PhD Process: Part II
Personal, Communication
and Environmental Aspects
Jayant Haritsa
Computer Science & Automation
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 1
The PhD Process
REAL WORLD
RESEARCH
COMMUNITY
Part II
INSTITUTION
ADVISOR
THESIS
Part I
PERSONAL ASPECTS
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 3
Motivation for PhD
•
•
•
•
VTU requirement for promotion
Cultural capital (add the Dr prefix)
Masochistic mindset (long pain period)
Enjoy discovery / writing / talking
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 4
Work Ethic
•
•
•
•
•
INDEPENDENT research
It is YOUR thesis, not the Advisor’s!
The advisor is not a NANNY!
CANNOT do PhD as side business
Focus on ONE problem at a time
–
2 * 0.5 << 1 * 1
• WELCOME criticism of your work
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 5
Survival Pre-requisites [1]
• Ability to look at life in a perverse (creative) way
– (Mark Twain) Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter !
• Patience and mental strength to negotiate the
troughs (inevitable for every PhD)
• Trust your gut feelings in spite of negative results
– Luck favors the prepared mind (Pasteur/Hamming)
• Good sense of humour – you will definitely need it!
• Ability to smile (through gritted teeth) at advisor
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 6
Survival Pre-requisites [2]
• Industry experience – NO!
– "Real problems" only imply short-term
applicability
– May even be counter-productive since
immediate reaction is to start programming,
rather than conceptual thinking
• PhD registration X
 Research Scholar
• PhD is “training to do research” AND
“actually doing research”
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 7
VTU Faculty Specifics
• Difficult to devote time due to academic
and familial responsibilities
– Make sure to set aside a fixed daily time slot
for research and make this sacrosanct
• Course students can participate in the
research work under your direction and
thereby accelerate the progress
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 8
Good PhD Thesis
• Relevant to society – NO!
• Relevant to industry – NO!
• Right question: “Did I have fun thinking about
the problem and did I devise elegant solutions
that I am proud to show my mother (and she
didn't find any mistakes in the proofs)?”
• Doing a PhD is hard enough without the
burden of additional expectations ...
• All good dissertations find their way into the
real-world sooner or later
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 9
ENVIRONMENTAL
ASPECTS
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 10
BAD ADVISOR CHOICE
• Knows less about the topic than you do
(even at the beginning)
• Not visible in the research community
• Says “Yes” to a student without assessment
• Popular with students due to low
expectations, not subject mastery
• Most notable achievement in last five years
has been getting his PF transferred
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 11
GOOD ADVISOR CHOICE [1]
• Junior Young Turk
– Great enthusiasm and involvement
– Current with research topics
– Remembers PhD tribulations
– Expects the world from you
– Micro-management of your work
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 12
GOOD ADVISOR CHOICE [2]
• Senior Big Shot
– Broad perspective of research area
– Can advertise your work well
– Provides academic freedom to explore
– Perenially rushed for time
– Will not write your thesis
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 13
BAD CHOICE of FRIENDS
• ondu idly-vada / by-two coffee dost
– Unless your thesis topic is “Topological
sorting arrangements of circles and donuts”
• Indian philosophy buff
– Indian philosophy is an intellectual mechanism
for providing extremely sophisticated reasons
as to why work cannot be done
• Lazy genius
– Will drag you into the mud with him
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 14
GOOD CHOICE of FRIENDS
• Technically competent and ambitious
– a healthy spirit of both cooperation and
competition
• Willing to call “a spade a spade” and criticize
you to your face
• Brings out the best research in you
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 15
RESEARCH COMMUNITY
• Take every opportunity to meet with the
“movers and shakers” in the field
– attend local international conferences such as
COMAD, HiPC, FSTTCS, IndoCrypt, …
– attend summer schools (Yahoo, Microsoft, …)
– apply for six-month internships in research labs
after you are about half-way through your thesis
– send technical reports for comments outside
– for funding, approach academies (INAE/IASc
/NASc /INSA) and DST/CSIR/KSCST/VTU
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 16
REAL WORLD
• Family
– starts calling you a “visiting professor”
– question your sanity with cold-blooded regularity
• Well-wishers
– take great delight in asking you
“Is the thesis done yet?”
“Can we call you Doctor now?”
“Do all PhDs take this long?”
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 17
COMMUNICATION
ASPECTS
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
WRITING and PRESENTATION
IMPERATIVES
• It is your duty as a scientist to share your
discoveries with others
• Your work is understood only from what you
present / publish
• You are evaluated only based on what you
write in your reports, etc.
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
Acquiring Writing Skills [1]
• http://dsl.serc.iisc.ernet.in/~haritsa/geninfo/techwrite.ppt
(by Vikram Pudi)
• Essential for both publications and thesis
• Spelling: Automated Spellcheckers
• Style: Elements of Style by Strunk & White
– Clarity, elegance and flow
– Technical precision is paramount
• e.g. rampant misuse of “optimal” and “ideal”
– Avoid ornate language – this is not a literary exercise
• e.g. The linked list appeared like a chain of jasmine flowers
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
Acquiring Writing Skills [2]
• Organization
– Modular (like programming)
– Linear narrative (no “item songs” )
– Minimize redundancy
• Choose good titles/acronyms (like variable names)
– Time Will Tell: Leveraging Temporal Expressions in IR
– Real-time commit protocol called PROMPT
(Permits Reading Of Modified Prepared-data for Timeliness)
• Read and revise word-by-word!
– 10 page paper usually takes a month to write satisfactorily
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
Acquiring Presentation Skills
• Slides should be in large font / visible colors
• Ideas should be conveyed through
pictures / animation as far as possible
• Focus on conveying the main idea, and not
every single detail
• Rehearse the entire talk a few times
• Memorize the inter-slide transitions
• Carry out dry-runs with your peer group
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
PUBLICATIONS
• ESSENTIAL to publish at least TWO papers
before submitting thesis
– Progress milestones  confidence buildup
– Honest feedback from anonymous experts
– Early warning of potential disaster situations
– Ideas for future work
– Thesis gets written/revised at a steady pace,
not delayed to the end, when it can prove to be
an overwhelming task
– Makes the resume speak for itself
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
PUBLICATION FORA
• Unique feature of CS: The top conferences
and journals are viewed as equivalent fora.
– Evaluating Computer Scientists and Engineers
for Promotion and Tenure
• David Patterson (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
• Lawrence Snyder (Univ. of Washington, Seattle)
• Jeffrey Ullman (Stanford University)
“In those dimensions that count most,
conferences are superior.”
“Conference publication is both rigorous
and prestigious.”
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
CS Conference/Journal Quality
• Most reliable, comprehensive and recent are
the rankings by Australasian CORE
• ~1500 conferences and ~2000 journals
• Ranks them into A+, A, B, C categories
• Website: http://www.core.edu.au/
• Goal should be to publish in A+ and A
categories
• ICDE database conference (A+): ~15% accepts
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
Further Reading
• How to Get a PhD: A Handbook for Students and
Their Supervisors
– E. Phillips and D.S. Pugh, OUP
• Getting a Phd: An Action Plan to Help You Manage
Your Research, Your Supervisor and Your Project
– John Finn (Routledge Study Guides)
• Authoring a PhD: How to Plan, Draft, Write and
Finish a Doctoral Thesis or Dissertation
– Patrick Dunleavy (Palgrave Study Guides)
• http://www.phdcomics.com/
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
Take Away
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
QUESTIONS ?
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide ‹#›
END
June 2010
VTU PhD Workshop
Slide 30