Assignment 6

Assignment 6: Advanced Graduate Student Panel

please articulate ONE important question which you would like to see to be addressed / discussed by your experienced peers!

insert your answer below as follows:

your name — followed by your question

Dola Saha - How easy/difficult it is to find a topic for PhD Thesis, and if possible, please suggest a few tips on selecting a topic based on the criteria that the topic will remain interesting to the PhD candidate for rest of the PhD life.

Michael Otte - Could you compare and contrast being a teaching assistant vs bing a research assistant; particularly with regards the amount of time that you are able to spend on coursework and your own research interests.

Caleb Phillips - Are there any specifically research-related tools you use to manage resources, references, and citations? Please limit answers to free-as-in-freedom software.

Lee Becker - What would you differently if you knew what you know now when you started the program?

Paul Marshall - Do you find that you take classes into the later years, or do most students take about 2 years of courses and then focus solely on research?

Mohammad Al-Mutawa - Starting from the beginning (MS phase) to the end (getting the PhD), how would you draw a curve that would represent difficulty and required effort?

David Gnabasik – I'm beginning to hear many stories about post-graduate teaching / faculty rejection letters. Has anyone heard good preparation advice for minimizing that period of time?

Jeffrey LaMarche - It does not seem like taking classes alone will adequately prepare someone to take an area examination, so how can someone make sure that they are prepared enough to pass their area exam?

KyuHan Koh - What was your biggest challenge so far? i.e. Qualifying exam (Preliminary exam), Thesis proposal, publishing papers, etc..

Saroch Panichsakul - What's so special for being a PhD student (proud of yourself, cool research, easy to find a job, PhD trailing your name, self esteem, etc..)?

John Michalakes – I'm interested in hearing about qualifying and area examinations. Could you give a blow-by-blow account?

Dan Knights — How have you dealt with any ethical dilemmas during your studies regarding the appropriate use of technology, as in the case of machine warfare research or government surveillance research? How do the local and global research communities tend to deal with such dilemmas?

Nwanua Elumeze - The PhD is ostensibly a gateway to a research career at a university or large company. Have any of you considered taking your domain knowledge and creating a company with your ideas? How feasible is is to deploy your research in this way?

Yuli Liang - Right now we're spending all the time in course homework and research, and some professors keep saying that it's important to joining the academic community. How and what's the benefit according to your opinion?

Jinho Choi - For those who have Master's degrees in CS from other schools, it's likely that they have already taken most courses for breath-taking. However, since the department allows to use only one course from transferred credits for breath-taking, they need to take at least 4 other courses although there are not many 5000-level courses left for them to take. Is there some way that transferred students can move on to 6000+ level courses sooner so they can concentrate on their researches more?

Guy Cobb - How do you go about finding/choosing an advisor if there is more than one person you are interested in working with, without alienating anyone?

Rhonda Hoenigman - How often do you go to conferences? Do you find these trips to be helpful to your research and in what way?

Keith Maull - What are the top three (3) challenges you have faced since you started the PhD program? How did you deal with them? Were these anticipated or unanticipated challenges, and if anticipated, how much different were they to what you expected?

Jane Meyers - What graduate level course have you enjoyed/benefited from the most and what made it worthwhile?

Ashok Basawapatna- Have you had any experiences with classmates dropping out of the Ph.D. program– what differences in the Ph.D. experience seperates you from them if any?

Yifei Jiang - How often do you publish papers? How/Where did you get the ideas and topics to write a paper?

Holger Dick - Why would anyone think that it is a good idea to spent most of the time as a phd-student on classes/topics that are of no interest or help to the students and their research?

Joel Pfeiffer - When thinking back on your accomplishments as a PhD student, which do you rate as the highest? Proposal, first paper published, adjusting to life in grad school, etc.

Shumin Wu - Once you have chosen a particular research topic for your thesis, do you feel pigeon-holed to that path? How do you deal with other research interests that may not closely relate to your thesis?

Soumya Ghosh - What is the best way of going about choosing a phd thesis? At what point of time is one ready to pick the topic.

Last modified 10 October 2007 at 1:30 am by Soumya