Hi everyone,

I have done two quite different projects in my PhD years with two different advisors. The first project failed after long time due to the error on the topic itself. The results and progress from the second topic is good. I am writing thesis now, some faculty member told me, I can write down anything I have done, with results or without results. Is that true? If I write two quite different topics, how can I splice them together in a nice structure? I don't want to have a thesis looking like two technique reports bound together. Any suggestion is appreciated.

You're the only person in a position to judge, but if you think it will look like two projects spliced together, then it's likely the examiners will.

I would only include the first project if you can link it to the second in some way, otherwise it will make the thesis seem very disjointed. Are there any similarities between the 2 projects at all? For example, did any of the techniques that failed to work in the 1st project lead you to make certain decisions about your 2nd project? In my PhD, I started with a lot of experimental work. The results were ridiculously varibale and hard to obtain, so I switched the focus of my project and it ended up being entirely computer-based. I included the (fairly rubbish!) experimental data in my thesis, and used this as a rationale for why my project then changed direction. Could you do something similar?

That is a possible way to join two projects together. The two projects have some similarities, in very general way though. The structure of first model is simpler than that of second one, maybe I can state first model fail because the setting is blah blah blah, then I change the setting to second model. Thanks a lot for inspiration!