Tales of a PhD advisor

A few years ago, I may have achieved a world record of sorts. 60 percent of the students in an advanced course that I was teaching requested me to become their PhD advisor. 

To put the numbers in perspective, the class just had 5 students. I was flattered and agreed to supervise all the 3 students who made the request. Two of these students continued working with me, and one later moved to the research group of my colleague, Soumen Maity. This month, both my students have successfully defended their thesis. Jewel Mahajan defended on the 1st of December, and I am posting this blog right after the conclusion of Jishu Das's defence. Jishu has been co-supervised along with my colleague, Baskar Balasubramanyam. So, as of today, I am a proud advisor of 4 PhD students.  May I exult in the joy for a few seconds and remind myself that in my field and at my career stage, this is a number to be reasonably proud of? 

My first two PhD students, Sudhir Pujahari and Neha Prabhu graduated in 2016 and 2017 respectively; they both hold faculty positions now, and are doing very well. Sudhir joined as a PhD student at IISER Kolkata, and later moved to IISER Pune with me; Neha joined me at Pune. Incidentally, Sudhir is the second Math PhD from IISER Pune. The first PhD from our department is Yasmeen Akhtar, who was supervised by Soumen Maity, and is now a faculty member at BITS Goa. 

As the year comes to an end, it feels great to reflect on my journey and experiences as a PhD advisor. The relationship between a PhD supervisor and students is one of the most important relationships in the academic journey, and also a fundamental component of how knowledge grows in a field. Several comparisons are made with other formative relationships in life, such as the parent-child relationship. 

My relationship with each of my students is unique. While I saw (and continue to see) each of them grow as mathematicians and human beings, it is equally true that they have seen me grow as well, both professionally and personally. My students found me at distinct stages; the person who advised Sudhir and Neha (Students 1 and 2) was very different from the person who advised Jewel and Jishu (Students 3 and 4). 

When Sudhir started working with me, I was six months into my first faculty position. Neha joined me a year or so after I moved to Pune. So, I was at an "early-career" stage when both of them started working with me. My early career years had their own set of struggles and anxieties. The key struggle was that I was experimenting with different ideas, and it took me some time to build a vision for my core research programme. I have written about this struggle here. In that sense, both Neha and Sudhir were fellow-adventurers, but the anxious part of me did indeed wonder once in a while if I had started supervising students too early on. Looking back today, these fears now appear unfounded. In fact, the success of a joint project with Neha helped us both to forge research paths to move ahead. 

By the time Jewel and Jishu started working with me, I had passed through the "early-career" stage. I had clear research goals in mind, and was determined to pursue them systematically and in a focused way for the next few years. That is why, even as the pandemic raged and I was only able to meet my students online, I never had any doubt that both will finish successfully. In the case of Jishu, Baskar and I were co-advisors, and Baskar is a walking encyclopaedia on the topic. On their part, despite the difficulties of pandemic-induced isolation, both the students displayed a remarkable amount of resourcefulness and sincerity. We got used to discussing ideas and questions over long emails (and occasionally, long WhatsApp and text messages as well, a practice that I now strongly discourage in my students; WhatsApp and text messages are best used only for urgent communication). They took full advantage of several international conferences and seminars being held online, notwithstanding the late night hours in Indian Standard Time. Like any research project, our projects also experienced some turbulence from time to time, but it only made us more determined and excited to finish them. My work with Jewel led to a long article on a topic that has been of great interest to me, and has now appeared in the Journal of Number Theory [in fact, writing this paper has been a valuable academic experience, and some day, I am going to write a blog post exclusively about it]. Jishu has multiple papers under review, but here's something that makes me happy and proud: Student 2, Neha initiated a nice research project with him and their article has now appeared in the Journal of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society. 

I would like share a few reflections about PhD supervision.

1) Student first.

