"The Life of a PhD Student" Panel Discussion

Tuesday 23rd March 2021

Róisín Hill (NUI Galway), Ryan Smith (UCD), and Paul O'Reilly (TU Dublin)

Moderated by Ed Donlon (TU Dublin)

Discussion starts at 9:43. This interview has been lightly edited for readability and clarity.

Ed: On the panel here today we first have Róisín Hill from NUI Galway. She started her PhD in 2017 and her research focus is on the design, implementation and application of moving mesh methods for problems with layer phenomena. We also have Ryan Smith from UCD. He started in 2019, and so along with Róisín is a current  PhD student. He's interested in the simulation of fluids and combining modern machine learning and image processing techniques to find new ways to study the dynamics of breaking waves. We also have Paul O’Reilly from, well, when he graduated it was called DIT, but TU Dublin now. He graduated in 2017 and his research interest was the mathematical modelling of optical patterning in photopolymer systems. I think we might start off the discussion with talking a bit about the background to your  PhD, so if we could start with you Róisín: I wonder what was your motivation for doing a  PhD? Could you talk a little bit about why you wanted to do it and when did you know it was something you'd be interested in?

Róisín: Well my route isn't the standard route. I went back to education in 2013 and did an undergraduate degree in maths because my daughter had started an undergrad the previous year and I just loved the work she was doing and got very interested in it. So I did an undergrad from 2013 and then in 2017, on the completion of that, I started my PhD. Part of the motivation was in the summer of my third year, 2016 of my undergrad, I did a summer internship which was, I think, only five weeks long, but I really enjoyed that. It was research-based and that was part of my motivation, and I had also found a lecturer at NUI Galway that I really liked to work with. We got on really well and we were both interested in the same sort of stuff. My PhD is really application-based, so a lot of it is programming and I really fell in love with the programming and the applied math side of my degree. My undergraduate degree was a maths science degree, so I had a lot of flexibility. After the first year, where your modules are set, you can kind of head towards whichever you like. You can do more pure maths, applied maths, scientific computing or statistics, depending on where your interests lie. Once I'd done the summer internship, I said that I’d just love to keep going at this and do a PhD, and I'm really enjoying it. It's hard work, and there's a lot of work in it, but it's very rewarding. I really like it and I like the environment in NUI Galway, even though I haven't been there in over a year now. So that's really what my motivation was.

Ed: It is hard to recreate that atmosphere online alright, but that's really interesting to hear. So it’s not the conventional PhD route that most people might think of, but it's great to hear that there's other routes into it. Brilliant, thanks for that Róisín. Ryan, if I was to move on to you: I'm going to ask you the same question. What was your motivation behind the PhD? Was there a particular kind of thing that spring-boarded you on, like Róisín's internship?

Ryan: I went straight from my bachelor's as well into the PhD after graduating in 2019. The first thing that turned me on to research was the thesis project that I did for my undergrad. I found that I really enjoyed reading the latest papers - but as you find out during the PhD, it's not just about reading, it's about actually working on and creating research as well. I really enjoyed that kind of research project and so that's what led me to considering the PhD. I'm in one of the CRTs, which is a Centre for Research Training, so I didn't exactly know the kind of research area that I was going into straight away. I got to keep my options more broad and open during the first year of my research, and selected a supervisor in that way as well. It's a slightly different way than maybe the more conventional PhD programmes.

Ed: That might be something we touch on later on as well because the Centre for Research Training is a slightly different route than what Róisín has experienced, and what I think Paul will touch on now. I think that the idea of the undergraduate thesis pushing people on to do further research and getting them first involved is going to be a common theme. I’ll put the same question to you, Paul: would you be able to tell us a bit about your background? Was doing a PhD something you were always interested in, or was it a route that you discovered more as you were an undergraduate?

Paul: I suppose it's something that you definitely discover more about [as you are an undergraduate student]. I don't think most people go into their undergraduate straight from their leaving cert saying “I can't wait to do a doctorate”. Similar to both Róisín and Ryan, I went straight from my undergraduate and it really was kind of a function of two things. Primarily, I was enjoying the environment I was in and I had a choice at that point about going out into the workforce or doing a master’s. I felt like I wanted to move on from a master’s, where it’s a bit more module based as opposed to trying to figure things out yourself and it’s project based, so that's what pushed me into the PhD. I started in 2012, so the economy wasn't in a great place. That was kind of a nice added-benefit. I could work on something that perhaps in the future would add a lot to you, without having to kind of go out and face the big bad world straight away. So it was nice to be able to stay in that environment a little bit longer.

