Some do’s and don’ts from my PhD

Antoon Goderis

Information Management Group

CS700

20 October 2006

goderisa@cs.man.ac.uk

Me• Belgian

• First degree economics (Leuven)

• Conversion course in CS and AI (Mcr / Edin)

• Ex-Mentor

• PhD in the Information Management Group– Carole Goble and Robert Stevens

eScience Bioinformatics

Workflow

Reasons I did a PhD• Some v cool people

• Develop and work with latest techniques

• If it doesn’t work out, the job market will still be there

.. in Manchester

• Home of ontologies meeting the real world

• Proximity to the academics

• English

Do’s

Find your own niche• Find and Do Your Own (Little but Great) Thing

• Zigzagging between theory and practice

• It’s hard to please two masters– In a little over three (four) years

– So choose, at the latest after year one

‘Add to Knowledge’• You already have a lot of baggage to draw on

• Lots of small steps – so keep going

• Who could be your community/communities?

t1

Community (or reviewers’) knowledge about whatever

t2

Talk to all who will listen • Carole Goble

• Ulrike Sattler

• Chris Wroe

• Phil Lord

• Robert Stevens

• Mark Greenwood

• Dave Robertson

• Bertram Ludaescher

• Andy Brass

• Norman Paton

• Alan Bundy

• Austin Tate

• Nikiforos Karamanis

• Peter Li

• Alan Rector

• Serafeim Zanikolas

• Andreas Wombacher

• Evgeny Zolin

• Richard Banach

• Wilfried Lemahieu

• Jacques Vandenbulcke

• Lin Yang

• Ilkay Altintas

• Efrat Jaeger

• Christopher Brooks

• Edward Lee

• Stephen Potter

• Jun Zhao

• Pinar Alper

• Duncan Hull

• Paul Fisher

• Matt Horridge

• Khalid Belhajjame

• Boris Motik

• Birte Glimm

• Frank van Harmelen

• Annette ten Teije

• Marco Roos

• Armin Haller

• Jim Blythe

• Daniele Turi

• Sean Bechofer

• Valentin Zacharias

• Ewa Deelman

And find your own truth

1. Brokering problem-solving methods2. Agent-based protocol composition3. Process algebra and description logics hybrid4. Ontology instance learning5. Abduction based ontology retrieval6. Workflow interoperability7. Simple versus complex and their combination 8. Gold standard based workflow discovery

Time management• E-mail/phone/instant-chat/meetings

• Read related work

• Attend courses/seminars/workshops/conferences

• Demonstrate

• Review

• Work dinners

• Adapt to a life abroad

• Do your own research..

Care for your supervisor• Find a topic you both care for

• All feedback is good feedback

– Time is short

– Prep for the outside

• Meetings

– Set the agenda

– Solutions, not problems

• Writings

– Print stuff out

– Get more than one opinion

Travel• Conferences

– Galway, Chicago

• Workshops

– Edinburgh, Bath, London, Hinxton, Galway, San Diego

• Study visits

– Innsbruck, Berkeley, San Diego

Anticipate going up and down

Have a life• Life outside research helps life inside

• Dare to (actively) do nothing

Don’ts

It’s not about• Being formal versus practical

• Being in a sexy domain

• Being a coder

• Being overly respectful

• Pushing out paper

• Doing your time

Beware procrastination

Beware procrastination

• Nobody cares

– whether you show up

– whether you do work while you are in

– when you leave

• But there is a catch

• Output is measured through

– Papers in good places

– Impact in the community

Finally, a good routine (for me)• Write in order to think

– Not think in order to write

– Log your (excitement/disillusion with-) ideas

– Make it a compelling story

• Draw up a timeline with respect to a paper deadline

• Prioritise/plan every morning

• Keep at least one day per week free of work (-thoughts)

• Have a periodic reality check of your ideas

– Avoid analysis paralysis: balance thinking/doing

The end

Thanks

Questions?

goderisa@cs.man.ac.uk