Student supervision is not exactly smooth. Since I live in Pune, I can't help but compare supervision to driving on rough roads full of new speed breakers (which weren't there yesterday), not to mention the change in the entire landscape due to the ongoing metro construction. Roadblocks can either occur due to difficulties in the projects, and or due to a complete contrast in the personalities and priorities of the mentor and the mentee. Since mentees in this case are adults with minds of their own, there will likely be many situations of disagreement, or when the student just refuses to act as per the expectations of the advisor (or vice versa). When ego issues find their way into this mix (a perfectly human thing to happen), it is easy to forget the overriding goal, namely the training of the student.

The role of the guide is to train the student, make the student aware of opportunities and "advise" the student about issues to which they have limited exposure. The key goal is to initiate the student into the scientific journey. But, at the end of the day, it is an advisory relationship where the student may have a different path in mind or a different style of traveling from what the guide may have envisioned. For example, the student may not be so keen on the research project that the guide has suggested, but may have built collaborative networks for a different project. Is the guide to be like a nagging/overbearing parent who insists that the student do everything exactly as they want? Or, is the chief guiding principle to be what is best for the student so that they get a degree and move on in life? 

The "nagging/overbearing" persona does have its advantages occasionally: it has to be turned on when the student is procrastinating before submitting something, not compiling their thesis in an acceptable format, or when their idea of preparing conference talks is to copy their papers onto slides (this is a perfectly natural thing to do for someone speaking on their work for the first time). How much and on what matters the guide is to persist depends on the situation at hand (will the student lose their fellowship or visa status if a document is not submitted on time?) and the level of awareness in the student (is the student mindful of the consequences of not submitting something on time, or not doing something carefully?) 

But, as a guide, the most important skill to practise is to tailor our reactions based on what is best for the student, namely that they get their degree along with the skills and expertise to move on. This is similar to dealing with the bumps, debris and traffic on Pune roads by remembering how our roads and public transport will eventually transform when the metro is fully operational. To carry the analogy further, do we want the PhD journey of a student to be like the metro (making progress and transforming Pune, day by day), like the failed BRTS project (took off, and then stalled), or even worse, the "proposed" Pune airport project at Purandar (which never seems to take off, even as multiple cities in India of all tiers get their own airports)?

2) Growing together.

The relationship between a mentor and mentee is that of synergy. We work towards a common goal, build ideas together and bring complementary skills into a project. The outcome is as significant for the student as it is for the advisor, even though the consequences for the student may be more evident. Every project that I have finished with a student initiates the student into a new research theme and questions that they may choose to focus on in their initial days before eventually developing their own vision. But, it also adds a new dimension to my own research programme. Many colleagues and friends assign a PhD problem to their student independent of their own research goals, and let the student take it forward on their own with some guidance. Perhaps, I may do this in the future. But, at this time, I find myself heavily invested in the projects of each of my students; I assign problems to my students that I've been thinking about myself. These problems have been of great importance and relevance to my core research programme. At a deeply personal level, each successful project that leads to a PhD not only opens a path for the student, but also renews my faith in larger goals. As such, we both become a part of each other's journey of growth.

3) Sincerity and mental flexibility matter the most.

All my students have very different personalities. Each has their defining strength, and looking back, I can now see how the specific strength of each student is demonstrated in their work. Each student also has their own struggles, and I have faced unique challenges in each relationship. Some students may demonstrate more creativity in their work. Some are willing to jump right into a problem, while others may need a little prodding in this direction. Some are extremely thorough with each aspect of their writing, while some like to get their work out as quickly as possible, and have to be gently encouraged to put more care into proofreading. Sometimes, the same student is very thoughtful while writing a paper, but not so while preparing a talk, or vice versa. Some can work on multiple aspects of a project at the same time, while some do much better focusing on one part at a time. 

So, the other day,  I tried to "rank" what qualities or strengths are most desirable in a student, or what "weaknesses" are the "least desirable". I could only come up with one conclusion: as long as the student is sincere about their work, has the flexibility to accept feedback and believes the guide to be squarely on their side, every attribute falls into place. 

Sincerity in both the guide and the student is a vital part of the PhD journey. The student's sincerity manifests in their willingness to work, and the guide's sincerity manifests in them contributing wholeheartedly to the student's growth. This makes the interaction meaningful, pleasant and forward-looking, even with all the personality foibles. A trust develops that has the potential of surviving (and even flowering) through the years ahead. 

