# PhD forward research plans



## Kuso (Nov 4, 2011)

OK, so I'm just finished my first year of my PhD, lab based, medicinal chemistry and biomolecular science type stuff.  My primary supervisor is fantastic, ideas-wise, knowledge-wise, skills-wise, in fact he actually wrote the book on one of the main techniques I use, literally!

i have had little contact with my second supervisor and her skills base wouldn't be strong for the stuff I'm doing at the moment.  Basically, the first half of my PhD will be coming up with lead compounds, designing and synthesizing them and the second half will be assaying them to determine any effectiveness.  It's this second part she'll probably play a larger role in.

Our school is/was fairly informal, no formal progress reports except for the 9 months differentiation report and a yearly 1 page sheet to be filled out.  However, a new member of staff has taken over the post-grad research program and brought in a system where there's to be official meetings with your supervisor, at least monthly (we did this anyway, but didn't keep minutes in the manner they now wish)  and every two months with both your supervisors.

Now, I feel I'm progressing rather slowly, but my supervisor says the opposite, I expect the truth lies somewhere in between.  So I've requested a meeting next week with both my supervisors under the guise of fulfilling these new regulations to find out how exactly I'm getting along and whether my plans are as realistic and do-able as my supervisor makes out (he's the eternal optimist).  Both my supervisors agreed to this, thought it was a good point in time for us all to sit down together as my second supervisor has little idea of what I'm actually doing at the moment.

For the meeting I'm planning on producing some sort of report that I can email to them before hand so we can spend the actual meeting discussing the details, equipment/ training I might need etc.  My second supervisor advised "och, just a few pages, some bullet points or something" and my primary suggested "whatever you feel is appropiate".  Now the one thing I keep hearing about at skills training days are Gantt charts, but I hate them and they're probably not very appplicable as until I have this meeting I won't be able to say how long certain things are going to take.

So basically what I'm asking is (don't know why all the preamble really) is does anyone know of a way to lay out a brief summary of research to date that isn't a Gantt chart, just paragraphs of text of bullet points?  I'm thinking possibly a flow diagram, 'I will do this if this works, if that works then these two strands of research feed into this area of research'.  Actually, I suppose I should just get on with doing the thing...


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## King Biscuit Time (Nov 4, 2011)

Don't worry about the format too much. You'll realise as you're writing it down if it's a helpful and logical way to present the progress/future plans.

What's great is that you've taken the initiative to meet both your supervisors, and prepare properly for the meetings. My PhD was very informal, and I never acted on my suspicions that I was progressing too slowly until it was too late- At the end of the first 3 years my supervisor got the sack (and rightly so) and took me another 18 months or so to get something worth submitting together and get out.

Now your situation almost certainly won't be as bad as that! (not much could be) - and it turned out alright for me in the end, but I do often think back to my first few years and wish I'd taken a bit of initiative - I could have got so much more done.

And I'd do a flow chart with a few explanatory notes btw. But I like flow charts.


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## Kuso (Nov 4, 2011)

My supervisor is excellent in that he is very well regarded in his field, well published etc.  But I admit, I almost need someone standing over me with a whip to make sure I get things done in a timely fashion.  I'm hoping if I submit this plan and there's chances for publications out of it etc it'll see both my supervisors try to push me a bit harder to get work done.  The last 5-6 years has seen my lab not fare very well.  It's molecular therapeutics, some of the stuff we come up as with as potential drugs/ treatments is a bit out there sometimes.  That's the point of what we do, but my lab has just had a run of bad luck in that none of the ideas have turned out to be really noteworthy.  On top of that, I think he's had several people take advantage of his nice nature and there's people who have had their three years funding for their PhD, he's got them a 12-18month post-doc place to give them funding to write-up and they still never submitted!!!  Plus there's other intra-school politics where he's been screwed over.

