM MENS BENEVOL 2023 Nijmegen, 27-28 November 2023
- 2. ADVICE, GUIDELINES, TIPSAND TRICKS FOR PHD STUDENTS (AND THEIR ADVISORS) Software Engineering Lab Tom Mens tom.mens@umons.ac.be
- 3. 1993-1999 PhD Researcher 1999-2000 Project Researcher 2000-2003 FWOPostdoc Fellow 2003-now Assistant/Associate/Full Professor Practical Advice based on 3 decades of Personal experience • As a PhD student (1993-1999) • As a Postdoc researcher (1999-2003) • As an assistant/associate/full Professor (2003-now) • As a PhD advisor (2003-now)
- 4.
- 5. From PhD studentto Professor/Professional PhD student Postdoc Professor / Professional
- 6.
- 7. Which quality ofability should a PhD student have or acquire?
- 8. Which quality of ability should a PhD student haveor acquire? Perseverance (5) Persistence (3) Curiosity (3) Resilience (2) Focus (2) Discipline (2) Ambition / Passion Motivation Critical thinking / Scientific attitude / Rigor Open-mindedness Problem solving Structure Responsibility Autonomy / Independence Honesty Integrity Hard-working Imagination Dedication Passion Stubbornness ...
- 9. Which skills should a PhD student have or acquire? Reading Readand keep track of the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice related work within your field of research Writing “You will be writing all the time, and your writing will be critiqued and edited and sent back for revisions until you can finally put a coherent thought on paper. It is not uncommon for professors to go over student writing word by word and sentence by sentence explaining exactly why the grammar is broken here or the logic there.” (quote from Claus Wilke, through X) Communication and presentation “The other thing you'll do all the time is giving presentations. Lab meetings, PhD committee meetings, undergraduate classes when you're working as a teaching assistant, you will be constantly in front of people having to present complex technical matter.” (quote from Claus Wilke, through X)
- 10. Which skills should a PhD student have or acquire? Supervisionand management “Almost every PhD student has the opportunity to supervise other students, either undergraduates who want to gain research experience or other, more junior PhD students who need to learn their way around the lab. And the students you supervise will generally have the freedom to just walk away from your project, so you'll have to learn to keep your subordinates happy and engaged.” (quote from Claus Wilke, through X) Multitasking (juggling!) Communication / Social / Networking Planning / Time management Organisation / Structuring
- 11. What drives you to pursue a PhD? Scientificcuriosity and self-fulfillment – Research is your passion – Fun of learning – Thrill of discovering new insights Intellectual challenge of knowledge creation – solving complex problems – expanding the state-of-the-art in research Self-development – To learn new skills – To widen and deepen your (scientific) knowledge – To teach complex matter to others Future career prospects
- 12. Practical advice forPhD students Have a good “thesis statement” 🙋 A sentence that sums up the central argument around which the entire PhD dissertation revolves. – It encapsulates the essence of the research that the dissertation seeks to explore. – It highlights the main idea and direction of the dissertation. – It explains how your research contributes to the existing body of knowledge within your specific field of study. 💡Come up with a good thesis statement as early as possible. – It’s an easy win to improve your dissertation. – It allows the reader to know the destination right at the outset of your writing.
- 13. Practical advice forPhD students Take responsibility for your actions 💡How much you get out of a PhD is directly proportional to how much you put in “The attitude is generally: If you want to get a PhD you've got to pull yourself together and get some work done.” (quotes from Claus Wilke, through X)
- 14. Practical advice forPhD students Always Plan Ahead • Plan for the short term – conference submission deadlines • Plan for the medium term – Your PhD – Research visits of longer duration – Do not underestimate the time it takes to write the actual dissertation (at least 3, usually 6 months, sometimes more) • Plan for the long term – Your academic or professional career after the PhD
- 15. Practical advice forPhD students Keep your Focus • Set your target – Clearly define and set the main goal of your PhD. – Always work towards that target. – Avoid too many loose ends that cannot fit easily into a coherent thesis statement. • Structure your thoughts, your daily work, your writing, your code! • Alternate activities requiring a lot of concentration (e.g., coding, thinking) with more lightweight activities (e.g., writing). • Be curious. It is OK to have side-tracks that are not part of the PhD goal, but limit the effort you invest in them.
- 16. Practical advice forPhD students Track • Read and keep track of the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice related work within your field of research • Keep track of evolving technology and evolving fields, it may open up new research ideas and opportunies • Keep track of your own activities – for annual reporting – for completing your CV – for planning ahead
- 17. Practical advice forPhD students Be Mobile Seize the opportunities to travel and reach out 💡Attend workshops, conferences, seminars, summer schools – Coffee breaks and social events are perfect occasions to connect – Ask help from your supervisor to prepare/mentor you to attend your first conference, and to introduce you into the community • Especially relevant for junior/introvert PhD students – Meet like-minded people • To discuss about your research • To foster future collaborations • To complain about your advisor ;-) – Increase your visibility – Keep yourself up-to-date with the research field
- 18. Practical advice forPhD students Be Mobile 💡Carry out 1-3-6 month research visits in labs abroad – Select a lab that fits the scope and needs of your research – To increase your mobility – To boost your CV (for an academic career) – To broaden your research scope and vision – To increase your research network – To increase research collaborations
- 19. Practical advice forPhD students Be Mobile 💡Short, targeted stays can be useful too to learn new technology or new skills
- 20. Practical advice forPhD students Which software tools are indispensable for a PhD student (in your domain) and why?