In essence, what made each advisory relationship successful was the love for mathematics in each student and the fundamental willingness of each student to work hard and improve themselves through feedback. My eldest two students are now my friends: I feel happy when they make an effort to keep me updated about their professional journeys or when they reach out for advice. I have received valuable advice from them as well. Now that the youngest two have graduated, I hope that they will also see me as their lifelong cheerleader and well-wisher. Further, with every new student I supervise, I hope to become a better mathematician and a better human being.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan: an inspiring PhD story

We know Harivansh Rai Bachchan to be among the most distinguished and prolific poets in the 20th century.  Although he primarily wrote in Hindi, his formal academic training was in English literature, and he served as a faculty member in the Department of English at Allahabad University for several years.  He had a rich, multifaceted and eventful life, which he documents in his four-volume autobiography. The first volume describes his family, early life in Allahabad, his student days, and culminates in the passing away of his wife, Shyama ji, who succumbed to tuberculosis at a very young age.  In the second volume, he describes his further training and search for stability in his professional and personal life, meeting Teji Bachchan and starting a new life with her.  This volume essentially concludes with him getting a regular faculty position at the Allahabad University.  The third volume is the motivation behind this blog post: it covers the period in his life when he travels to Cambridge as a visiting student to pursue a deeper study of the poet William Butler Yeats, and stays on to obtain a PhD, becoming the second Indian (after Balachandra Rajan) to obtain a doctorate in English literature at Cambridge University [0]. In the fourth volume, he narrates his life after quitting academia, his move to Delhi to join the Ministry of External Affairs, and further developments as his children grow up. I am only a few pages into this volume, and have not been able to immerse myself fully into it.

A common theme in the first three volumes is that of the nearly continuous stream of struggles and upheavals in his life, and how he faced them with resilience and tremendous self-discipline.  He shares his emotional journey with candour, and does not hesitate in letting us see (and feel) his vulnerabilities as he deals with bereavement, career struggles, unexpected disappointments, rejections and failures. Poetry enthusiasts will appreciate his attempts to describe his creative thought process, and to explain some of his poems in the context of his life events at the time of composition.  

The third volume, "Basere Se Door" describes his PhD story, and offers us much to reflect upon and learn.  Many aspects of his journey mirror issues and situations that we think about and live through in academia.  This includes figuring out our academic goals (on our own, even if they are starkly different from that of our peers), taking steps to fulfil them (often involving life-changing decisions), staying focused on research while also dealing with anxieties due to not having job-certainty for long periods of time, balancing a feeling of contentment with a desire for growth in the phase when certainty arrives, the willingness to see oneself as a student all through our lives, and the mental flexibility to make tough choices if our perspective towards academia changes or if academia can no longer meet our needs. 

After finishing his Master's, he spent nearly 10 years holding temporary academic positions, including that of a high school teacher, research scholar and short term lecturer. After 10 years of uncertainty in his professional life, he obtained a regular position as a lecturer in the Department of English literature at Allahabad University in 1941.  Although he experienced a feeling of contentment after obtaining this position, he simultaneously encountered the common acquaintance of almost every academic: the impostor syndrome.  He was sensitive to gossip around him about a Hindi poet being at an English department [I suppose multidisciplinary skills weren't valued much in those days].  As was his usual tendency, in response, he devoted an unusually high amount of time and energy on his teaching assignments. [1]  

 While he grew into his role as a teacher, he also observed the academic atmosphere in the university, and reflected upon what career progression meant to people there. Why is seniority relevant in the context of university, he wondered.  Can intellectual growth be measured by a wall calendar? The mind expands or shrinks according to the work that it engages in. He felt that research and self-study demonstrated in a concrete form through scholarly publications should be used as a parameter for progression as opposed to counting age, in order to prevent stagnation of the mind.  

"Admittedly, it is difficult to determine criteria to evaluate intellectual ability, but if universities don't make an effort to do this, who will?"

[Basere Se Door, Page 23, 2013 edition, Rajpal and Sons (The translation is mine, and I apologise for any deficiencies.  I don't have access to the English translation of his autobiography.)]

