• You do not know what you are doing. This is normal, after-all we are talking about research and is impossible to “jump into the unknown” knowing exactly what you have to do.
• You do not know what you are doing (version 2). This is less normal but happen often. If you are a first timer, the master, hasn’t prepare you in all the minor details of your sub-domain of research and you may need to compensate this by studying a bit on your own.
• You are subject to the shiny object syndrome. Again, this is normal. You are human and as human we are attracted to “new things”. This aspects may play against you in this phase as you are risking to jump on too many things without investigate deeply in any.

Factors that may #Prevent you in #Advance towards the #research aspect of your #thesis
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Start by recognizing these aspects in yourself. Make sure to put some attention on what you are doing and on your thinking process. Over time you should be able to recognize these aspects and how they are effecting you when approaching to doing your thesis.

What follows is a step by step process that can help you in “putting your first foot out of the door” and leverage the literature review that you are probably already doing, followed by “a quick reading technique”. If you read the article on how to read a paper quickly and effectively you know that I always suggest to start by asking yourself “why should I read this paper”. If properly used, this approach can help you in this stage in several ways starting from the fact that you are trying to put some order into “the chaos of what you are reading”. But there is more; let’s start by considering the following categorizations:

• Objective. What is the problem that the authors are trying to solve?
• Methodology. What is the approach that authors are using for validating their research hypothesis?
• (sub)Domain. What is the expertise of the authors and from what angle are approaching the problem?
• Tools. What technique is used by the authors and what software is adopted for doing the “hands on aspect” of their research?
• Data. What kind of data set is used by the authors, are they proposing or adopting a standard benchmark for evaluating certain aspects of their research?
• Proximity to the problem that you are addressing. How is the article that you are reading related to your problem? Maybe it is trying to address something similar or maybe it is addressing something different but the approach of the authors could be useful for your case.

Possible ways to categorize a #scientific #paper for helping you during your #research
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Categorization is the first step on how to use the literature review for your research. Every thesis must contain a literature review part, normally in chapter 2 or chapter 3. I recommend you to take note of these aspects and to summarize them using one or more tables. This will give completeness to your work. In particular it will shows that you haven’t only read a few articles but that you are capable to navigate the landscape of cutting edge literature that is around the problem that you are trying to solve.

You are also welcome to propose your own categorization. Different domains will probably have some particularity that can’t be easily generalized. Nevertheless, let’s see how we could use each one of the categories for addressing the particular problem that is related to our thesis.

Finally, please note, that when you are approaching a literature review you should “remove your ego from the equation”. In other words, you are looking at the work of others and you want to be as objective as possible in evaluating it. It is not about your problem and your research questions; it is about their problems and the solutions that are proposing. Your objective is to understand and categorize. There will be plenty of room for expressing your opinion and your ideas in other parts and phases of your thesis.

1: Objective and Proximity to the problem that you are addressing:

This is probably the most strait forward of the proposed categorizations. When addressing a scientific problem you probably have a particular objective in mind. You are considering a literature review for helping you in specifying the problem further and/or you would like to evaluate possible solutions that have been proposed.

You want to categorize the work of others, taking into account, that aspect in mind. In particular considering if the work of the authors may be relevant or not. A reasonable categorization should consider the following aspects:

• Is the work of the authors trying to solve the same problem that you are? In other words you have the same objective of the authors.
• Is the problem a subset or a super-set of your objective? I.e. you are aiming at an objective that is smaller or bigger.
• Is the objective of the authors similar to yours but developed in a different domain? For example, you are both interested in improving the speed of delivery but you are focusing on door to door milk distribution and the authors are considering newspapers.

This categorization will help you in understating who is trying to solve a similar problem. You will also have a feeling of the level of deepness of their analysis. Finally, you will know and what has been already done in your area of research. As your goal is not to replicate the work of others but to propose (and evaluate) an innovative idea, this will help you in preparing and clarifying the landscape where your future work will be positioned.

This is the first categorization that will help you reasoning around how to use the literature review for your research.

Try to #understand what you are doing by looking at the objectives of other #Researchers. Devise analogies and differences.
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2: Methodology

This approach for categorizing relevant works suggests to forget completely about the objective and to focus “on the how”. There is not a single way to solve a problem and probably each author is specialized in a adopting different techniques. Consequently, different works will approach the problem using different methods. For example they may propose a Qualitative or Quantitative approach and within that type they may focus on something different.

