What it means to be a Ph.D.
researcher?
IIT Madras
1st March 2012
Shankar Balachandran
RISE Lab
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras
shankar@cse.iitm.ac.in
Disclaimer
 The views are mine
 Not the department’s
 Not the institute’s
 You may disagree with me
 Take things with a tub of salt
 These opinions and views were developed over time. I am
unable to attribute any of these to any one person or event
but I am sure several people and external factors shaped
these views.
What is research?
 Dictionary Meaning:
 diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order
to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc
 Key things
 Diligent
 Systematic
 Discover or revise
 Facts, theories, applications
What does every Ph.D. student aspire
for when they join?
 A theorem or law named after them
 Hundreds of citations
 Every one recognizes you by your name
 Even better, just by your face
 Will be the smartest one in the planet
 Almost a celebrity status
Identify these famous researchers
Andrew Ng
Charles Leiserson
Andrew Tanenbaum
David
Patterson
Raj Reddy
Djikstra
What Can Happen
 Your thesis definitely bears your name
 Several other authors and co-authors
 Stealing your limelight
 Google yourself with the hope that you turn up in the first
few links
 Keep looking for “who is citing me”
 Your advisor may be the only person that recognizes you
What happened in between
 Many a slip between the cup and the lip
 Picked the wrong school
 Picked the wrong area
 Picked the wrong problem
 Picked the wrong guide
.
.
.
 Frustration during both your Ph.D. days and later
Motivation Level of a Grad Student
Why Should One Do Ph.D.?
 Can be one of several reasons that you may have
 Want to understand things more deeply
 Want to make an impact in the society
 Want to become a professor
 Want to make money
 Each one has their own reason
What does your guide (and others,
including yourself) expect from your
Ph.D.?
 Original contribution
 Leads to the question:
 Why should I innovate?
 A more deeper and philosophical question
 Can’t we just consume and not produce?
Relative Emphasis that We Tend to
Place
 Diligent
 Systematic
Discover or Revise
 Facts
Theories
 Applications
Font sizes are proportional to relative emphasis that a typical student places on different things
Ph.D. is a Personal Endeavor
 Yes,
 You have a guide
 You have a lab and lab mates
 There is a community which consumes and produces contents
in your field of interest
 But
 You have a choice over
 What you do, how you do it and when you do it
 And also what you don’t do.
 I see it as a great way to know your strengths as well as
weaknesses
Research Can Be Frustrating
 Not all of us are born bright
 “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
 Albert Einstein
 Being smart is only part of the Ph.D.
 Remember the diligent and systematic part?
 Superhuman efforts
 Be smart
 Manage time well
 Ask the right questions
 Read, write and speak well
My Personal View of Ph.D. research
 Ph.D. student is similar to a child
 Infant
 Unable to move around on your own.
 Too many new things – all equally fancy
 Toddler
 Beginning to walk on your own
 Will fall a hundred times
 Young child
 Can walk steadily but can’t run
 Post adolescence
 Sprinter, marathoner ….
Where does your guide fit in?
 Your research guide is like a parent
 Infant
 Carry around
 Toddler
 Hold hands to walk
 Young child
 If you fall, the parent lifts you up and dusts you
 Post adolescence
 Dude, you are on your own
Guide/Student Relationship
 Both sides can be unreasonable
 No parent can expect an infant to run
 No adult should expect the parent to carry them
 Unfortunately, this mismatch in the expectations becomes a
sore point
Marathoner vs Sprinter
 Marathoner
 Chug along slowly but steadily
 The horizon is distant
 Sprinter
 Quick burst of energy
 Can’t sustain for a long time
 Ideally
 Ph.D. requires both sprinting and marathon training
 Always focus on the horizon
 But don’t lose sight of the potholes that you are driving into
My approach to guiding students
 Infant
 Learn from me
 Child
 Learn with me
 Post-adolescence
 Teach me
Research vs Ph.D.
 Can’t you do research without a Ph.D.?
 Yes
 Can you get a Ph.D. without research?
 No and aptly so
 History of research
 Long history, several discoveries and inventions in several fields
 History of Ph.D.
 Relatively short
How is research awarded?
 Imagine what a researcher in the medieval time was looking
for
 Money?
 Ph.D.?
 Most likely to be a personal, academic and scientific endeavor
 Somewhere along the line, we have productized research
 Papers
 Grants
 Ph.D. degree
Research Culture in the West
 Research thrives on a community
 Producers without consumers and consumers without
producers can be a problem
 The west has adequate number of both
 Not just production/consumption
 Peer group to brainstorm and discuss
 Get inspirations for problems
 Validation
 Build systems
 Interact with the industry
 Learn to ask the right questions and learn to get your answers
reviewed and checked
In India
 At most 50 Ph.D.s graduate from CSE departments
 Across all IITs + IISc + NITs + Other universities
 Serious researchers
 A small (but growing) number
 In contrast
 US has more than 10,000 Ph.Ds in computer science and
engineering
 Many are still active in research
 Larger community to plug in to
 A fresh student starting out in the US already has a better
start
Why Does It Matter?
