PhD Talk

In today's episode, we talk about virtual conferences:  our experience with attending virtual conferences,  the different formats of virtual conferences and why understanding the format matters when it comes to getting most out of the conference, our best tips for attending virtual conferences (while the rest of the world keeps spinning around you), and our best tips for presenting at virtual...

In today's episode, we interview Professor Tanya Golash-Boza. Professor of Sociology at the University of California - Merced. As a writer, speaker, and teacher, she tells stories of people and of systems to help colleagues, students, readers, and listeners understand how racism and capitalism structure our lives and what we need to do to change this country and the world. We talk about her c...

Today's episode is a Q&A episode. We received questions about how to select and narrow down a research topic, when to contact potential advisors, and what our major skills and struggles as researchers are. In addition, we discuss what we've learned from the last 4 months of podcasting, as well as our favorite books and albums of 2021 so far. If you have questions for us for a future...

In today's episode we interview Arjenne Louter, the Dutch PhD coach.  Listen to today's episode to learn more about how Arjenne became a PhD coach, how a PhD coach can help PhD students, and what is often missing in doctoral education and supervision.  We learned from Arjenne about the most common struggles of PhD students, challenges for international PhD students in the Netherlands, an...

In today's episode, we discuss supervision issues - issues we have observed around us and issues we have experienced ourselves. We look at the different types of supervisions issues that are common, what you can do when you encounter an issue in the working relationship with your supervisor, and what you can do at the start of your working relationship with your supervisor to prevent issues i...

In today's episode, we interview Dr. Jonathan Guillemot, a lecturer and researcher at the School of Medicine of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. We talk about doing a PhD part-time, Jonathan's  current responsibilities, his best advice for PhD students, the impact of COVID-19 on his work, and we take a deep dive into the topic of systematic reviews. The resources mentioned in this epi...

In today's episode, we discuss how we gather references when starting a literature review. We discuss where to find references, and some tips and tricks to find hard-to-find references. Here are the websites we use for finding articles: Engineering Village Scopus Google Scholar ResearchGate Here are some of the structural engineering particularities we mentioned: SSRP from UCSD Ritter 1899 re...

In today's episode, we interview Kaelyn Apple, first year PhD candidate in African American history at Yale, YouTuber at The Redhead Academic, and business owner of Accepted.  We discuss her path from UCLA (with an exchange at Cambridge), Oxford to Yale, the way she combines her studies with her online presence and her business, and her best tips for getting in the university of your dreams. ...

In today's episode, we look at how we read research articles for the literature review of your PhD thesis as well as in the later career stages.  Listen to today's episode to learn more about how to read broadly and deeply, how often to read, how to take notes of what you read, and how to digitize the articles you read and your associated notes. Software we mentioned: Reference managemen...

In today's episode, we interview Christina Shenvi, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, the Associate Residency Program Director and Director of the UNC Office of Academic Excellence (OAE). We learned from Christina about going for an MD after her PhD in chemistry, how to create a life you love, how to manage time and expectations, and how to make audacious decisions. This episode is fu...

In today's episode, we addressed a few questions that came in through the PhD Talk blog. We discuss what a day in the life looks like during COVID-19 for both of us, the programs and apps we use on a daily basis (and the ones that tend to suck us in for too much time), our experiences with meditation and the effects we have noticed, and coaching programs during the PhD year and mid-career yea...

In today's episode, we talk about writing habits. We discuss Rico's lessons learned from struggling with writing his entire MSc thesis, Eva's experiences of writing her PhD thesis, writing during the tenure track years, and current writing habits. At the end, we give our best tips for consistent writing and developing good writing habits. The PhDometer mentioned is available for dow...

In this episode, Rico and Eva interview Michelle Crowther. Michelle is the learning and research librarian for humanities and languages at CCCU Canterbury Christ Church University (Canterbury, UK) and PhD candidate in English Literature at CCCU. We discuss the work of a university librarian, and how librarians can support university students and researchers, on campus as well as in the digital rea...

In this episode, Rico and Eva discuss various options for grants and scholarships for graduate studies. Listen to learn about options for funding graduate school in Canada, Belgium, the USA, the Netherlands - as well as our own experiences with various types of funding.

In today's episode, we learn from Rico's experience in an engineering PhD that has an experimental component. We discuss lessons learned, planning in the lab, the practical aspects of making and testing specimens, and then have a quick look at data processing after an experiment. We also discuss how things have changed since Eva did her PhD on an experimental topic. 

In today's episode, we interview Ivan Carrera, a PhD candidate in bioinformatics and Ecuadorian professor. His scientific career has taken him and his growing family from Ecuador to Brazil, Portugal, and Colombia. Listen to today's episode on Ivan's research, his experiences abroad, and being a scientific father. Follow Ivan on Twitter @elprofe_ivan or Instagram @elprofe_ivan and ch...

In this episode, Rico and Eva discuss their professional and personal goals for 2021. We discuss research, writing, teaching - how we expect the pandemic to influence these in the year to come, and how goals relate to.  Eva shares goals regarding service and admin as well. We then discuss our personal pandemic-proof goals for 2021.

In this episode, we reflect on 2020. We discuss how the pandemic impacted our research, what progress we made, as well as our personal goals. 

In today's episode, we interview Silvia Pugliese, who is doing her PhD in a Marie   Curie european ITN (international training network) . We talk about the project, her part in it, the logistics, and lessons learned from the pandemic.

In this episode, we discuss gifts you may want to consider for the PhD students and academics in your life - or, if you are a PhD student or academic, gifts you may like to receive. We've broken these down into two categories: productivity and leisure. Listen for gift ideas, as well as discussions on weird music mashups, the best chairs for fidgety people, and gardening for those who do not h...

Today, we discuss the sometimes messy nature of the PhD timeline - from our own experiences as compared to the "ideal" timeline. We also discuss additional requirements, as well as international differences.

In this episode, we ( Eva and Rico) discuss why we started this podcast, and interview each other on our background, lab adventures, and how we spend our time.