Let me clarify with an example and lets’s consider the problem of predicting the weather. In this case the problem is clear and well defined but each researcher may have different approaches in proposing a solution:

• Maybe they are asking to 10 different groundhogs their opinion,
• Or are considering to model the data that they have using linear regression,
• Maybe are using a <Insert Your Favorite AI technique here> for building a predictor.
• Alternatively they are just focusing on a sub-problem like, for example, on the quality of the data that their sensors are collecting.

As you may imagine the list of possible methodologies can become very big. However, each domain of research has their “preferred styles” for solving their challenges. In practice you will find that authors tend to focus on a subset of 1-10 different approaches. This is due to the fact that researchers are humans and their knowledge is specialized.

If you want to understand how to use the literature review for your research a categorization regarding the methodologies used by researchers is an important aspect.

Look at the methodologies that other #Researchers are using. It may help you in finding one that you useful for you as well.
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3: (Sub) Domain of Expertise

As anticipated in the previous section, researchers are humans and they approach a problem with their expertise. Some problems (usually the most fun) transcend a single domain and are called “multidisciplinary”. If the problem that you are considering is in this category you want first to clarify with your supervisor a few aspects of your research. In particular you may want to be sure that your research question(s) are focus enough and not too broad. Topics like global warming or world poverty are fascinating problems but are a bit to ambitious to solve for a single thesis.

For the rest of this section I will assume that your research topic is narrow enough and has multidisciplinary aspects. Let’s, for example, consider the domain of “Internet of Things”, in particular the problem of “Privacy in Internet of Things“. Clearly this domain is analyzed by several types of researchers.

• Economists are trying to understand how these changes will impact businesses and the economy in general.
• Lawyers are considering regulatory aspects.
• Big Data Experts see this as an opportunity for collecting an analyzing data.
• Engineers are considering how to build new devices
• Computer Scientist focus on how to develop applications on top of that infrastructures
• Social Scientists study societal adoptions of these technologies

Each single expert is approaching the same problem from his/her own domain of expertise. Consequently you may find articles that are relevant but very different in therm of styles. If that is the case a categorization that take into account these dynamics can help you in understanding (and probably narrow down) your research questions and your future research.

Are your #problems multidisciplinary problems? Categorize the #literature review taking into account the various #discipline that are approaching the problem
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4: Tools

What are the tools that the researchers are using for solving the problem? Here I am explicitly not talking about the methodology. I am referring to tools and technology used in order to implement the validation of the research question. This categorization vary a lot in each domain of research. It can range from tools for building online surveys and questionnaires to software and/or libraries for implementing a particular proof of concept.

If you are considering more types of paper, i.e. papers that are using different methodologies, a single categorization maybe difficult to build. If that is the case you may want to consider a categorization per methodology that you are considering.

Let’s consider the example of Artificial Intelligence in particular, AI applied to weather prediction. You may find that researchers may focus, for example, in Neural Networks and in Data Mining techniques. If you want to survey both, you may want to consider two different tables. One dedicated to Neural Networks tools and the other to Data Mining tools.

If you are envisioning too many tables you may want to question the scope of your research. Check with your supervisor if your research question is focused enough.

#understanding the tools that are used by #Researchers can help you quantify the time that you will spend doing your #research. Thus #speeding the #learning curve
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5: Data

What information are the researchers using for validating their work? Many of the considerations and concerts that we made for the “Tools” category also apply here. In particular, if you find yourself considering several different types of data you may want to question the scope of the research. Typical sub-categorization of this categories includes:

• Data from questionnaires and/or surveys.
• Data collected from a physical device and/or use case.
• Simulations.
• Use of standard data-set known and accepted among researchers.
• Data collected from a particular company.

Categorize the data used by researchers will help you understand how you can use yours and is an important aspect of how to use the literature review for your research.

Look at your #data in an objective way. Can they be used as the validation of your your #scientific #claims ? What are other #Researchers using?
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Wrap up: How to use the literature review for your research?

I am sure that these categorizations, as well as, the one that you will suggest are typical of your particular domain of research and will improve the quality of your literature review. However, this is not the point of the article. The goals is “to move forward” towards a successful experimental research.

