Hello everyone,

I am a computer science PhD candidate. My work is related to time series and machine learning. I am working almost lonely.. my supervisor dosent have a research team in this specific field. Unfortunately I didnt recognize this ( there is no research group ) until late stages ( i am now at the second year). This is so bad for me because I am very much a person who like to study and work with groups.

I am looking for cooperation and coaching as well. It would be great if I can know some one that can help me through my PhD journey. Also, if there is anyone share the same research interest and like to collaborate to produce papers with significant contributions.


If you are, or know someone who are, please let me know.

Many thanks

Hi Sllona,

I am in the same spot. I am a research group of one and my supervisor isn't that helpful. I can't give you any advice on how to find collaborators but you can still socialise with other PhD students. I was fortunate enough to become friends with a few PhD students in another research group and became an unofficial member ( they invited me to their Christmas Meal). I understand that lockdown has made socialising a lot more difficult but I know my university is hosting coffee mornings for postgraduate everyday that could be useful.

Also, I know lockdown is difficult for this but conferences are amazing. Personally I prefer internal postgraduate conferences or early career researcher conferences. The few PhD students in my field at other unis that I know well were all because I went to the pub with them at a conference. Unfortunately conferences are the by far the best way to collaborate with other unis but online conferences are not that great.

With the current lockdown, I am just focusing on managing my mental health with the assumption that I can network/socialise after coronavirus.

Hi rewt



Thanks for taking the time to reply to the post. You are right, conferences are good way and also meetings with other PhD students even from other areas. However, none of them are available for my case. As you said the conferences are all online which is not great. And our uni is closed for HDR desks and offices.

Hopefully I can found some mates to work with

I understand that you are frustrated but everyone is in the same boat. I don't think finding like minded PhD students is easy.

Although we could start a postgraduate forum discord channel?

Starting a discord channel is a great idea !!

Sure, let's do it

Is anyone else interetsed?