His observations proved to be prescient.  Despite being a meeting ground for intellectual giants in all fields in pre-independence and early independence days, Allahabad University lost its eminence over the next few decades (as did many of our older universities), mired in bureaucracy and unhelpful policies that did not nurture academic growth. 

Harivansh Rai Bachchan spent the next 11 years teaching at the university, and describes these years as those of good health, professional stability and personal contentment.  He raised his children, and spent time in study and creative writing, but stayed away from formal movements taking place in the Hindi poetry world. But, instead of settling down into complacency, his mind was agile, and open to opportunities to learn and grow. Therefore, at the end of 1951, when the British Council announced some travel support for faculty members to spend six months at a British university, he decided to apply.  He revived a research project that he had initiated several years ago on the work of William Butler Yeats.  Putting his plan into action was not easy: after receiving invitations to spend a few semesters at both Cambridge and Oxford and getting a sabbatical from AU, he had to arrange for finances for a 15-month stay in England.  This required negotiations with publishing houses who published his poetry, and dipping into family savings, but he received whole hearted support from his wife in his plans [2].  When he did not get any reply from the education ministry to his application for financial support, she encouraged him to write straight to the Prime Minister.  Pandit Nehru not only gave him an appointment, but also immediately approved the entire amount that was required.  Meanwhile, the British Council did not approve his application for traveling expenses, and he had to make those arrangements on his own.  Finally, in April 1952, at the age of 45, this professor with a permanent academic position left his secure establishment in Allahabad, and flew to England to become a student again.  I was personally quite inspired by this episode in his life, because it teaches us to not let age or complacency come in the way of our intellectual goals. 

At the time of his voyage, Mr. Bachchan had not made any plans for pursuing a doctorate. His plan was to explore some questions about the work of Yeats while spending six months in Cambridge, followed by nine months in Oxford.  At Cambridge, he met Professor Thomas Rice Henn, who agreed to supervise his work, and gave him access to all his collected books.  He writes about his daily schedule:

"I would go to the university library after breakfast, and study there until 1.30 pm.  After a light lunch, I would go to Mr. Henn's office, and study until 6 pm.  Often, he would drop in during that time, with questions and suggestions about my reading.  After dinner, I would either attend a seminar, take a walk, or enjoy theatre or cinema.  After that, I spent several hours reading anthologies of modern English poetry, making journal entries or writing letters before going to sleep."

In Henn, he found a hands-on advisor who provided him the necessary guidance and resources for his project.  Naturally, with the progress that he made on the project, he started to consider the possibility of staying on at Cambridge and expanding his work into a doctoral thesis.  He was encouraged by a friend, Vishwanath Dutt to follow this plan.  Henn enthusiastically agreed, but explained that since Bachchan had only two years, he would have to formally register for a Master's in Literature, and write a thesis: if the degree committee found the thesis and his performance in the viva strong enough (and this would be exceedingly hard), they would consider the thesis for the award of a Ph.D.  With the further support of his wife, therefore, he registered for an M. Litt. and started working on his thesis.  

His doctoral studies started full steam.  His description of Henn as an advisor is touching: Henn met and guided him regularly, kept his project goals on track, gave him feedback on his writing (this included approving thesis chapters which contained a point of view very different from that of Henn, as long as they were supported by literary evidence and proper analysis), and often invited him home for meals and long discussions.  He was also sensitive to Bachchan's mental anxieties on account of his family in India (especially the financial and other hardships that his wife was facing bravely on her own [3]).  

As part of his thesis preparation, Bachchan also visited Ireland to meet Mrs. Yeats and other people associated with Yeats.  They met him graciously, and answered all his questions. He describes a heart-warming episode at the end of his stay in Ireland, when he invited Mrs. Yeats and some others for a farewell dinner.  After dinner, the hotel manager refused to accept any payment for the dinner gathering, because he was a guest of Ireland.  Bachchan suspected that Mrs. Yeats had secretly paid the hotel bill herself, so as not to strain the finances of a struggling PhD student. 