How to use the literature review for your research? My suggestion is the following:

• Reflect around the Objectives of the researchers and consider if you would like to be doing something similar. Try to understand analogies and differences and what “they are proposing” and what “you would like to do”.
• Use the Sub-Domain of Expertise for reflecting around the scope of your thesis. Decide the angle that you are more knowledgeable for approaching the problem.
• Shop around for Methodologies, find the one that resonate more with you. After-all, you will have to follow it in detail for the coming months.
• Play with the Tools that are normally used by the researchers for validating the particular methodology that you selected. This will give you some mutuality for elaborating the practical part of your research.
• Ask yourself if the tool that you are considering is a good match with the Data that you are collecting or you have at your disposal.

This is how to use literature review for your research. If you start reflecting on all these aspects you will have a lot of questions in your mind. That is perfectly normal, and if you succeed in organizing your thoughts around these 5 categories you will have a clear objective in a well defined domain. In addition, you will have a methodology and a tool to use for analyzing your data.

If you find yourself with more question then answers. Try to organize your thoughts around the 5 mentioned categories. This will break down the problem in more digestible pieces such as:

• Is my objective clear enough?
• How deep do I know the methodology that I would like to apply?
• Are the data that I have good for the methodology that I would like to use for validating my results?
• Am I capable of using that particular tool? How much time will take me to learn it?
• Is the tool adequate for been used in conjunction with my data?

The goal is to find an objective that is achievable and can be evaluated with a sound methodology in the time-frame of your thesis.

You may want to take note off all your ideas and discuss them with your supervisor as some of them may be too ambitious or not sufficiently specified.

Use a #Literature review for #understanding what you are doing in the context of your #research. A proper categorization can help you in learning from #OTHERS
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This article (How to use the literature review for your research) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

If you like what you read, consider sharing it!

The post How to use the literature review for your research appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

• You have a supervisor and you discussed with him/her a possible topic for your thesis.
• You already browsed a few scientific articles related to the topic and you like the subject.

If that is not the case please look at How to take the most from your thesis and How to read a scientific article quickly and efficiently that will give you the basics for understanding what kind of thesis you would like to do and how to not spend an infinite amount of time reading scientific articles.

With all been said is now the time to understand what you have “your assets” and how you can start using them towards a successful thesis.

Count Your Assets

If you are thinking that you really have nothing, well think again. You have more than you can imagine. I am pretty sure that you can count on the following:

• A supervisor that is happy to mentor you and support you.
• Access to the facility at the university for reading scientific papers.
• Support for English writing via some university facilities.
• Guidelines on how to do a thesis from the thesis coordinator of your bachelor/master program.
• Examples of “good past thesis”.
• Knowledge of everything you have studied so far.
• Friend and family that will be happy to support you.

That is far from been nothing! On top of what I just listed you may also have:

• An Internship in a company.
• A part-time job in a company.
• Or no internship or job.
• Continuing the work of a previous student.

The first set of items are clearly “assets” that you can use for helping you in doing your thesis. The second set represents things that are both an asset and a liability at the same time. An internship or a work in a company can provide you access to information that are normally not available to “outsiders”; however, at the same time, it subtract you precious time that you could dedicate to your thesis. Please do not misunderstand me, I do not believe that an internship or a part-time job at a company is “a bad thing”: it really depends on what you would like to do when you will graduate and if you want to know more please consider reading this article on How to take the most from your thesis before warming up your research engine.

Start your master or bachelor #thesis by #CountingOn #yourself and your #Assets !
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Count how much time you have

Now that you know on what you can count during your journey towards a great thesis you should get a real and tangible grasp of the time that you have. In counting you should also consider that during this journey you want to spend time with your friends and have fun. This is as important as doing the thesis itself, as you do not want to burn out during the process but, hopefully, you would like to enjoy the process!

Start by working backward from the deadline.
In other words do the following:

1. Figure out the deadline for submitting the thesis,
2. Count vacation periods and time that you plan to take off,
3. Count time that you have to spend in your internship as time that you will not dedicate to your thesis,
4. Count the time that you have to spend in doing the remaining exams (if any).
5. Do not forget to consider time for gym and/or beers!

If you do the math you will have an idea of an upper bandwidth of the time that you could dedicate to your thesis. Critically assess that number and ask yourself “Is this doable or you are overestimating/underestimating yourself?” If you are experiencing difficulties you may involve your supervisor in this discussion as he/she has more experience then you in this matter. However, if that is your decision start thinking at possible scenarios before having that discussion. You will have a set of solutions and gather valuable feedback instead of “sharing your problem” to you supervisor.