- 21. Practical advice forPhD students Use the right tools for the right purpose • Backup and cloud storage – pCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, … • Anti-virus tool • Video-conferencing – Teams, Zoom, WebEx, Jitsi, Google Meet, … • Collaborative software development – git, GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, ... – Slack – …
- 22. Practical advice forPhD students Use the right tools for the right purpose • Preparing papers and presentations – LaTeX, Overleaf, Beamer, Keynote, PowerPoint, … • Finding and managing bibliographic references – Google Scholar, DBLP.org, Zotero, Mendeley, … – Publisher-based: IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, Springer Link, Elsevier Science Direct… – AI-based tools:researchrabbit, SemanticScholar
- 23. Bibliographic Reference ManagementSoftware Example: ResearchRabbit
- 24.
- 25. Practical advice forPhD students Use the right tools for the right purpose • Actively share research artefacts (publications, tools, datasets, videos, presentations) – arXiv.org, ResearchGate, Zenodo, figshare, GitHub, SlideShare, Speaker Deck, … • Use social media to disseminate research – LinkedIn, X, YouTube, …
- 26.
- 27.
- 28. Practical Advice Engage in“Open Research” • Respect the FAIR principles of digital assets in your scientific research (www.go-fair.org) – Findability – Accessibility – Interoperability – Reuse • Share your research artefacts early and publicly – Use a DOI for all of them! – papers in open access – datasets – tools – Create reproducible results
- 29. the reproducibility ofMSR studies has clearly improved since the situation around 2010, and the reuse of some kinds of datasets has become commonplace.
- 30. Reproducibility Spend time onhigh-quality replication packages. • It allows other researchers to confirm/refute your findings, and build further open them. • Structure your replication package – Distinguish the raw data from the processed/curated data – Document your datasets (version, source, extraction date, names and types of columns, ...) • Provide clean code – Document your code – Use coding conventions – Explicitly list all versions of all dependencies/libraries used – Ensure your code runs correctly in a virtual environment, independent of the machine on which it has been created
- 31. Create and sharestructured and readable replication packages (e.g. JupyterLab notebooks) https://github.com/AlexandreDecan/secos-backports https://zenodo.org/record/5055506 “Back to the Past: Analysing Backporting Practices in Package Dependency Networks," IEEE Trans. Software Engineering, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2021.3112204
- 32. Create and shareusable tools and datasets “A ground-truth dataset and classification model for detecting bots in GitHub issue and PR comments”, J. Systems and Software, 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2021.110911 https://github.com/mehdigolzadeh/BoDeGHa http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4000388
- 33. Practical advice forPhD students Collaborate • Meet regularly with your research group – Weekly meetings with supervisor – Brainstorms with other PhD students and postdocs • Collaborate with other researchers on topics of mutual interest – Write papers – Develop tools – Create and share benchmarks and datasets • Co-organise scientific workshops • Supervise master students • Interact with companies to apply research in practice – Company contacts are also valuable for your future career
- 34. Practical Advice Publish Regularly •Focus on quality – Be ambitious but not overambitious – Aim for quality (long-term gain) rather than quantity (short-term gain) – Choose your publication targets wisely: focus on A or A* conferences and journals with high impact factor • Communicate your publications early – Share preprints (e.g. on arXiv.org) – Use social media • Present your publications to a live audience – Practice your presentation and communication skills, they are a very valuable asset.
- 35.
- 36. CORE2020 Journal Ranking http://portal.core.edu.au/jnl-ranks/(discontinued since 2022)
- 37. Perils (and howto avoid them)
- 38. What are themain challenges you are (or have been) facing as a PhD student? Time management Writing Money Rejected Papers Being creative Long delays in review process Extra work unrelated to the thesis Getting started Getting data / getting study participants Deadline pressure Searching for topics Work-life balance Focus on one specific topic / Limited attention span Uncertainty / imposter syndrome Depression Doubting my own abilities Emotional investment Insomnia Lack of confidence Lack of motivation No one gets why you want to do a PHD Unhuman supervisor
- 39. Perils (and howto avoid them) 💡Do not neglect family, friends or yourself – Ensure a good work-life balance – Do not focus on research only, you will risk a burnout – Mens sana in corpore sano • Engage in sports and cultural activities • Take some me-time, holidays
- 40. Perils (and howto avoid them) 💡Welcome constructive criticism – You will be constantly challenged on the clarity and soundness of your thoughts and arguments – Do not take criticism personally – The feedback provided by advisors, reviewers, colleagues and the presentation audience is there to help you! – Questions raised can help you to explain better next time. – Discuss about, and integrate the feedback you receive – If you should encounter destructive or overly negative criticism, ignore it, it is not worth your time
- 41. Perils (and howto avoid them) ⚠ Doing a PhD is not a 9 to 5 job – Plan well ahead for upcoming deadlines – Do not procastrinate – Avoid needing to work last-minute all the time – Work more and harder occasionally, especially in case of upcoming deadlines
- 42. Perils (and howto avoid them) 😫 Getting stuck in your research “I can guarantee you that anybody with a PhD has at some point hit rock bottom where nothing worked and everything seemed hopeless and they have pushed through and worked their way out of it and developed enormous strength and resilience in the process. There are few experiences like it.” (Claus Wilke, through X)
- 43. Perils (and howto avoid them) Getting stuck in your research – This happens to every PhD researcher at least once. – Move away your pride, seek advice ASAP from your advisor and colleagues so that you can continue to move forward – Create and embrace collaborations – Explore alternative research paths – Imposter syndrome
- 44. Perils (and howto avoid them) • Feeling isolated – A PhD is a long, mostly independent project – Your advisor may not always have time to help you – Reach out to other people – Get to know PhD students outside of your group working on related topics • Your PhD advisor may not be a specialist in your chosen domain of research – This gives you more autonomy, but also requires you to seek external collaborations that are able to help you out when you need it
- 45. • Go fora professional career? • Or choose an academic career?