Ed: Very good. Róisín, you mentioned that you had a good relationship with your supervisor. You had him as a lecturer when you were undergraduate and that led you to having an interest in continuing on to do a  PhD. So can I ask a bit more about that - how did that initial contact work? Did you contact him or did he mention to you that doing a  PhD was something that you should pursue?

Róisín: I don't actually remember! He [Róisín’s supervisor, Niall] was my lecturer for both numerical analysis and scientific computing, which is what my PhD is on, so I had a real interest in that subject. I actually don't know which of us said it first, but I ended up just by chance doing my final year project as well with him. In NUI Galway you get to pick three lecturers to do your final year project with and you're just assigned one randomly, so I ended up being assigned to him. At that stage, I definitely knew that we worked really well together. He was somebody that I felt I could definitely work with for four years without getting frustrated with things. On the other hand, for example, when I said to another lecturer that I might be interested doing a final year project with them, they said “well come and meet me” at a particular time. But I ended up standing outside their office for half an hour because they had completely forgotten about the meeting! But anyway, Niall is great, he's always there when you need him and he's always contactable. To me, that kind of that relationship is very important. To have somebody whom I felt very comfortable asking questions about problems. He would also occasionally say to me “you should figure that out yourself”. That's something that's very important for me: to know what you should be doing, but also to know that there’s no point in spending an awful lot of time on something that’s of no benefit. So he'd be really good at things like that, like telling you where to best spend your time. That’s very important for me.

Ed: Yes of course. That sounds like a very fruitful relationship! That was definitely getting off on the wrong foot, to be left waiting outside. I suppose that's one of the advantages of doing a  PhD though, isn't it? To a certain extent, you're able to pick your own boss for the next four years. So if you have a good relationship with someone, you can you can actively seek to extend that. Ryan: with you it was a little bit different, because you didn't know who your supervisor was going to be, if I'm correct, before you entered the CRT?

Ryan: Yes that's correct. Just as a bit of background to the CRT, when we go in we start off with some group projects under some supervisors. So we use that first semester or two to get in contact with potential supervisors and ask questions about the research that they are they are proposing for projects. So the first semester within the CRT is very much about searching around and finding a project to work on.

Ed: Very good. Paul, you were an undergraduate in TU Dublin and then you probably had an initial contact with Dana (Paul’s supervisor) during that stage and was did you approach her to ask about the PhD opportunities or how can that initial contact work?

Paul: I had asked around, both externally to TU Dublin and internally, to different people including Dana and it actually just worked out. It turned out that one of my other lecturers was was a previous student at that time and was just finished, so the stars aligned a little bit. Once I'd finished and that gap opened, as well as asking around and seeing what other kind of options were available. I enjoyed the lectures that I had with Dana over the previous two years (before starting the PhD). Had it been a semester off it probably wouldn't have worked out as well!

Ed: I definitely think that when you take someone's class and you see how they work, it gives you an idea of how you might get on with them during a PhD and that might lead to a collaboration with them. Róisín, I’m going to touch now on your ongoing research. I know this will probably have changed since Covid-19, but what is a typical day like for you as a PhD student?

Róisín: As you say there's a mixture. You have stuff to do like tutorials sometimes as well I supervise computer labs. The main bulk of my time is spent researching. With me, a lot of my research is computer-based: I'm writing programs, running them, getting numerical results, then checking them, re-running and changing parameters, and running it again. Then I’m writing up the information when I’m happy then the results I’ve gotten, or thinking of how I can improve this or how I can further this to another stage. Usually I'm either writing Python programs or I'm writing in LaTeX, so that would be most of my research time. Of course, I’m also reading papers and finding out what else is going on in the research world as well.

Ed: That's really the kind of nuts and bolts of maths research: you have your programming set-up open but you're also reading papers as well. Is a typical day quite similar with you, Ryan?