When #planning your #thesis , #measure your #time carefully: start by counting it #backwards
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Build a fuzzy but feasible timeline

Now that you have a clear understanding on how much time you can/want to dedicate to your thesis you can start envisioning a possible timeline. As is impossible to predict the future you can expect that you will deviate from your planned deadline. That is why is important that you have a flexible (fuzzy) goal-driven and action-oriented timetable. In defining the milestones for your timetable you can consider that the thesis can be divided in the following sub-tasks:

1. Understand the problem: this can be done both, via an extensive literature review, or using your internship or expertise of your supervisor.
2. Acquiring the basic knowledge of the subject: once that you know what is the topic of your thesis you want to supplement your current education with a one or two books about the topic in order to gather the big picture on which problem that you are trying to solve.
3. Extensive Literature Review: you want to survey and understand the cutting edge research that is perform around the topic in order to become an expert of the sub-domain in which your thesis is part.
4. Formulate a scientific hypothesis and related model: the more you will be analyzing the literature and spending your time in solving the challenge from a practical point of view at your internship the more you will start be able to formulate a scientific hypothesis that you can “cast some light” into the problem.
5. Building an experiment that validate/invalidate your hypothesis: use the data or use cases that you define to validate your theories from a qualitative or quantitative point of view.
6. Write the thesis: you should consider the task of writing a thesis as a an independent task. Being able to presents the finding of your work in a simple and understandable manner has its challenges and require time and effort.

There is a clear dependency among these tasks and the more you will advance in one the more you will feel the need to update and revisit what you have already done in the others. That is perfectly normal, and is the reason why you want to consider a “fuzzy” schedule: the more you will advance in building the thesis the more you will become expert in the material and the more you will see things clearly.

You may want to discuss with your supervisor all the aspects of your thesis and put a time duration on each task together with “your next first step” that is covered in the following subsection.

your #thesis need a fuzzy #schedule when you will set your #deadline . Have clear #goals and a #flexible #Mindset on how to #reachinggoals
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Think about your next step

If you reached this step you have a list of assets that you can use for building your thesis, a clear and feasible timeline and a set of related tasks. The only item that you are missing for warming up your research engine is “your first next step”. Every great journey start taking that first step. Your thesis is not an exception in this respect.

Figure out where you are in the journey of your thesis and what you could do for advancing it forward. Do it and book an appointment with your supervisor for discussing what will come next!

This is pretty much all you need to know for warming up your research engine!

Have a clear objective and try to be flexible in reaching it. After all, you are doing research and this activity has a serendipity component.

What are the first steps when starting your #thesis ?
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This article ( warming up your research engine ) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

If you like what you read, consider sharing it!

The post Warming up the Research Engine appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/groups/231572807787807/

Alternatively just click on the join group button

Thesis Support Group Closed group · 2 members Join Group

This thesis support group intend to be a group of people with common experiences or concerns who provide each other with encouragement, comfort, and advice. Nothing more nothing less.

We will focus on both, master and bachelor thesis. You will receive support from PhD students, practitioners and academics in general. Nevertheless, the real value will be what you will share with your peers

It is a close group and participation will be moderated rules of this group includes:

• Have Fun! The fact that this is a thesis support group does not forbid you to have fun and enjoy the company of others.
• Give before you take! Focus on both, how you can benefit from the group and how you can help members in improving their thesis
• No personal attacks here! If a member personally attacks another member with words that are harmful, threatening or not in-line with our mutual respect policy, that member will receive a warning. Three warnings and you’re out.
• Please stick to our mission statement of this Facebook group. Irrelevant content does not belong here it belongs on other pages.
• If someone mentions you by name please respond directly to that person on the same post. If the comment is inflammatory please report it to the group admin.
• If you are going to comment, we would prefer it if you could try and add valuable discussion to the conversation. Be friendly, be fair and use common sense.

No really special rules and when you do not know what to do, just use a bit of common sense.

This mini-series of article on how to do a good thesis may also help you

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If that is the alternative some heuristics may guide you in forming an opinion prior reading a scientific paper. This opinion is “by definition” a bias and you should be aware that may be misleading. In other words, you will answer to the question “what is a good research paper?” or “is this publication worth reading?” before reading the paper.

First of all, there is not a magic answer to these questions. A most heuristics for assessing the quality of a publication will have flaws.

