The Ph.D. student as a research apprentice

One of my former undergraduate students (and a current RA at our Center for Engineering and Sustainable Development Research at De La Salle University) recently secured a scholarship to do Ph.D. studies at Hokkaido University starting in the autumn of 2012. Her professor-to-be told her that she would be his first student from La Salle, and as such, expectations of her would be high. Thus, I find myself occasionally offering her bits of “wisdom” to relieve some of the pressure of representing an entire institution, and at the same time give some perspective as to what is in store for her over the next half decade or so. My favorite line whenever the topic of graduate studies comes up is that, first and foremost: a Ph.D. student is a research apprentice.

Coincidentally, two of my favorite examples of people successfully negotiating Ph.D. studies with flying colors are both chemical engineers. One of them, Dr. Denny Ng, is now an associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s satellite campus in Malaysia (there is also a campus in China, plus the original site in England) and one of my closest collaborators. His Ph.D. work was done at a breathtaking pace and resulted in 10 journal papers in just over two years. I should point out that his Ph.D. was completed under the British system, where students proceed directly to research without any preliminary lecture courses — the theory being that they could learn on their own whatever needed to be learned to complete the research. Dr. Ng continues to work on extensions of his Ph.D. research on developing design techniques to implement pollution prevention schemes, and since doing his postdoc at Texas A&M University, has also branched out into design of biorefineries. Today, he has about 40 publications in an academic career that began barely half a decade ago, and, significantly, guided his first Ph.D. student to the successful completion of his degree just last month. Closer to home, we have the case of Dr. Allan Soriano of the Mapua Institute of Technology, who did his Ph.D. (and later on his postdoc) at Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan on the thermodynamic characterization of exotic solvents for carbon dioxide capture. Such solvents may one day be one of the keys to the large-scale mitigation of climate change through the cleanup of the exhaust gases of industrial plants. Just like Dr. Ng, he has already published close to 40 journal articles in the span of just a few years, and continues to be one of the most productive chemical engineering researchers in the Philippines. It is therefore only fitting that, last year, Dr. Soriano received the Outstanding Young Scientist award from the National Academy of Science and Technology. What sets these two young men, each in his early 30s and each conceivably capable of eventually producing a hundred or more career publications, apart from the rest? Why is it that so many Ph.D. students, on the other hand, languish for years (or even decades) without significant progress? Most importantly, what lessons can a new Ph.D. student learn from these examples to ensure his or her own success? 

Here’s an important lesson: first and foremost, a Ph.D. student is a research apprentice. The analogy I like to use is that of the master craftsman of medieval times, taking on an apprentice who would gradually learn the craft until he (back then, I suppose it would have been almost always a “he”) was sufficiently proficient to become a craftsman in his own right. This is precisely the case in the case of scientific research, where the craft is that of creating new ideas. The arrangement presupposes that a good mentor is essential to learning the craft properly. While mentoring styles vary, in general, as in the case of the master craftsman and his apprentice, the Ph.D. student is given more guidance early on, and then becomes increasingly independent with time. He or she learns to identify a significant research problem, to design a workable data gathering strategy, and to analyze results to sort out significant insights from the noise; he or she learns to write scientific articles, to present findings at conferences, and to defend ideas either in writing or verbally. At the same time, the Ph.D. student would become the professor’s de facto assistant, helping out with various tasks such as co-supervising master’s or undergraduate students, or doing “side work” (i.e., other research not necessarily part of his or her Ph.D. scope) as part of a larger research team. If there is enough funding, he or she can get to travel, to present research findings overseas, to meet with collaborators, or even to undergo additional training through the mentor’s contacts. While the process is not perfect, generally, after a few years, a reasonably talented and reasonably motivated person learns enough to be able to achieve the universal benchmark for a successful doctoral thesis: the generation of a significant and novel contribution to the world’s knowledge pool.

If you are a current or prospective Ph.D. student, I certainly hope the apprenticeship analogy is helpful. While the fundamental requirement of novelty may seem daunting, a Ph.D. thesis need not be an ambitious attempt to solve the grand unanswered questions in your discipline. Focus and quality are what matter; your adviser should be able to give some insights as to what is “good enough” for a Ph.D. scope. And once you get your Ph.D., take note that it does not automatically confer to you the status of a seasoned researcher (after all, why else would there be such a thing as a postdoc?); but it should, in the best of cases, be the start of a fruitful research career.

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Dr. Raymond R. Tan is a university fellow and full professor of chemical engineering at De La Salle University. He is also the current director of that institution’s Center for Engineering and Sustainable Development Research (CESDR). His main field of research is process systems engineering (PSE), which focuses on developing computational techniques to improve the efficiency and sustainability of industrial processes. Tan is the author of more than 70 published and forthcoming articles in ISI-indexed journals in the fields of chemical, environmental and energy engineering. He is member of the editorial boards of the journals Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, Philippine Science Letters and Sustainable Technologies, Systems & Policies, and is co-editor of the forthcoming book “Recent Advances in Sustainable Process Design and Optimization.” He is also the recipient of multiple awards from the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP). He may be contacted via e-mail ([email protected].).