Ryan: Yes. The research is obviously composed of writing, reading and, well, tearing your hair out trying to program stuff! Then also you find a lot of the time, as Róisín said, you’re tutoring or attending seminars or other events, and so there's a lot that makes up a typical day.

Ed: That's actually something I’d like to come back to in a second - the teaching and attending seminars and all of the other duties and responsibilities apart from the main employment research. Paul, if I could get you to think back to your life as a PhD student, I want to delve a little bit more into how much teaching you did and how did you balance that with your main research?

Paul: On the research side, my experience was mostly reading for the first year or two and looking at how other people solve problems. In hindsight, I think I'd almost underestimated that coming in, that you would think it would all be the really fun coding work. When you're coding you kind of know what you're doing, and when you're reading that’s usually not the case. I would say most of my time initially was spent feeling clueless and like I didn't know what I was doing! Anyone here who's looking to do a PhD: bear in mind that it’s a very normal feeling to say at times “I haven't got a clue what I’m doing”. I would say that 80 or 90 percent of the progress was made in the last 18 months. The first three and a half years was obviously not useless, but progress is not linear. My experience was a bit different as well, in that I didn't have funding. DIT [TU Dublin] were very good in that they essentially gave me a very cheap self-funding rate. I think I paid less than two thousand euro a year, maybe even €1500, so the cost wasn't too prohibitive. Also, the head of school organized for me to get a fair bit of teaching hours, which essentially meant like I was working two full-time jobs. If anyone is considering teaching, then it's very fortunate to do maths because I started off doing a few tutorials but then the School of Business needed help and then the School of Computer Science, then the School of Engineering. So I was able to fund myself and for a few years from that teaching. It did obviously mean working a bit more than a normal 40-hour job, but it is possible.

Ed: That's good to hear, because I think some of the students in attendance today might have been wondering about the additional income that you can earn during the PhD, outside of your base funding. There will be teaching opportunities made available to you. If you can think back to before you started your PhD, Róisín, I wanted to know about the additional tasks and duties that you do as a PhD student, that you maybe didn't really expect to do before you started? Did you expect to have this amount of teaching and did you know fully what you were getting into, or did more things arise as you as you went through your PhD?

Róisín: I would say in general I knew what I was getting myself into, because I knew some of the current PhD students at NUI Galway at the time. I knew what their own extra responsibilities were, as you say, like teaching, attending seminars, giving presentations and doing things like this. Just doing all the other little ad hoc stuff. One of the other things in NUI Galway is that we have a math support centre as well. So you spend like three hours a week where you're helping mainly first year and second year undergrads with maths issues, whatever their maths problems are. Then there are mature access students as well, people that are coming in through alternative routes other than coming straight from secondary school. But, I would have known all of that before I started, because I made a point of finding it out. Not before I started my undergrad - I wouldn't had a clue what was involved, but by the time I got interested in doing a PhD, I had a good idea what I was letting myself in for.

Ed: So you’d done the background work, I think probably more than me!

Róisín: The other thing was that I was staying in the same university as well, so I was kind of aware of how it worked there. Maybe if I had gone somewhere else to do it, I wouldn't have had the same amount of information and things might have worked differently there.

Ed: I definitely think there is a benefit to having that type of corporate knowledge, that insider information just of how things work. I wonder, Ryan, did you know fully about the additional tasks and duties that you would be expected to do as a PhD student? Or did you have to figure things out as you went along?

Ryan: I had anticipated some tutoring duties anyway. I think with the move to online teaching, the time that tutoring takes has slightly increased. Particularly with correcting: you're downloading files, clicking and scrolling through things. It's a bit harder to mark them and keep track of everything. I anticipated a couple of hours a week dedicated to tutoring. I probably hadn't thought about all the seminars that I would be attending, and how they break up the day. Things like that get you out of your office (or maybe you're still sitting at your desk at home all day in our current circumstances), but they are a little bit more time consuming than you would perhaps think. Some days it's hard to find time to do the research.

Ed: That's a good point. Because everything's online, sometimes you can overstretch yourself and overestimate the amount of things you can attend in one day. It can be hard to judge how long things are going to take. Paul, if I could come back to you now. You've already talked a little bit about your teaching, so I wanted to talk now about a slightly different aspect. Ryan mentioned about seminars and conferences in general. If you were to think back and say what was the best or one of the best experiences you had during your PhD? Maybe a conference you attended, or perhaps a summer school, can you talk us through any of those?