 You are going to publish in conferences where they are trying
to publish
 Competitive and trained
 Also have English as their mother tongue which can be an
advantage
 Makes it quite tilted in their favor
Peter Norvig’s Suggestion
 Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
 Also applies to research
 You start out late but sustained effort can get you there
 Imagine yourself where you are going to be ten years down
the line
 Prepare yourself for that
Key Things in a Ph.D. student’s career
 Courses
 Qualifiers
 Picking the right research problem and areas
 Publishing
 Giving talks and listening to talks
 Thesis Writing
Courses and Qualifiers
 Courses
 Expand your breadth
 Keep you on toes
 Take sufficient math courses all throughout
 You don’t know when they will come to bite your back
 Qualifiers
 Necessary evil
 Various schools have various mechanisms
 I see it primarily as a mechanism to enable early exit
Picking the Right Research Area +
Problems
 Early career decision
 Has a profound impact
 At that time, you can’t see the scope of the area as a Ph.D.
problem
 Also, you cannot possibly imagine post ph.d. relevance
 In some sense, students trust guides blindly
 If you are a new student
 Read a lot and ask a lot of questions
 No pride to protect at this stage
 Don’t hesitate to question established thoughts
 Leads to new discoveries
Publishing
 Remember, publishing is the way of giving back to the
community
 One can question the relevance of
 Counts
 Venues
 Gaming the system etc.
 Bottom line
 If you have something interesting to say, say it
 You should say it – you owe it to the community
 Say it well
 Sometimes, it is also the means to marking your territory
Talks
 Prepares you for something larger than your Ph.D. student
life
 You are expected to give talks throughout your career
 The more you give talks, the better you get at
 Organizing thoughts
 Presentation
 Keeping the audience interested
Thesis Writing
 This is something that you call your own
 You should be proud about it later
 Requires a lot of effort
 Cannot be just the concatenation of papers
 Theses do not have page limits
 Theses need not assume a lot of familiarity from the reader’s
side
 Illustrated examples are okay
 This is the stage where your collective wisdom over the years
must show
Shortage of Time
 All this is expected to happen in 5 years
 What about the 10-year plan?
 Research does not stop with your Ph.D.
 Your Ph.D. research should lay the foundation for your research
career
 Ph.D. is the path not the goal post
 The scenery is as beautiful as the destination
Post Ph.D.
 Academic vs Industrial Research
Industrial Research vs. Academic
Research
 Academic research can do with hot-potato approach
 If it is too hot to handle, drop it
 Industrial research always has limited funding
 Industrial research can always get axed suddenly
 Industrial research is typically more focused and the
timelines are usually rigid
Some Useful Tips for Ph.D. students
 Maintain a research scrap book
 Could be a notebook or a blog
 Note down all your thoughts, questions, methodologies etc.
 Can come in quite handy to look at the evolution of your
thought process
 Also makes it easy when you write papers/thesis
 Keep on the look out for interesting problems
 You are going to be employed 5 years from the start of your
Ph.D.
 You should think about what is going to be relevant five years
down the line and acquire sufficient skills
Tips (contd.)
 In your third year or so
 Start thinking about where you want to be
 Academia
 Start thinking about sending submissions to journals/top conferences
 What kind of courses will you be asked to teach
 What area of research you want to work after Ph.D.
 How to write proposals / get grants
 National vs International prominence
 Industry
 What kind of position are you going to like?
 Research vs Development
Taking up Post Doctoral Positions
 Very common in sciences, humanities and in engineering
fields other than CSE and EE
 Usually done to
 Stand on your own feet
 Move to a new area
 Pick up other skills that you may need to sustain a research
career
Importance of Networking
 We all fit in to a community
 Start networking with your community right from your Ph.D. days
 With people from your research lab and the department
 With researchers outside the institute
 You could even think of doing independent research or work with
people other than your guides
 When you finish your program
 You will have your own network
 Your own set of research problems
 You don’t have to be under the shadow of your guide
 Attend conferences, give talks, attend talks by people from other places
Some Useful Resources
 How to be a Good Graduate Student by Marie desJardins
 A graduate school survival guide: So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.
by Ronald Azuma
 Douglas Comer’s essays on Ph.D. in Computer Science
 http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/
 Measuring research
 http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.research.measure.html
 You and your research by Richard Hamming
Thank You