Who's Doing a PHD or Similar Qualification?
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Mine is on protein-protein interactions, I done it because its the field of biochemistry that interests me and I figured a PhD would open a few more doors than my BSc. What I'll do after I'm finished is something I'm still figuring out.
doors to where?
I already have mine (completed my viva 7 years ago now). I did it because I wanted to see how far I could go intellectually, because it would help my career and because I thought it was interesting. Mine was on self-assembling molecules in photographic films emulsions and pharmaceuticals. I now have a very good job working for a global Pharma company where I'm going up the ladder nicely, so I guess it worked out pretty well.
On more comment, I went on afterwards and did a Post Doc for three years as i was worried that I had focused on too small an area. Looking back on it that was three wasted years. Employers don't really care about that period of my time and I missed out on three years of real wages.
Good luck if you go for it. Its hard work but, once attained, it can never been taken away from you. Plus - in my experience - banks absolutely fawn over PhD's.
On more comment, I went on afterwards and did a Post Doc for three years as i was worried that I had focused on too small an area. Looking back on it that was three wasted years. Employers don't really care about that period of my time and I missed out on three years of real wages.
Good luck if you go for it. Its hard work but, once attained, it can never been taken away from you. Plus - in my experience - banks absolutely fawn over PhD's.
I'm doing a PhD on retrovirual immunity and interactions between endogenous and exogenous retroviruses at the National Institute for Medical Research next year. I've always wanted to go into research, though for a long time I figured this would be ecological. Since coming to university, I'm much more interested in disease really, so it's a logical conclusion for me. 3 years to do the PhD and then I'm hoping to get some post-doc work at a decent lab somewhere, maybe back here in Oxford, I'm not sure about that bit. I only really saw a masters year as a bit of a waste of time and money, really, so I just applied to do it straight after my BA. Of the applicants that I know about/met, I was the only one without a masters and/or a year or so's commercial lab experience. I take it that it didn't count in their favour ...
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I finished my PhD 5 years ago now. It was in the field of Aerospace Engineering, looking at a non-linear technique of continuation and bifurcation analysis of helicopter flight dynamics and control law design.
I did it because I found it quite interesting and my desired job was going to be a little hard to find at that exact time (around 9/11). I didnt expect to use my PhD in my future career, and indeed don't use it at all, although it maybe helped me get onto the training scheme to get where I am now.
I did it because I found it quite interesting and my desired job was going to be a little hard to find at that exact time (around 9/11). I didnt expect to use my PhD in my future career, and indeed don't use it at all, although it maybe helped me get onto the training scheme to get where I am now.
As the title really, just interested to know what youre researching, why you decided to undertake it, and what sort of career progression/direction you expect to undertake once you have completed it
Doing a PhD, researching swarm intelligence and swarm robotics, micro aerial vehicles/flying robots, social and collective systems, evolutionary adaptive systems.
I loved researching projects at uni but hated doing exams and mundane tasks like programming, fixing computers, office work. Worked for a big company for a year and hated being a cog in machine. I also really wanted to work in robotics. The only real way to do this is to do a PhD in robotics.
I didn't want a 9-5 job, I wanted more flexibility. I didn't want to be told what to do but to research what I find interesting. I also wanted to be more advanced academically since the value of a degree has gone down over the years.
Anyway, robots are cool and I wanted to work with them.
Well, I have ended up on an extremely long and academic PHD (should take me about 4.5-5 years). After which regular companies wont want to know me probably. However, robotics companies would still be interested, and a few elite investment banks or consultancies. Some friends that have recently become doctors have been head hunted by companies like Boston Consulting with obscene paycheck offers. The other likely candidate is technological start up companies, probably in the field of MAVs/UAVS for surveillance work. But this entials long working hours and no pay and a lot of stress, with a small probability of success.Alternatively of course there is Post Doc work, still no money but much more relaxing and enjoyable than a PhD.
ermm, i have one and have spent the last 12 years doing research on various post doc projects - in hindsight i haven't done that badly. All the people who left and got jobs in science aren't doing any better than me. However, with real hindsight, i never would have gone into science at all - there is no money in it and you usually have to work for people far stupider than yourself 
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I never thought I'd say this but I'm considering going back to try and do a PhD or EngD in the near future but it might be just because I'm being made redundant and hence I'm considering all options.