A good publication is a publication that adds value to what you are trying to achieve. There is no escape, you first have to read the article and then judge it on your own. Both Einstein and Shakespeare they had a moment in their life when they publish something and they had zero citation and zero positive review.

Nevertheless, let’s consider the following heuristics:

• (i) Is the abstract scientifically sound? Is it formulating an hypothesis? Is it summarizing the performed experiment(s) for validating the hypothesis?  If the answer is no. Well you may be suspicious.
• (ii) Does the article has citations?Obviously, the newer it is the less citations is going to have. However, a lot of citations just imply that the article has been mentioned by colleagues and nothing about the reason why.
• (iii) How citations are distributed over the time? A lot of citations right after the article was published and nothing over the years may indicate that finding are no longer of interest of the research community. Alternatively, the ideas may have been replaced by a “a better one”.
• (iv) Do Authors keep citing their previous works? If that is the case the article may be just a small increment of an existing idea already published and you may want to go directly to “its origin”.
• (v) Is the author known among the research community? You should always think with your own head, however some people are known for been very productive researchers and this may serve you as a shortcut.
• (vi) is the journal/conference considered a good venue? Short answer: in this respect, probably your department (or University or Research Institute) maintains a list of Journal that are considered of “good quality”. These are a list of venue that your “local scientific community” consider respectable. Obviously this list is not exhaustive but can be a starting point.

6 Heuristics for Assessing the Quality of a Publication
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These are 6 heuristics for assessing the quality of a publication. However, a long answer to the point (vi) requires some understanding on how scientific venues (such as journals and conferences) work and I will make a dedicated article on the topic.

The post 6 Heuristics for Assessing the Quality of a Publication appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

First of all let’s start with what you achieved so far and congratulation for reaching this stage in your studies! This implies that you have a (more or less) clear idea on what you would like to do at the end of your thesis/studies and that you have a thesis topic that is triggering your curiosity and you would like to know more about. If that is not the case you may want to read this article that suggests you how to take the most from your thesis. Also, please note, this is not instructions on “how to write your thesis” but limits itself in the preparatory work that you need to do before start working at your thesis.

When interacting with your supervisor you have to understand the following:

• He/She is probably mentoring several students at the same time.
• He/She is probably more busy then should be and is probably dedicating  50-60 hours/week to his/her job.
• He/She maybe doing other things like teaching and research while supervising you.

Consequently, without a proper set of communication tools with your thesis supervisor, your email may be “lost in the chaos”. He/she may not read your emails and attachments with various version of your thesis may just “contribute to the noise”. On the other hand, if you will make an effort in keeping the material that you plan to share with him/her ordered, he/she may be able to quickly follow what you are doing and the majority of the time that you will spend together will be actually spent in improving the state of your thesis.

Improve your #mentorship experience: setting up proper #communication #tools with your #thesis's supervisor allow you to optimize the time that you will spend with your #mentor
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Sharing a folder is one of the best communication tools with your thesis supervisor that I was able find. Obviously, the tool itself is not sufficient and how you will structure the material inside plays a crucial role as well. Probably this is not new to you and you may have your own way to do that: maybe using Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint etc. However, you want to check if and how your supervisor currently operating because, as he/she is probably supervising several students at the same time, adopting one system for each student is simply unmanageable. What follows is what I usually recommend to my students. I personally use Dropbox but these recommendations can be easily generalized.

Why did I choose Dropbox? Because is free and I like the idea of having a folder that is the same in every computer that I use. In case you do not have an account this is an invitation link https://db.tt/ALnJBcdQ that will give you 250 MB of free space on top of the 2-5 GB that you will normally have. Nevertheless, let me say again that this is just how I personally operate and is important that you will check with your supervisor how he/she would like to set up the proper communication tools with you!

Communication tools with your thesis supervisor step by step

Step 1: Download and install Dropbox in the computer that you will use for your thesis.

Step 2: Create a shared folder in Dropbox. The title of the folder should have your name and the word “thesis” in it, so that it will not be confusing with potential others.  It like having a normal folder in your computer with the exception that will be shared with your supervisor. In other words every time you will change the files inside the folder your supervisor will see it and you will see the changes that he/she will make as well.

Step 3: Invite your supervisor to the shared folder. Just ask for your supervisor’s Dropbox id and follow the proper procedure.

Step 3:  Create the following structure into the folder.

