Hi folks,

I have done with my PhD VIVA with minor corrections few weeks ago and only recently received a letter from university senate confirming award of the degree. Please note that this letter is not the nice looking 'Degree certificate' which will be given to me in July during graduation. I can rush them to get it before. However, I would quite like to attend the actual event in the summer.

My question is can I officially use 'Dr' now?

Shrijit

Hi everyone,
This is after stressing hours about possible career path to choose after a PhD. I am an international student in the UK nearing the end of my PhD. I have been desperately looking for a suitable postdoc or similar role before handing in my thesis to avoid a period of unemployment.

I have recently started looking for postdoc jobs as opposed to 'other jobs' because I understand that a post doc vacancy is generally expected to start more or less imminently. I have not been able to find a project that has a close match with my PhD project, let alone applying. Can anyone suggest the best way to look for a post doc in electronic engineering in UK or abroad?

Can anyone also suggest other options within academia? I have done a lot of teaching in the labs/ workshops. I also think work within university as teaching/ administrative (department management/ knowledge transfer/ Intellectual property etc) may also be give thought. But I don't know their implications.

Can anyone suggest something or share their experience in a similar situation. Any reply will be appreciated.
S

I am currently writing the final chapters of my thesis in the UK. I am from India and there is a offer of joining a private university with the vision to expand its engineering teaching quality and research infrastructure. However, since it is the early days, there is not much in terms of infrastructure. I believe that teaching and research feed each other if they are done in balance. I have done a lot of TA ship over my time as a PhD student and this has made me interested in doing more teaching.However, I also understand that being away from research may be jeopardising. On one hand I am thinking doing a full time assistant lectureship will give me first hand experience in doing independent teaching, course development, administration, writing grant proposal and perhaps some research, I fear that it may impair my chances of pursuing research heavy roles in future if I change my mind.Do you think I may be accepted in research heavy jobs if I spent a year or two in a teaching heavy job?

Any comment will be gratefully appreciated! Shrijit

It is a good idea to publish and attend conferences if the money is available to do so. More than anything it will be a useful thing to have during your PhD viva at the end of your PhD which is a very important and decisive part. Having some publications on your work will act in your favour as testimonies of accepted works and will help you defend more strongly. Apart from this, if you want to pursue an academic career, the publication record will be very useful too.
I don't think writing papers will delay your submission because if you have written up for your paper, it will actually reduce the time of writing a chapter in your main thesis which will essentially be just about expanding the content of your paper. So, overall it is a good experience to be able to write papers, although it will mean that extra bit of work. :)

Yes, that's true.I gave some detail of my specialisation because that's what people suggested earlier on. I know it is specialised but then most PhDs are specialised. aren't they? I asked about the grad scheme because I thought being with a bigger employer will give associated opportunities to develop new skills and add to knowledge by doing so. Since most PhD projects are specialised and getting something absolutely relevant is a bit of an ask, I think the point to emphasise here is the experience gained in generic research skills which  certain employers might be interested in. When I describe my project, I talk about my research aim, in the course of achieving this, I go through skills that might be transferable which include analogue and digital circuit design, PCB construction, testing which involved handling various test equipments (scopes, spectrum and vector analyser, LCR meters etc). Does it put in context?

Hi everyone, I am in second year of my PhD. My area is physical electronics where we build electromagnetic sensors, design and build necessary electronics to set up experiments to demonstrate signal acquisition from various situation. I am particularly in to nuclear magnetic signal acquisition using my sensors. I am an international student in UK. Can anyone tell me if there are employers who do graduate scheme for students with a PhD?Thanks guys.

Well. It a very good university.however, I don;t know about its MBA program. Only thing I would would say that look for MBA and not MSc in Management. MOst universities in UK MSc in management. These are good degrees but then they are not MBA. MBA is generally 2 yrs and MSc is one year. MBA s can be costly too. They are generally costlier than doing a MSc in science/technology. I can't tell you the right figure. Best to check individual websites. Some universities which do MBA are Oxford, Strathclyde in Scotland. I am sure there are others but I am not into management so I leave ot to others to answer or you can find them on the web.

Hi. That was just because the previous post wanted me to. I don;t mind teaching either.In fact I like it very much. But not sure how easy or difficult it is to stay in academia.

Thanks. I am rather into experimantal electronic engineering where here is a bit of Physics (Magnetic resonance signals) and mainly analogue capacitive sensors and analogue signal processing.Not much of programming which is a bit worrying. I am trying to incorporate some programming in the due course but not very sure. I am rather in desiging RF cirsuit to work around few hundred MHz.

Thanx.But equally what;s wrong with staying in academia? does it become too monotonous after a while? Does it not pay well?

Hi. I am not anywhere close my finish but I think if you haven't got a reply then it might be a good sign.Sometimes you get replies long after you have applied.May be they hold until they get all the applications and then begin to evaluate. It happened to me while I was applying for a funded PhD. I didn't hear for months and then all of a sudden it came in way.
Also, is it expected to have that many publication? I am in engineering and I haven't seen anyone more than 3-4 publication within my group.cheers.

Hi everyone. I am a engineering PhD student starting my second year. I have so far have only academic experience. I have been continuing from my undergraduate (Home) and then Masters (UK) straight into PhD(UK). I am still not decided where would I like to be working. Although academic doesn't appear bad, I somehow think doing an industry job will be better (may be good money?). But I don't know if industries like to hire fresh PhD (I am aware of 'over qualification') and also I am an international student and so will have some issues of work permit and stuff (although I feel it wouldn't be very bad after PhD).Anyone would like to sore my confidence here?

Hi. I am doing a PhD in engineering. My work is related to Electronics and Physics. I have only spent most of my times in academia and worried about industry experience. I might manage to get an unpaid internship at a semiconductor fab but undecided about going for it . Can anyone help me if doing such a thing improves future employability or it is more important for PhD job seeker to show their involvement with academia and conference/journal publications.

Second part of your question. You do not have to do another MSc taught as you will probably find same taught content as you did in your present MSc unless you want to branch out.more over, this is not very convincing to some people too.Here yo have to bear with me as I am less than a novice in Ecology.In UK you only need to have an undergraduate degree to go for a PhD. Don't worry too much if you feel you don't know many things as PhD itself is a learning process and the more important thing is your willingness and ability to learn rather than your present knowledge. I hope this helps. Let me know if there is antything else I can help with. Cheers.

Hi Payal.This needs to be answered carefully. While you are saying that you don't want to take a chance in terms of choosing your guide, it sounds like you make most moves in your life with extreme care. This is perfectly reasonable but it can as well be argued that there can't always be guaranteed result to everything that you do. PhD itself is an open ended project which may or may not make you satisfied enough.
I entirely agree that choosing a guide in PhD is as important as choosing a project and all the rest of it. PhDs have a combination of factors in it such as guide, project, university, funding and all of them may not be exactly be of your choice so an optimum decision is to be made by none other than you. I wish you good luck with that .