i finished my phd quite a few years ago. My topic started out as signal processing applied to speech, but morphed into signal processing applied to bioinformatics because it was easier to publish.
it was an extension of undergrad, electronics engineering.
a day was either reading papers or writing matlab code, or waiting for matlab code to finish running. Pretty much everything was either reading research or working on future research. If I tried 20 ideas, one might work well enough to get a paper out of. Then a whole lot of testing to flesh it out, then writing the paper and editing and typesetting a creating images.
I was in a lab so there were other people to talk to working on similar things, that helped a lot.
most useful skills i think are just the research process, how to go from undergrad to expert in a topic. how to interact with the academic community.
I enjoyed the process of learning so much. Not so much the process of writing papers.
I wasnt the best at staying in contact. I could have met him every morning if i had my shit together, but i caught up with him once every week or 2 in practice. Most of the help early on was guidelines on papers to read, and topics to write a paper on. Towards the end it was much more me driving direction. Like i said the other people in the lab helped a lot especially discussing ideas and learning concepts. We had 'tutorials', where you present at a whiteboard to the 3 other people in the lab something you feel you understand e.g. pca or mfccs. That sort of thing was fun and good for understanding.
The thing to probably note is that the final thesis was supposed to be basically the published papers put together with a story linking them. That isnt how many labs do theses in other fields, but it worked in our field well enough. It gave a good deal of experience in writing papers, but also meant the thesis was basically all peer reviewed before you even submitted it, which made rejection extremely unlikely.
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i finished my phd quite a few years ago. My topic started out as signal processing applied to speech, but morphed into signal processing applied to bioinformatics because it was easier to publish.
it was an extension of undergrad, electronics engineering.
a day was either reading papers or writing matlab code, or waiting for matlab code to finish running. Pretty much everything was either reading research or working on future research. If I tried 20 ideas, one might work well enough to get a paper out of. Then a whole lot of testing to flesh it out, then writing the paper and editing and typesetting a creating images.
I was in a lab so there were other people to talk to working on similar things, that helped a lot.
most useful skills i think are just the research process, how to go from undergrad to expert in a topic. how to interact with the academic community. I enjoyed the process of learning so much. Not so much the process of writing papers.
How often did you meet with your advisor, and how much help did you receive?
I wasnt the best at staying in contact. I could have met him every morning if i had my shit together, but i caught up with him once every week or 2 in practice. Most of the help early on was guidelines on papers to read, and topics to write a paper on. Towards the end it was much more me driving direction. Like i said the other people in the lab helped a lot especially discussing ideas and learning concepts. We had 'tutorials', where you present at a whiteboard to the 3 other people in the lab something you feel you understand e.g. pca or mfccs. That sort of thing was fun and good for understanding.
The thing to probably note is that the final thesis was supposed to be basically the published papers put together with a story linking them. That isnt how many labs do theses in other fields, but it worked in our field well enough. It gave a good deal of experience in writing papers, but also meant the thesis was basically all peer reviewed before you even submitted it, which made rejection extremely unlikely.