• Articles: will contains all the scientific articles that you will be reading and you believe are relevant to your thesis.
• Data: if your thesis will be collecting data. This folder will contain information on how the data are structured and the data
• Thesis-Proposal: you probably had to write a thesis proposal to pitch for an internship and/or to validate your preliminary idea. This folder should contains “everything that you have done” before starting the thesis.
• Presentations: relevant PowerPoint presentation.
• Chapter-1: You probably are not going to write your thesis “all in once”. If you will break the thesis in chapters you will have the possibility to finalize once chapter and ask to your supervisor for an early feedback.
• Chapter-2: see chapter 1 comment.
• Chapter-N: yep, as many as you need. I guess the last one should be conclusions
• Appendix: in case you plan to have multiple appendixes consider adding sub-folders into this folder
• Final-Thesis: should contains your “final draft” and your camera ready thesis.

The structure should be as self-explanatory as possible. Obviously, you are welcome to arrange the folder in the way you prefer and to add other sub-folders. Nevertheless, this is the minimum structure that I would like you to consider and always (did I said always? let’s do it again: always) agree with your supervisor on the proper structure. You think that you are sharing folder but in practice you are sharing “mental categories” with him/her.

Final remarks

Setting up the proper communication tools with your thesis supervisor in the end will save you time and will allow a more effective communication. Communication will probably happen via email and/or Skype; nevertheless, you can always point to the shared folder for additional explanation: “I just finished chapter 2, can you please have a look?”. “I found this article in google scholar, is it really relevant?”. “What do you think about visualizing the data in this way?”etc.

The post Setting Up the Proper Communication Tools with your Thesis Supervisor appeared first on Francesco Lelli.

Let’s start from a step back. Instead of start from a research topic, ask yourself the following question:

“What would you like to do when you will grow up?”

Is a difficult question and you have infinite possibilities but let’s simplify it and consider the following 3 categories:

• (i) Are you planning to look for a job in a company?
• (ii) Would you like to become an entrepreneur and start your own company?
• (iii) Are you consider an academic career?

The idea is that you will tune the thesis for your objectives and you will use it for helping you in advancing your goals.

Let’s consider the first case (i). If you would like to join a company, your first priority should not be the thesis itself but finding a proper and relevant internship. The thesis will be part of the internship itself and you will discuss it with both your supervisor and your mentor at the company that will offer you the internship. Whatever you are planning now is not relevant as your mentor will have his/her opinions and your work should be integrated in their activities.

At the same time, your thesis will be an opportunity for “putting a foot into the door”, test the working environment, understand if this is what you really want to do for the next years and, obviously, prove yourself as a valuable asset for the company.

Once you will graduate, if you decide for a different company, this experience will be valuable and your CV will have something that will help you stand from the crowd.

In the case you would like to become an entrepreneur (case ii), you want to first join an incubator and/or a business network meet, your new friends and colleagues and, only after, seek for an entrepreneurial supervisor that is willing to discuss a possible thesis that can help you validate/disqualify some of your entrepreneurial ideas. Instead of focusing to writing a sound proposal you should focus on identify your “target professor” as early as possible and involve him/her in a discussion that will lead to your research proposal.  An internship is “neutral”; some may help you acquire new skills but at the same time you will be working at someone else projects and you will spend your time not focusing in finding your own path.

Finally, in the case of an academic career (iii), your goal should be to pursue a PhD; anything that you will be doing before joining a PhD program will not be really relevant for your future academic career. Consequently, all your activities should be focusing in “getting points” for being accepted in one. Your thesis can help you in that more than you think. An easy way to stand out from the crowd is understanding the scientific method and make a thesis that has potential for been published in a scientific journal. In choosing your supervisor, you want to focus on one that is currently doing research in an area that you believe is interesting and you can potentially picture yourself investigating it for the next 3-4 years.

Use your #thesis for kick start your #Careers and differentiate yourself from the crowd. #careeradvice
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Once what you want to do when you will grow up is clear you will find that to take the most from your thesis is relatively easy to achieve. You should also be ready to have a constructive discussion with your potential supervisor and you can choose the one that is more compatible with your character and what you would like to do in the future.

Yes, I said “compatible with your character”; in the end, both students and professors are human beings and do what they do following “their own style”: you want to be sure that you are compatible otherwise, you risk to waste time that you can spend somewhere else.

In case you are considering me as a possible mentor for your thesis I invite you to read this post first.

This article ( Take the Most from Your Thesis ) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

The post Take the Most from Your Thesis appeared first on Francesco Lelli.