Blog: Life as a Distributed Algorithms PhD CDT Student
Considering applying for a PhD with us? Want a glimpse into the life of a Distributed Algorithms student?
Deciding on pursuing a PhD can be a huge and life changing decision, after all, you are set to commit to four years of research! Given this, we thought we would lay out a ‘day in the life’ of some of our current PhD students.
All of our PhD students work within a cohort environment. This means: -
- They work alongside other PhD students, all working towards achieving the vision of Distributed Algorithms
- They come to work each day and can share a space with their fellow PhD students and post docs
- They attend meetings on a weekly basis with the CDT
- They attend regular sub-group meetings; sharing ideas, research updates and ask questions and queries to help them with their projects
- They attend regular meetings with both their academic and industrial supervisors
- They participate in 'mini projects' assisting with their overall aims and professional development
- They take part in group training, with organisations such as STFC Hartree and the Alan Turing Institute.
- They undertake specialist technical training, such as Stan (open source software for statistics)
- They attend regular social events with the wider CDT team (including researchers within the Signal Processing Group)
Background
This CDT arose from a proposal from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Distributed Algorithms. The two main themes were: -
- Towards a Data Driven Future and;
- Future Computing Systems.
Therefore, all of our PhD projects - and there are now 30 of them - have these two main themes running through them. Unlike many other CDT’s, the projects here are co-defined and co-supervised with businesses from industry, with the likes of IBM, Dstl, GCHQ, and Unilever (to name but a few – see the full list of our partners here).
A Day in the Life of a PhD Student
So, what does a day in the life of a PhD student, here at the Distributed Algorithms CDT, look like?
Student Snippets
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Adam’s day looks like…
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Ben’s day consists of… Lots of coding! Take a walk for some fresh perspective/clear head. Attend team meetings or conferences if they are on.
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Panagiotis’s organises his day like so… Read the day's calendar to prepare for any meetings. Read and write stuff that can help me from other papers, researchers, blogs or articles. Implementing stuff, from the above! |
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Matthew’s daily plan… Mornings involve a coffee and planning tasks to complete throughout the day. Write code to solve a given task, often distributed on the Universities HTCondor pool or HPC facility, called Barkla. Writing progress reports and papers. Socialising and discussing ideas with other researchers.
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Kostas’s day is planned like … Connect to both Bede and Barkla which are the supercomputers in Durham and Liverpool and open my Jupyter notebooks. I watch my network's loss curves in Tensorboard a bit too much! Every Friday I usually go to the pub for a beer and occasionally I ask Theo for his math expertise! |
Efthyvoulos’s day is divided like so…. Wake up as early as possible and make iced coffee (double Freddo espresso specifically!!) Check my calendar for the day’s meetings. Divide my day to work on my task - including team projects, brainstorming, coding, or creating a powerpoint. Take regular 5-minute breaks away from the screen. |
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Marco’s day looks like this… Get a cappuccino to start my day |
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Meet all of our students here!
As you can see from our student snippets, no two days are quite the same, but a common theme running through, is that they’re motivated and plan their days suited to their working styles. Our students’ stories will also give you an idea of the type of work and tasks that you will undertake as PhD student. If you would like more of an overview of life as PhD student, there is a really useful article over on FindaPhD’s blog.
Why Choose the Distributed Algorithms CDT?
Further links & reading
DA CDT Website – review our research programme and the people we work with!
DA CDT PhD Projects in Progress – what type of projects are our current students working on?
DA CDT News – what have out students and researchers been up too?