Paul: Overall, the best takeaway I have is that you're surrounded by people every day who are doing research and who are just generally curious people. To me, that was a huge factor. I shared an office, I think there might have been even more than 10 of us in it, with computer science students, engineering students, and maths students. Everyone's talking about their individual projects, but also people are talking about other interesting things. I spent quite a while talking to a Russian postdoc about Ukrainian politics, and he was also telling me about chess strategies! So it was me and this host of different people from around the world, but also people solving and looking at problems in different ways. I think that atmosphere is something that I would not have gotten without doing the PhD. Unfortunately, the last year has meant that some people here are working from home and maybe they've missed that. The same for conferences and seminars - you just always meet different people who are solving different types of problems and that to me is very interesting. Even going to a conference and looking at poster presentations and just seeing what's going on.

Ed: That kind of stimulating atmosphere can certainly be a real benefit from doing a PhD, and I agree that that social aspect is kind of missing while we’re all working from home. Róisín, if I was to put that same question to you – have you any highlights so far? What were the best events you've attended or the best experience you’ve had so far?

Róisín: One of the best experiences I had was that I got to go to Banff [Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery] in Canada. It's absolutely gorgeous, it's up in the Rockies. This setting is just something out of this world. I was supposed to go in a couple of months’ time again, which of course isn't going to happen. But yes, the travel was fantastic. Even my very first conference that I ever went to was in Oxford. I went on my own. It's actually on again (virtually) this week, so I’ll be at that from one o'clock to nine every evening. It was absolutely lovely. I arrived the first night and I knew someone that was in Oxford and we went for dinner, and on the way back we met some of the people that talked at the conference and they took me under their wing for the rest of the week. It was just absolutely amazing. You get to meet all of these people and they're all interesting, and it was easy to talk to them. Even meeting all of the other PhD students at the Irish conferences, it's lovely. What Paul said is right - you do definitely get to meet much more interesting and inquisitive people doing a PhD. I really miss not being able to go in. I wouldn't have went to Galway every day anyway, but I used to love the days where we had a PhD coffee/tea room tea room where everyone would meet for lunch. As Paul said, the conversation could be about absolutely anything - it could be about research, somebody could be up at a whiteboard saying “I’ve this problem, has anyone any thoughts?”, but really it could be about anything. So often, talking through to other people’s problems in that environment might mean that in a year's time you could have the same problem, but you now know how to deal with it. Whereas currently, if you have problems there's no one to talk to about them really.

Ed: Definitely, it's hard to recreate that environment online. It's amazing how often bouncing ideas off someone over a coffee turns out to help solve the problem you're working on. For any students in attendance today, that might be something you're interested in: once you get PhD funding, depending on the funding body, you will get a certain amount for international travel and attending conferences abroad is definitely one of the huge pluses [of a PhD]. While that may sound a little bit daunting now, people will take you under their wing and the atmosphere is generally very welcoming and friendly. So I hope that was the same experience you've had Ryan - what's been a highlight so far of your PhD?

Ryan: So I haven't been able to attend any in-person conferences, as I started in September 2019. I did get to have one short trip to Paris on March 10th, but I believe was the week that UCD actually closed for Covid-19. So I spent a few days in Paris visiting collaborators. I will have the opportunity to go back as part of a shorter placement as well, hopefully in the summer of next year.

Ed: That sounds very exciting and that'll be a definite highlight of the PhD! We’ve had some questions from some students who are in attendance, so I think I'll put the first question to Paul. This student wants to know about your background confidence in your maths knowledge and your work ethic when you were first applying [for your PhD]? Also, did you find it intimidating to be moving from a very structured undergraduate degree to the more fluid and self-directed world of PhD research? So if you could take yourself back to the start of the PhD  - did you doubt your ability at any stage, or did you go through that same thought process?