- 46. Guidelines for aProfessional Career • Your PhD expertise may not be valorised – If you are lucky, it will… • Your main assets are the transversal skills you acquired – Autonomy – Technical skills (advanced programming, data analysis, using specific tools, …) – Writing and presentation skills – Planning skills – Social (collaboration and communication) skills – Being involved in joint research projects – Critical out of the box thinking – Rigorous scientific attitude, abstract thinking – Problem-solving capacity – Ability to work on long-term goals without short-term rewards – Transform high-level concepts into marketable products/services
- 47. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career • Get involved • Organise • Publish • Collaborate • Network • Teach • Apply for funding • Plan your future
- 48. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Get Involved Contribute to the research community by taking on active role in • scientific conferences – Become part of PC – Publicity chair – Student volunteer – Local co-organiser – … • scientific journals – Reviewer – Guest editor of journal special issue – Member of editorial committee – …
- 49. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Organise • Scientific workshops – related to your research interests – Avoid too narrow focus • Tutorials • Hackathons • …
- 50. • Publish PhDresults in conferences and journals • Diversify and expand your research horizon – explore other research domains – collaborate with other experts • Try to obtain best paper/presentation awards • Leverage your knowledge – write up a survey, taxonomy or research challenges about your research area (if they do not already exist) Try, e.g., ACM Computing Surveys (A* journal) Guidelines for a Postdoc Career Publish
- 51. … it willboost your citation count
- 52. Respond to callsfor special issues • Check calls for papers for thematic issues in your journals of interest • Hope that your conference paper gets invited for a special issue • Go for magazine contributions – IEEE Software – IEEE Computer – …
- 53.
- 54. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Collaborate • Work together with other researchers on research topics of mutual interest – Write papers – Develop tools – Create and share benchmarks and datasets – Conduct interdisciplinary research • Co-organise scientific events • Supervise PhD and master students
- 55. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Get Involved in Teaching Having course experience is good – For your CV, if you want to get tenure – For attracting master students • That want to do a PhD • That would like to carry out research tasks
- 56. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Apply for
- 57. Apply for Funding Postdocfunding – EU Marie Slodowska-Curie Fellowships ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions – ERCIM Fellowship Programme fellowship.ercim.eu – National postdoctoral fellowships – AXA Research Fund – Check calls on SEWorld – …
- 58.
- 59. Apply for Funding Write/proposeresearch projects yourself – If your postdoc status allows you to – Preferably inter* (interuniversity, international, interdisciplinary) Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS Appel "Crédits et Projets" 2014 / Call "Credits and Projects" 2014 1) Manque d'un planning concernant l'évaluation des résultats. 2) L'intégration d'autres modalités que le geste et le son n'est pas assez clairement traitée. 3) L'utilisation de la plateforme dans au moins un domaine d'application n'est pas envisagée. 4) Dans quel langage, l'utilisateur de la plateforme travaillera ? Les discussions en commission ont permis de rassurer sur une partie des points ci-dessus. Note finale / Final grading Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS / Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS Appel "Crédits et Projets" 2014 / Call "Credits and Projects" 2014 1) Manque d'un planning concernant l'évaluation des résultats. 2) L'intégration d'autres modalités que le geste et le son n'est pas assez clairement traitée. 3) L'utilisation de la plateforme dans au moins un domaine d'application n'est pas envisagée. 4) Dans quel langage, l'utilisateur de la plateforme travaillera ? Les discussions en commission ont permis de rassurer sur une partie des points ci-dessus. Note finale / Final grading A : Excellent Décision du Conseil d'administration / Decision of the Board of Trustees Rejection of the proposal due to a lack of financial means / Rejet de la proposition faute de moyens financiers
- 60. Apply for Funding Don’tDespair !
- 61. Guidelines for aPostdoc Career Plan your future Solicit for tenure track positions (abroad?)
- 62. Conclusion Get involved Organise Be mobile Publish orperish Collaborate Increase visibility Network Teach Apply for funding Prepare your future