The book is full of such incidents and many others, which tell us about the importance of deep and regular work for a thesis, staying focused [4], good mentorship and a support network of peers from graduate school. His housemate was a statistics student by the name of Ranvir Singh Bawa, who taught him how to live with minimal expenditure, and supported him emotionally through good and bad times.  

One of the most exciting parts of the book is the period after his thesis submission in 1954. He prepared thoroughly for his viva.  Although Henn had advised him to focus on his research work and not get distracted by anxiety about results,  Bachchan was conscious of what was at stake.  He had heard scary dissertation stories.  Would they tear the thesis into bits during the viva, he wondered. Would he be able to answer all their questions? During the four-hour long viva, he desperately searched for hints about what the committee thought of his work, but all members maintained the proverbial British "stony face" during the proceedings.  Post viva, in which he thought he did well, he had to wait for a few weeks before the final decision of the committee.  Finally, on the day the results were declared, he walked with Bawa to the main office.  It was Bawa who had the first look at the notice board, and confirmed that the 47-year old Bachchan had indeed received a Ph.D.  His instant reaction was the same as that of his wife when she got the good news later, "Izzat Reh Gayi." [5]

Dr. Bachchan's life was full of interesting contradictions: on the one hand, he was unable to afford a gown for convocation.  On the other hand, when he returned to India, he was welcomed and hosted by the families of some of the richest industrialists of India.  He returned a happy, content and confident man to Allahabad, and rejoined the university with renewed hope.

But, the biggest "anti-climax" was yet to happen.  Instead of appreciation from his colleagues for his academic accomplishment, he had to face jealousy at the work place.  The university could no longer give him the work satisfaction and intellectual stimulation he was hoping for, and he was disappointed by the toxic reactions to him.  And so it was that one of India's greatest poets, and a knowledgeable English lecturer who had achieved a nearly impossible academic feat decided to quit academia.  He was invited by Pandit Nehru to join the Ministry of External Affairs as an expert who would supervise the translation of all documents and communication of MEA into Hindi, and to introduce new initiatives to promote the use of Hindi at the work place [6].  

It was with a heavy heart that he left Allahabad with his family, after having spent nearly all his life there.  After devoting years to scholarship and teaching, he moved into an entirely different sphere of bureaucrats.  This, he realized, was what would make him happy at that point of time, and he did not hesitate to change course.  This also makes us reflect upon the deterioration in the work culture at universities in India in those days, and how they lost several bright minds as a result. 

One final thought: it requires great integrity to accept and appreciate the academic accomplishments of others, and great clarity of vision to support and nurture such talent.

[0] There seems to be some ambiguity about this. Some online portals mention that Harivansh Rai Bachchan was the first Indian to obtain a PhD in English literature from Cambridge University.  But, in his book, Mr. Bachchan mentions that his friend who encouraged him to try and obtain a PhD gave him the example of B. Rajan as the only person from India until then to have obtained a PhD in this subject from Cambridge.

[1] He also consciously underplayed his identity as a poet in the university.  He insisted that his students address him as Mr. Harivansh Rai, and not Mr. Bachchan (or Bachchan ji).  He mentions his conscious efforts to dress, walk and behave "like a lecturer of English".   

[2] In the book, he expresses his gratitude to her on several occasions: she was a remarkable woman who braved anxiety and unpleasant situations in Allahabad in his absence, but provided unconditional support to him in all his academic plans.  

[3] He describes a rare occasion when Professor Henn flew into a temper.  One morning, Mr, Bachchan was excited to see a frozen lake for the first time, and walked over it to come to office.  When Henn heard this, he got extremely upset at this irresponsible and dangerous act, and questioned Bachchan about how his family would cope if something happened to him. Bachchan was grateful for the concern. 

[4] which is undoubtedly hard while also facing financial pressures.  Pandit Nehru, who had been generous in the beginning, refused his request for further support: apparently, some colleagues of Bachchan had spread malicious rumours about him. Bachchan had to further dig into family savings to finance his doctoral study.  Today, PhD students receive their fellowship as part of well structured schemes, but one cannot help thinking about students in India who routinely do not receive their fellowships on time, and battle disappointments and anxieties on this account. 