I'm doing a PhD in Cosmology. I really enjoyed physics at uni so once I'd finished my MPhys I started a PhD straight away, for the love of the subject more than for a job. Although I seem to do more programming than physics these days. There are different models to describe how the universe evolves, usually based on some underlying theory. I am comparing theoretical results from a particular model of dark energy to observed data, and running Monte Carlo simulations in order to find best it parameters for the model. Also, in its current guise this model only describes what happens on large scales, so I'm trying to develop a non linear (small scale) version of it.
I'm not sure what I am going to do afterward. I'd love to set up my own business, and have a couple of projects in the pipeline which may come to fruition when I finish uni.
I'm not sure what I am going to do afterward. I'd love to set up my own business, and have a couple of projects in the pipeline which may come to fruition when I finish uni.
Soldato
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Got my PhD in a social science subject 7 years ago.
I got a lot out of doing it, and it took me down the career path I wanted.
However, I now spend half the time wishing I'd pursued philosophy and half wishing that I'd continued in the hard sciences rather than switching after the first year.
So perhaps social science was a good compromise after all?
I'm reasonably happy with how things have turned out, but social science PhDs don't tend to get head-hunted for big pay cheques, I don't think...
I got a lot out of doing it, and it took me down the career path I wanted.
However, I now spend half the time wishing I'd pursued philosophy and half wishing that I'd continued in the hard sciences rather than switching after the first year.
So perhaps social science was a good compromise after all?
I'm reasonably happy with how things have turned out, but social science PhDs don't tend to get head-hunted for big pay cheques, I don't think...
Which course and where?
Recently finished a PhD in numerical methods (local RBF meshless solution techniques for anyone that cares). It was part of the mechanical engineering department, but is larely applied math. Currently I'm doing a short term post-doc project (just 6 months), and will soon be starting another on applying the method that I developed in my PhD to modelling CO2 sequestration, as part of an EU project. I'm also trying to build up a constultancy business with three other guys who have complimentary skillsets.
Anyway, now that's out of the way, the reason to do a PhD is simple; you want to do research. Certainly there are lots of 'doors' which can only be accessed by someone who has a PhD, but they're virtually all research-based. If you're doing a PhD thinking that it will improve your job prospects in the general graduate-type market then forget about it. It can do you more harm than good. For one thing, many employers are dubious about hiring PhDs. They tend to think (rightly or wrongly) that PhDs will want to do things their own way, rather than the company way, and so be more difficult to manage. There is also a perception that PhDs tend to be more introspective thinkers, and less suited to working in a team. You can argue that this isn't actually true, but if a significant number of employers think this (which they do) then whether or not it is true is pretty much irrelevant.
Also, in a lot of fields the 3-5 years of experience you would get going into employment straight from your degree, rather than taking the masters-PhD route, can be a lot more beneficial in terms of career advancement - not to mention that you will be getting paid around twice what you would have as a PhD student.
Anyway, in short: Doing a PhD is a great way to spend your time (in my opinion). You get a lot of freedom, virtually no responsibility, a reasonable living stipend, and you get to research pretty much whatever you like within reason. But, it is not neccesarily a good plan for general career advancement, unless you want a career in research in which case it becomes essential.
Anyway, now that's out of the way, the reason to do a PhD is simple; you want to do research. Certainly there are lots of 'doors' which can only be accessed by someone who has a PhD, but they're virtually all research-based. If you're doing a PhD thinking that it will improve your job prospects in the general graduate-type market then forget about it. It can do you more harm than good. For one thing, many employers are dubious about hiring PhDs. They tend to think (rightly or wrongly) that PhDs will want to do things their own way, rather than the company way, and so be more difficult to manage. There is also a perception that PhDs tend to be more introspective thinkers, and less suited to working in a team. You can argue that this isn't actually true, but if a significant number of employers think this (which they do) then whether or not it is true is pretty much irrelevant.
Also, in a lot of fields the 3-5 years of experience you would get going into employment straight from your degree, rather than taking the masters-PhD route, can be a lot more beneficial in terms of career advancement - not to mention that you will be getting paid around twice what you would have as a PhD student.
Anyway, in short: Doing a PhD is a great way to spend your time (in my opinion). You get a lot of freedom, virtually no responsibility, a reasonable living stipend, and you get to research pretty much whatever you like within reason. But, it is not neccesarily a good plan for general career advancement, unless you want a career in research in which case it becomes essential.
Currently doing a PhD in (officially) Computer Science.