Paul: I don't think anyone does a PhD without doubting themselves pretty much at every point! I think everyone goes through that period. Ryan's probably coming up to it now where you start thinking that you'll never finish and you're definitely going to quit, and then you get to the point where you absolutely can't quit because you know you've put too much time into it. It's a mixed bag of emotions. I would say that it's more of a marathon than a sprint. You literally have four years to build up that knowledge and that expertise. I was fortunate to have a great supervisor who definitely pointed me in the right direction a lot and made sure I didn’t get too lost in the weeds. It's a slow process: you'll spend two and a half years completely taking stabs in the dark, but it's not waste of time. That's actually what builds up the skills to do research. I wouldn't get too caught up on “I need to know everything in advance”, because if you know what to do in advance you wouldn't be doing a PhD.

Ed: I definitely think that riding the ebbs and flows and trusting yourself is a big part of it. Róisín, if you were to think back to that stage when you were starting off, did you go through that same thought process? If so, can you think of any advice that perhaps you were given or you would give to a student who is going through those kind of doubts?

Róisín: Well, there are two things. One is that most universities do a final year project that is research based, and if you've really enjoyed doing that, then that's really important. If you didn't like doing that because it is quite self-directed, then you may not really want to do a research degree. The other thing is that it was mentioned some students doubt their maths ability. Well your undergrad should be showing you that, if you're if you're doing well in your modules, then you do have the ability to do a PhD. You don't have to be a genius and get everything right all the time, but if you're able to get first-class honours then I think you would have the intellectual ability. It's then to decide whether you're interested in doing the research element and if you're a self-motivating person. If you're somebody that, if no one is chasing you for a week then you'll do nothing, then you might have to have a rethink. Some supervisors will be very hands-on and other supervisors won't be, so you need to be able to motivate yourself.

Ed: That's very good advice, you do have to have that drive to push things over the finish line. Ryan, if you were to offer advice to someone starting off or maybe considering doing a PhD, but they didn't think that they have the background mathematical knowledge that might need, what would it be? I mean there are of course avenues for further learning as you do the PhD. It's not like you stop learning and then have to write only what you already know. Could you talk about that?

Ryan: I second everything that Róisín said. You don't need a full background in the area that you're going into. Maybe you've picked up some of the basic mathematical skills to cover a wide range of topics in your undergrad. Then you'll spend that first year, or maybe a year and a half, reading and delving into your research topic and getting more of the necessary skills to read the literature and perform your own research. As Paul said, there will be times during your PhD when things aren't quite working or you don't have any idea what to do. One of the best pieces of advice that I received is that you shouldn't be comparing yourself to other PhD students. Progress is going to happen across different projects at different rates. Also, you don't know where they're struggling and things like that. So if you're comparing yourself to someone else, you may think that they're flying along without a bother in the world and you'll get a lot more self-doubts.

Ed: That's a very good point and it's an easy trap to fall into. It's only human to compare yourself to others but that’s great advice. Paul, not to put you on the spot, but if you were to think of the best advice you were given as an undergraduate (or at any stage), what kind of advice would you pass on?

Paul: Over and over again: it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. In terms of progress, you might do three months’ worth of work in one morning and then nothing for three months. It's that uncertainty and I think that's what a lot of people struggle with. In an undergrad, there's clear module goals and there's a clear everyday structure, where you come in and you know that you know you're going to do 1/13th of the course every week. In a PhD, it's not like that. You might be having a coffee in the morning talking to your supervisor and you go “Oh, that's exactly what we're going to do!”. But then for three weeks you'll sit there just reading papers and have no clue where to go.

Ed: Ok, very good. Thanks for all your answers so far, they've been really insightful. In one sense, we've talked a lot about the positives of a PhD, and I want to delicately approach the other aspect. Róisín, if you could change one thing about your PhD experience to date, or if something could have been improved upon, what would that be?

Róisín: I'm not a person to think like that really! I really that I hit it lucky. I really enjoy my research and I work really well with my supervisor. The one thing that I would get rid of is the current Covid-19 situation, of course, so that we could have done all of our usual traveling and things that we should have been doing for the last year but I’ve no control over that! Personally I was just I feel I was just really lucky and have nothing to complain about.

Ed: That's good to hear and apologies - I hadn’t meant to put you on the spot! Now I'm hesitant to ask, but Ryan, in the nicest way possible - would there be anything you could think of that you could change about your PhD experience to date?