He was very vocal in securing funding for my own PhD place, but apart from that hasn't taken on any other students (though he does have one who is writing up now and three that are due to finish next Jan-March).  I feel like I want to put something back into the lab that went out of its way to secure extra funding for me last year, I also want to make as much of this as I possibly can because with funding issues there isn't much chance of post-doc/academic work so I want to publish, publish, publish, even before submitting my thesis.

Right, stop procrastinating- a 1-2 page summary of results to date, my outline for my introduction/ background, a flow chart of my three strands of research and how I see them progressing and interlinking, brief explanatory notes and cost analysis, a very rough outline of the three papers I wish to publish (three strands of research) and a list of questions about access to equipment, training, is my cost analysis approiate etc coming up.  Thanks actually, this has been a pretty useful way of planning it instead of staring at a blank screen!


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## equationgirl (Nov 4, 2011)

Your plans sound fine, just explain in a couple of pages your plans - and don't forget the lit survey part. Not that anyone does of course 

Get hold of and read 'How to get a PhD' by Phillips and Pugh - it has lots of stuff about focusing your thesis and planning the work. Library should have tons of copies. Mine went to mrs quoad 

Publishing papers will help you for your viva, as if you can aim for 1 paper per chapter and publish 2-3, you'll have a large part of your thesis 'validated' by the scientific community (especially if these are reviewed journals) which makes it harder for them to fail you


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## Kuso (Nov 4, 2011)

The lit review's been covered in my differentiation report, this is more of a forward plan I'm doing at the moment.  I had one of those in my report at the time but things have changed a fair bit since then!  I'll check that book out actually, think most of these PGR training days I go to having people quoting at us from it.  I've heard mixed things about the publishing before viva- some people say its too much work and you should concentrate on getting your thesis together, others like yourself say it helps with viva since your work's already been peer-reviewed.  I think I'm in the second camp, plus it'll make applying for post-doc jobs easier if I have an actual publication history,not just a few titles and "publication pending" after them  Wow, I'm planning my life 2 -3 years in advance, it used to be I never thought past the next line/spliff....

anyway, almost finished my report- realized I'd quite a lot of it done in wee bits and pieces and it just needed put together into one document.  It's only 5 pages but think it gives a good overview of what I've accomplished so far and why its relevant to my field and my forward plan with plans for three solid papers and possibly two or three shorter/ lower impact factor ones.  I've costed most of it too, and it seems on budget. I've even managed to come up with a few Level 4 projects (I'll be supervising at least 2 anyway, so it may as well be related to my work) and this means I can get some stuff out of the teaching budget too 

5 o clock, finishing at a reasonable time and getting stuff accomplished... yay!


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## equationgirl (Nov 5, 2011)

It all sounds good - don't know your subject but I'm happy to look over stuff if you like to give you some general feedback.

Also, I'd stick to 3 papers, that's more than enough work on top pf the PhD stuff, you can always write up a couple more after you've finished.


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## Kuso (Nov 8, 2011)

well, the research plan went down grand.  my second supervisor said she hadn't been expecting one but was glad I'd sent it as it gave her a heads up on tomorrow's meeting as she's had literally no input into my project so far and that "it spoke volumes for my organisational skills and motivation" or something along those lines .  my PI said it was great to see everything I'd done so far collated together as he's only seen it in bits and pieces so far and that i'd plenty of scope for future work, all of which will be discussed tomorrow.  Fingers crossed the meeting goes well and nothing happens that it gets cancelled (touch wood), as they've me pencilled in for a 2 hour slot so we should be able to make a lot of progress

yeah, I think 3 should be grand, the other potential 1 or 2 would be short, 'letters' type publications


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## Kuso (Nov 9, 2011)

argh! meeting is postponed until later in week as another meeting is running hours over, only I know later in the week means next week and next week my supervisor is away on business, so...

it's not like I've nothing to do, i just wanted to be able to be doing something focused, y'kno?  aw well, the lab (and my bay in particular) needs a clear out, suppose now's as good a time as any


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## stuff_it (Nov 17, 2011)

So how do you determine how effective a lead compound is; poison ship with it? 

But yes it's always good to have a few papers in the pipeline to write up at a later date.


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