It's a "blue skies" (eurghh) project funded by NERC, the intended end goal is to facilitate a group of geologists in their study of fault evolution using a simulation technique known as Discrete Element Modelling. However I am tackling it as a CS, so my thesis and presented work is based around the usage of closed loop physics engines in the development of rigid body simulations. Can they be used effectively for very large stuff, does their reduced accuracy always matter for scientific research, what implications does their flexibility and non specific design ethos present to the researcher. Stuff like that.
I started it as I was pretty certain research was where I wanted to be. Did an MSc after my BSc, to dip my toe so to speak, and got handed this funded project while doing that.
I really enjoy it, love the fact my work is my own and fully intend to stay within an academic environment if I can. Initially as a post-doc but later I wouldn't mind a private research facility or even lecturing.
One thign is for sure though, if money is what drives you, academics isnt the place to be The money is fine, but never mind blowing.
It's a "blue skies" (eurghh) project funded by NERC, the intended end goal is to facilitate a group of geologists in their study of fault evolution using a simulation technique known as Discrete Element Modelling. However I am tackling it as a CS, so my thesis and presented work is based around the usage of closed loop physics engines in the development of rigid body simulations. Can they be used effectively for very large stuff, does their reduced accuracy always matter for scientific research, what implications does their flexibility and non specific design ethos present to the researcher. Stuff like that.
I started it as I was pretty certain research was where I wanted to be. Did an MSc after my BSc, to dip my toe so to speak, and got handed this funded project while doing that.
I really enjoy it, love the fact my work is my own and fully intend to stay within an academic environment if I can. Initially as a post-doc but later I wouldn't mind a private research facility or even lecturing.
One thign is for sure though, if money is what drives you, academics isnt the place to be
The money is fine, but never mind blowing.Sounds like an interesting project mate
Just curious though: DEM is a particle based approach, so how is it applied to rigid body simulations? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
Are you using stream processing to accelerate the simulations? DEM always struck me as an ideal candidate for GPGPU acceleration.
Sounds like an interesting project mate
Just curious though: DEM is a particle based approach, so how is it applied to rigid body simulations? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
Are you using stream processing to accelerate the simulations? DEM always struck me as an ideal candidate for GPGPU acceleration.
The definition of what is a DEM seems to vary quite wildly. Typically you will see spheres being used in the system. In that sense it *could* be considered a particle based approach, however, the spheres tend to have mass and volume, therefore it becomes a rigid body problem. We need to consider friction and the collision interaction of a system of bodies with radii.
In my case I am proposing that in situations where very exacting movement is perhaps not as important as the general trend of movement of the overall system, using a closed loop physics engine in the design of a DEM could prove very beneficial. Suddenly using elements other than spheres becomes very easy, the inclusion of triangulated surfaces to block movement also becomes very easy. However this introduces problems instantly as they are designed for near real time calculations, so they tend to be very restrictive on the number of rigid bodies that can exist in a simulation at any one time.
To this end I have found myself spending the past few months working out how many individual simulations, each running in its own instance of an engine, could interact in a distributed manner to form one large system. It sounded easy enough when I started, but have found it to be quite a difficult challenge.
Personally, i am not using stream processing at the moment, the scale of what i'm doing (1,000,000+ individual spheres to be considered in a system) doesnt lend itself to even the best NVIDIA can offer in their top end TESLA, the hardware is still to limited from a memory point of view.
However, I have no doubt that you will see most of the physics engines progress rapidly to making good use of OpenCL or CUDA to exploit stream processing. Currently PhysX works (in part and on a small scale) on GPUs using CUDA. Supposedly the rigid body portion will also work in the next iteration of the SDK. Other engines such as Bullet are looking into CUDA and OpenCL also.
My argument has always been that the library based approach to homogenous things like contact detection or rendering (OpenGL, DirectX) has consistently proven itself to ultimately be the better approach. To this end, I firmly believe that scientists should pay more attention to physics engines, as they do so, they should be dragged purely out of the realm of gaming and into the realm of ultra realism for pure simulation applications. Why do researchers insist on re-implementing something as generic as contact detection between bounding areas, when really there shoul be one refined library that everybody uses. Its only physics afterall!
Sorry op, that was all a bit OT. Out of interest (to the OP), are you considering doing a PhD, or was it just a general question? If so, what area are you looking at and will it be funded or self funded?
Just got onto a NERC funded PhD at Edinburgh starting in September, looking at the ecology and evolution of a sub-species of fieldmouse that's evolved on St Kilda, a tiny little archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. Really looking forward to it, lots of fieldwork combined with genetic and stable isotope analysis in the lab.