Ryan: The majority of my PhD experience has been during Covid-19, so that that would be the number one factor to change. I’d love to get back to the office and get back to seeing people and meeting people and having those social experiences. It’s great when you get to have a coffee and talk over problems if you are stuck on something, and you can chat to the person right next to you and work through it together. Just things like that.

Ed: For sure. Paul, you didn't you didn't have Covid-19 affecting you thankfully when you were doing your PhD, but if you could think back: would there have been anything that could have been improved upon? Or, maybe, anything that you could have better prepared yourself for?

Paul: Just to have a slightly different answer, one thing that everyone gets caught up on is the PhD funding. Even many of my friends with PhDs in different areas were complaining about the funding element. It is difficult, but it's a short term thing. I know four years feels like a very long time. But, especially if you're coming from an undergrad and if you started your undergrad straight out of school, you really don't miss out on much. It's not like you're going to go into the world at 21 or 22 years old and earn a six-figure salary anyway. You don't feel it as bad as everyone thinks and I think there's too much of a focus on the negativity. In the long term, once it's finished, the effects of that dissipate anyway and that becomes a memory. I heard too much about people worrying about that. Obviously, there's a certain degree of that but in hindsight I wouldn't have panicked as much about it.

Ed: That's an interesting aspect. When you're young and when you’re thinking of the short-term opportunity cost of doing a PhD compared to, say, working abroad, the other options can seem very tempting. But in the long term, I think that you're certainly not putting yourself at a disadvantage, but rather an advantage. The last topic I want to touch on is options for the future. Now, I know this is a bad question to ask PhD students, because they never know, but maybe Róisín you have a definite plan laid out? What are your plans for the future - do you have immediate plans for after your  PhD or is that just something you don't want to think about for now?

Róisín: That was the one question I said I hope I don’t get asked! I just very much take it as it comes. I'm in a completely different place than most people finishing their PhDs, in that I don't have to rush out and get a job afterwards. We have our own home and our children are grown up. I realise it's a completely different situation [to most other PhD students]. What I would like to do is a postdoc, but one issue then is that I'm limited on where I can work. Well, maybe not anymore considering things have moved so much online, but our family home is here so I'm not really going to take-off and do a postdoc in abroad or anything like that. If I do get a postdoc position, it'll have to be in Galway. That would be my hope. At the moment, my funding is up at the end of September. There's a chance that we get 4 months extra [because of Covid-19] so that will bring it up into the end of January. So I'm not really looking around at the moment too much as to what's happening afterwards, because I feel I'm in a comfortable enough position that hopefully something will come along.

Ed: I think something will. We'll have to have you back then for our “ask a postdoc“ day! Of course, Ryan, it's earlier days for you and your PhD and I'd be very surprised if you had a definite answer here! But maybe you could surprise me -  what are you thinking even loosely for the future?

Ryan: Well no surprises anyway! I haven't put too much thought towards what comes afterwards, but I’m possibly more geared towards the industry side of things. I did do an industry placement that just ended about a month ago, so I’ve got to experience both sides of the things, research and industry alike. So, I’ve no definite plans anyway.

Ed: I'm glad I asked you now, because a lot of undergraduates would probably think that a  PhD would firmly lock you down the road towards academia, but it's just as beneficial in industry to have a PhD. That's probably something that Paul's going to talk about now when I ask him because I know the answer to this question. So what did you do after you finished your PhD and what do you do now?

Paul: I went straight into industry. I had decided to go that route before I had graduated. To my last point, I was paid a premium for having a PhD, particularly in maths. I now work in in tech (for Indeed.com) where I'm a data scientist. Ironically, I'm actually interviewing someone next week for a post in Dublin who has a PhD, and we're very fortunate here in Ireland because there are so many tech jobs. Now, they don't hire exclusively people with PhDs, I just want to be very clear on that and you could still get a job with just a bachelor's degree, but it certainly does help when they're filtering CVs. The CV where a PhD is listed gets a second look. That goes back to what I said earlier - you might struggle a little bit for four years, but if you go into industry it certainly will be worth in the long run.

Ed: Yes, it will definitely stand you and be beneficial in helping you to stand out from the crowd as a worker in industry. Well guys, that was extremely illuminating and we're coming up to close to time so I think we're going to close things off now. Thanks a million to our three speakers for coming along, those answers were really interesting and enlightening!