[5] Hard to share the sentiment in translation.  Roughly, they are both relieved at not having to "lose face".  

[6] This, in itself, was a difficult task, as he had to contend with contemptuous English-speaking civil servants.  His experience at the ministry, and later life is described in Volume 4.  

More on student interviews

Mathematics @ IISER Pune is all set to start an Integrated PhD programme in the coming autumn semester. We finished interviewing candidates for this programme today. Sharing some thoughts from being a part of this process:

1)   We interviewed candidates shortlisted through the NBHM entrance exams and/or the JAM exam (jointly conducted by IISc and IITs for admission into their MSc/Int. PhD programmes). The candidates were either in their final year of undergraduate proramme or had finished it last year.  When we asked the latter what they did in the last one year, many mentioned that they took coaching for JAM exam. I was very surprised that there now exist coaching institutes for MSc entrance exams! When we asked why they did not instead register for an MSc at their university, they mentioned that their university marks were lower than the cutoff and JAM coaching offered a better alternative.

2)   There were a couple of colleges (not the famous, elite ones, but those which would be ranked from middle to low at their respective universities) from where multiple students showed up. These students did very well at the interviews and displayed high levels of motivation. Seeing the enthusiasm of these students, it looks like some faculty at these colleges are definitely doing the right things (which possibly include identifying bright students, training/counseling them, informing them about available opportunities and organizing lectures by eminent mathematicians which would spark their interest.)

3)   I still have the concern mentioned before that there could be students who are very good, but cannot perform optimally at interviews due to nervousness, a wrong set of questions [although we made every possible effort to give them a fair chance based on their preparation] or other factors. I wish the selection process could be modified to minimize such cases (so that we don’t lose out students with potential), but have no idea how.

4)   If Indian institutes ever feel the need to organize faculty orientation programmes analogous to North American universities, these should include a session on conducting all kinds of student interviews.  We do this frequently (for example, KVPY, PhD, Int PhD etc) but even with the best of intentions, have no idea how hurtful or intimidating our behavior as interviewers can be to students.

The young supervisors

My former advisor Professor Ram Murty is visiting IISER Pune.  While he was waiting in front of the coffee machine, a cleaning staff member helpfully asked him if he was here for a PhD interview (he has probably been given directions to do so to any unrecognizable person as our Main Building is full of PhD aspirants nowadays).  After he started laughing, the cleaning person apologized and withdrew.  Prof. Murty later said to me, “Maybe life is giving me another chance to do a PhD. This time, you become my advisor.” Later, my student joined us and we took him to a room where we asked him a lot of questions that kept him on the board for 4+ hours.  This happens to be the room where we interview our PhD candidates – so, the jokes continued!

On a more serious note, he mentioned that he started supervising his first PhD student almost 10 years after finishing his PhD.  From what I hear, in USA and Canada, faculty members usually don’t take students until they get tenured, nor are they expected to.   Supervision of multiple students happens at an even later stage.  On the other hand, in India (at least at research and teaching institutions), faculty members seem to start supervising much earlier in their careers.  This is especially true for new institutes, which by default mostly get very young faculty and which have to build a PhD programme.  At some of the new institutes, especially new IITs, even people with contractual appointments have started working with students.  It is highly likely that the contractual appointments will be made permanent, but what is remarkable here is that these members are less than three years past their PhD. 

Questions for readers:

1)   Is it a good sign that the demand for PhD in India is as high as to require faculty to start supervising at a relatively younger age? Or is it something to worry about?

2)   I am of course thinking from a Mathematics-centric viewpoint.  Perhaps, it is more common in the experimental fields to start supervising at a much earlier age and in much larger numbers.  If you are an academic, what is the trend in your field at your institute or university?

3)   This also raises another question.  How important are students for your research programme?  Again, observing my experimental colleagues, it seems they really want to take students to work on their projects.  Am I mistaken?

PhD selection via interviews

This is the season of PhD admissions.  A lot of Indian institutes are conducting interviews for their PhD as well as Integrated PhD programmes and I regularly meet exhausted colleagues at the lunch table discussing how many students they have met since morning. 

