I'm in my 4th year of
#PhD
, worked in different labs around the world, heard from several postdocs, PhDs and UG's...
Dear supervisors, here are my suggestions to make your research lab a better place & attract talent!
@PhDVoice
@PhD_Genie
@AcademicChatter
@AcademicDilemma
Whenever I cite a newly published article that has zero/singular citations, I always imagine a PhD scholar jumping out of happiness 🥳 when receiving notification about 1st/next citation. It makes me super happy 😭😍
@PhDVoice
@PhD_Genie
#PhD
#AcademicChatter
#research
#phdlife
Dear PhD mentors, here are some tips to improve your lab culture📌
1. Just like the industry, have an onboarding process for your new lab members. Give them a welcome gift (research diary, pen,list of must visit places nearby, lab key & lab T-shirt)
#phd
@PhD_Genie
(1/n)
1. Do remember that every meeting is a healthy two-way intellectual discussion and not a war!
If the students go out of the meeting room with more stress/tears, you are a very bad supervisor or I should say, you don't deserve to be called as a supervisor!
#Phd
#research
In the end, if we, students, feel that we are valued, appreciated and recognised for our hard work, we will do our best to come up with new ideas and will put that extra hour of work to finish things and send you the results. Anger and desperation won't improve anything!
#PhD
6. Along with doing science, create some memories. Celebrate birthdays, paper acceptances, go for lab trips...etc. Show the students that, academic life is also pretty exciting and can be fun!
4. Make sure to meet at least once a week with your students(online/offline). Talk about experiments, and how is things going, and more importantly show a happy face. Show some excitement about their work, and potential results, possible failures, papers published...etc.
7. Know your students. Some may be able to do things faster and independently, while others need more of your support and some more explanations to understand things. Be patient and explain if possible. Raising a voice/showing angry faces or being impatient won't help anyone!
2. Please listen to the student fully before commenting. It's easy to assume the student's answer before fully hearing them based on previous interactions. Never, ever do that!
Let the student complete the answer and ask you for comments/thoughts/doubts/
#phdlife
#mentor
3. PhD students may work day/night depending on the need of the expt, tools availability, rules...etc. Give them the flexibility.
Never message them before 9 AM or after 6 PM asking for data/updates. A general suggestions would be to use
@SlackHQ
instead of
@WhatsApp
.
5. Please don't schedule a meeting after 5 PM!
Please don't give the excuse that you have other administrative things to do during working hours. Schedule the meeting in the working hours. Also, please don't go for a walk to the lab after 6 PM 😇
8. Appreciate!
Appreciate your students in social media/meetings/ introduce them to your network. Kind and few words of appreciation can make a lot of positive impact 😊
What's your favourite part of writing papers?
For me, I love the way a blank sheet beautifully gets filled up with paragraphs, graphs and tables with a flow. Starting from page 1 to n, it's just like watching a tiny plant growing up and flowering.
@AcademicChatter
@PhDVoice
#phd
1) Never keep lab meetings on Monday, Tuesday and weekends. Putting on Monday or Tuesday will force them to work on weekends. Respect the social life of PhD students. It's also good for their mental wellbeing.
(1/n)
5) Teach them about academic writing in the first 6 months itself. How to write articles with a flow. Push them to write review papers or comments. Make sure that, reviews gets published in a journal which will skyrocket their confidence.
Also, make sure that, this reviews are
3) Arrange lab trips regularly, for example, a one day trip in two months and 3-4 day trip in each 6 months. Assign the job to arrange the trips to your PhD scholars from finding place and booking tickets to money management. This will teach them 100+ things that, PhD may not!
6) Talk your PhD scholars about their family regularly, understand their financial conditions and the mental traumas they went through. Make sure that, you are approachable for any issues they are facing. Be their big brother/elder sister or a good friend
2) Regularly talk about the long term and short term impact that the PhD project is going to produce, like patents, high impact journal papers as well as the societal impact. This will motivate the PhD scholars to work harder, smarter and better.
(2/n)
4) Assign jobs😄
For example you can assign jobs to your PhD scholars and give them positions such as Tour captain(who arrange trips for the lab), Conference manager(who check and keep track of conferences happening in your domain),safety manager( who make sure that safety
GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, follow their progress, and all the deadlines.
written as a team with another PhD scholars from your lab. This will teach them about teamwork. In science, you can't achieve anything alone😄.
Hard work with a team + Innovative thinking + perseverance is the key👌🏿
Philosophical and sociological aspects of my PhD topic😁
10) Build a good lab culture. Take opinions regularly and promote working as a team. Make sure that there is no ego or any other issues between your PhD scholars. Your PhD scholars are your second family!
perfect research tool to share multi-dimensional research with your peers and not just plain, boring text and slides. Add articles, PDFs, videos, white papers, ebooks, audio samples- basically anything you can think of and share it with your peers easily!