I have often wondered about the method of selecting candidates at Indian institutes.  As a new faculty member in 2010, I naively believed that we should also follow a system similar to North American universities: rate candidates  “in a wholesome manner” by the NET/NBHM scores, university exam scores, statement of purpose and reference letters.  As is now obvious to me, there are at least three problems with this:

1)   We all know how reliable university exam scores are. 

2)   The concept of writing an SOP confuses most students, (who don’t get adequate guidance from their college/university professors.)  At IISER Kolkata, we used to ask students to submit a write up about their mathematical interests.  Most students would end up writing this at the reception in a very shaky handwriting while waiting for their interview call.  The others, who had written the statement at home, simply copied passages from famous books of G.H. Hardy, Paul Halmos etc.

3)   Reference letters also did not usually help.  Sometimes, we got very weak students with glowing reference letters.  On a couple of occasions, we had some students who answered a lot of questions very well, but had poor letters!  In some cases, the college lecturers thought reference letters were character certificates!  [Note: writing reference letters is a bit of a hassle because even in the age of email, most of our institutes (including the elite ones) do not accept letters online and ask students to get letters from their referees in signed and sealed envelopes.]

 In the given circumstances, interview seems to be the most suitable option in choosing candidates.  The reference letters and the SOP that the student brings along hardly play any role in the selection process and even the mark sheets are sought purely for official purposes.

 I have the following concerns about the interview procedure: 

a)    A lot of students get nervous and anxious during interviews.  They need a little more time to open up and feel comfortable.  Come to think of it: a nervous student enters a room full of stern-looking faculty members [1](the number could be anything between 4 and 8!) who hand him a chalk and ask him to start solving questions on the board.  There’s a good chance that this student is writing on a board for the first time.  The student may have difficulty understanding what a member is asking or may not be able to answer a particular question.  This makes him or her more nervous and as the rest of panel (with the best of intentions) starts giving hints to this student, the student loses the ability to focus on the problem and think straight.  Often, a friendly and more experienced faculty member is able to make the student feel comfortable.  At IISER Kolkata, we once had a student who suddenly started panicking and sweating.  One of the interviewers made him relax for a bit and asked him about his favourite actor.  This student brightened up as soon as the discussion veered to Shah Rukh Khan.  Next thing we knew, he was back on his feet and performed very well in the rest of the interview.  So, this problem is mitigated to some extent by friendly faculty members who can question students without intimidating them.

b)   Because of the above reason, some students require more time than the others.  So, it is difficult to stick to the same time period for all students.  But, there is an administrative issue that interviewing a student for x minutes and another one for x+10 minutes could potentially lead to questioning from students (or their parents!) and even RTI enquiries!! 

c)    In order for an interview to be effective, the questions have to be well thought out.  Sometimes panel members can ask questions which may be too hard or inappropriate for the interview.  Answering such questions may not necessarily reflect the abilities one is looking for.  I once heard of an incident in which a faculty member asked the student to state and prove a highly nontrivial theorem.  The student was unable to do so.  When others discreetly told this member that this question might be too hard, he staged a walkout in front of a nonplussed student.  On one occasion, when I was in a panel and was asking a simple question about convergence of sequences, another interviewer openly snubbed me and insisted that we ask “real” questions (which in his worldview meant questions about solving differential equations!)  As you can imagine, I had to exercise extreme self-restraint to not retort [2].   Interviews cannot possibly be of any use if they turn into pedantic discussions (or wars) among faculty about what is important and what is not.

Perhaps these problems are not very serious and can be avoided if faculty with a serious interest in the quality of PhD students come together and design the interview procedure properly.  If a sufficient number of faculty members volunteer, the interview panel can be carefully chosen to reflect all the foundational areas that the student needs to be tested on. 

I recently heard of an interesting initiative at IISER Bhopal.  They organized a workshop for a couple of weeks in which students attended lectures on topics that were well represented in the Mathematics group there.  This workshop was followed by interviewing interested participants for the Integrated PhD programme.  This not only introduced the students to the research specialties of the group, but also enabled them to interact with the faculty and feel comfortable during the interview. This helped IISERB to attract some strong and interested students in this programme.

Questions for blogosphere: do you think fine tuning the interview procedure would be a good way of selecting students? Or do you have other ideas?

[1] Despite our best efforts, I think Mathematics faculty end up looking stern most of the time :)  
[2] Even though I don’t dispute the importance of solving differential equations.

Student desertion

Yesterday, I heard the most peculiar conversation between two people.  One of them, it seems, had either moved jobs or left his job or perhaps retired- it was not exactly clear.  The other person asked him what happened to his PhD students at his former institute.  This person shrugged and replied, “I don’t know.  They probably found someone else.”

His response made me wonder about the responsibilities of advisors towards students.  Should they not even attempt to make alternative arrangements for their PhD students if and when they move?  In a lot of cases that involve moving to a new institute, the student moves with the advisor.  This requires a considerable amount of paperwork if the student has a CSIR fellowship.  The new institute may have additional requirements for the PhD programme.  But, these things can be managed.

If it is not possible to move, the student works with someone else at the same institute.  In some cases, the new advisor also has similar research interests, or the PhD supervision is done jointly with the former advisor so that the student can continue to work on the same project.  But, I am also aware of many cases where students had to significantly change their research plans.  Nonetheless, usually, students are not left out in the cold and alternate arrangements are made with active involvement from the former advisor. 

One would hope the students of the person mentioned above were able to move to a new advisor and their programme was not disturbed too much.

But, his cavalier response made me wonder: If an advisor leaves, who is responsible for their PhD students? The advisor or the institute?

The wake up call

[Received an email yesterday and am producing it here with the writer's permission.]

Hi,

I went to some links from your weekend reading list and found a post by Xykademiqz very interesting.  It brought back some memories.

I was a PhD student in a computational field in the late 1990s.  My advisor's lab was in the process of getting new computers.  This left several huge desks unoccupied for a few weeks. One day, during an extended weekend, I dutifully went to the lab and started playing Solitaire.  I don’t know what came over me, but before I knew it, I had climbed on one of those inviting, big desks and dozed off.  Much to my shock, my advisor also decided to come in that day and I woke up to find her staring at me.  She was visibly upset, but didn’t say much and simply asked me about a manuscript that we were working on.  I quickly printed out a rough draft of about 25 pages.  The manuscript had a mistake in the first sentence itself  - she took a quick look and immediately tossed it into a recycle bin.  “I would like to see a version which was written while you were awake,” she said. 

Although I did feel guilty at being caught in a “compromised” position, I felt hurt that she threw away the whole manuscript due to one mistake. 

“How dare she insult me? I will make her regret this.”

“So what if I was caught napping. At least, I showed up on a holiday.”

"Maybe I was unwell. She didn't even bother asking."

I walked out burning in shame and anger and cursed her (in my mind) for not recognizing and appreciating the genius I was. I did not speak to her for the next few days, not that she was bothered. I resolved to work again on the manuscript and show her a perfect version the next time.  I also thought I would tell her how much her acerbic remarks had hurt me and would demand an apology. 

As I started going through the paper, I realized that it was full of serious mistakes: it did, in fact, look like the work of a half-asleep mind.  This was a wake-up call.  All these days, I had thought of myself as this super-intelligent and perfect person who would soon dazzle the world with great discoveries.  I had been careless in writing things up and did not bother to proof read, delegating that task to her!  But, she made it absolutely clear that she would not look at it unless I did a professional job with it.  I jumped into it with complete seriousness this time.  I wrote and rewrote all the new results in as clear a manner I could, rearranged the data from top to bottom, did a proper literature survey and placed the work in the right context. I went through the sections time and again to detect any error, technical or typographical. 

After a month, the paper was ready to be shown to her.  By then, I had given up all thoughts of demanding any apology.  I started feeling a bit obliged for the timely wake up call.  This time, her reaction to the paper was completely different.  She appreciated the work, praised it during the next lab meeting and suggested immediate submission with me as the single author.

It is my proudest moment, ever.