8) Involve them in proposal/grant writing as early as possible. Learning about how to convince the reviewers about your idea is very important. This will teach structured and effective writing. This help them to grab fellowships like
@MSCActions
as well as
@serbonline
funding😉
11) Tell them to make progress every day, Push them to think critically, motivate them to write something everyday. Take them for tea after your lab meetings and discuss science, politics, issues, about next trip😄. Make a good repo with your scholars.
protocols are strictly followed in lab, Empaths ( who ensure mental wellbeing of group mates as well as a professor!), Materials head( who keep track of chemical stocks in the lab and place order when ever it's going to over), The HR guy ( who keeps track of jobs in your domain
and inform labmates about the skills need to be developed. This will make all your PhD scholars industry ready by end of the PhD if they wish to move to industry )
(6/n)
7) Discuss new ideas and motivate them to develop curious questions and ideas. Never mock any of their thoughts /ideas. Teach them how to choose between discarding an idea or going for it.
9) Motivate to take courses from other branches. For example, if you are a
#Physics
researcher, learning some
#Philosophy
and
#Sociology
may give you a better perspective on the problems and their impacts on society. My first conference presentation was in
4. Criticise their work, but be a little soft and gentle. Your student may worked late night and week ends to show you the results. Just appreciate the work and throw some good words and tell them what can be done to improve it, rather than showing a frustrated face!
Internships are one of the best ways for UG/PG students to understand research better and tremendously help when applying for PhD abroad. They offer valuable experience, recommendations, publications, and skills. Here's a 🧵 of internships offered by Indian institutions.
Observing year-end posts from other PhD scholars might make many in my network feel like they're falling behind.
Some have stunning achievements like publishing 10+ papers in Nature journals or filing 5+ patents in 2023..
A🧵 to lift you up❤️
@PhDVoice
#PhD
@AcademicChatter
Writing an e-book for the PhD scholars covering various topics from time management and publication to mental health🥳. Will be soon sending it to the email subscribers ()❤.
What are you waiting for?
@PhDsofIndia
@PhDVoice
@PhD_Genie
@AcademicChatter
5. Have a lab philosophy and discuss it. Every efforts of lab member should be aligned with these lab philosophies. See
@iaincheeseman
tweets on the lab philosophy
With the new academic year starting, and many people beginning fresh as graduate students, post-docs, or junior faculty, I have been thinking a lot about the core philosophies that govern my own perspectives on science. So I thought I would share.
Welcome to The Tao of Cheese
Narayana Murthy says India’s work culture must change: ‘Youngsters should work 70 hours a week’ -
To compete with economies that have made tremendous progress in the last two to three decades
via
@moneycontrolcom
6.Have a preprint day or make it as part of the lab meeting. At least one student should read a preprint and discuss it during the lab meeting. The discussion should be conveyed to the corresponding author of the paper. This will help in open science and improved reviewing skills
Several entry barriers exist for a novice in solid-state nanopore research. Developing the expertise to build an in-house fabrication capability is one of them which will also help to save time and money. Optimising the protocols takes months & our new work address this aspect😀
To learn about the darker sides of a lab/PI reach out to people who left and were less successful than others. Why did it not work out for them? Not all of their stories will apply to you but they can provide invaluable perspective for your consideration.
Credit:
@Lange_Lab
Appreciate all their efforts to solve the problem, even if it's wrong. A small word like "fantastic effort" can make their day. Later, you can discuss what can go wrong and what went wrong in their solution and how to improve it.
A survey of PhD students found that, 40% were dissatisfied with their work-life balance, 76% worked more than 40 hours per week, and one in three students were at risk of developing a mental health disorder.
You know what to do!
Every hour one student commits suicide in Indi. Hearing that PhD scholars and students are hanging themself is not at all great news. I just compiled some helpful resources against suicide.
#research
#PhD
@AcademicChatter
@PhDsofIndia
@PhDVoice
3. Give students the freedom to anytime knock on your lab door for a short talk regarding their work. Have scheduled mentoring and planning meetings along with bimonthly devoted career-related discussions.
#careers
@PhDsofIndia
@PhDVoice
#research
#PhD
(3/n)
Last month
#Commonwealth
Scholars visited the
@UKParliament
to find out how it all works.
From making laws to debating issues, Scholars discovered how this historic assembly has evolved into a democratic model seen around the world.
Read more:
Being an international student is cool unless and until you fall ill. The daily
@WhatsApp
calls with parents are no more enough! Nothing can replace the hot ginger tea mom makes when you are cold and it's raining outside. Papa's massage on the forehead with
@VicksVapoRub
is ♥
@SteveTheChemist
Pro tip to candidates looking for
#PhD
, look at this thread and mail to the Professors having barely a few email asking for PhD position. They are definitely going to open your mail 😅😂
@PhD_Genie
@PhDVoice
#research
As an
#OBC
category scholar pursuing PhD at
@iiscbangalore
, I can understand your perspective. But, Reservation is crucial for disadvantaged groups like us to access esteemed institutions such as
#IISc
and
#IITs
. Despite challenges, we strive to compete and excel
A thread 🧵
When I joined IIT Bombay in 2013, the biggest stress that I had was how would I survive here, competing with all the top JEE ranks. For context, IIT Bombay's CSE program closed at AIR 59 (General) and almost all the top JEE rankers joined there.
Thread 👇🧵
Whether you are interested or not, join in sports and other activities as a lab group. This will increase the trust and bonding between the team members. Great science starts when people trust each other.
The weekend is well spent on birding around Manchester. It's nice to restart a habit that I left at
@iiscbangalore
. Unfortunately,
@OfficialUoM
doesn't have a birding club. Maybe I should start one :)
A thread of a few captures of the week. Dear birders, give a shout 🙂❤️