Panel

The panel discussion at the end of the PhD symposium provided the opportunity to students to ask questions about the PhD work and further employment opportunities.

One question was whether the inclusion of a demonstration into a PhD defense is a good idea. The mentors were a bit skeptical about this because the time for a PhD defense is usually quite restrictive so that the demonstration may take too much of it. Another point is that the main issue of a thesis are the theoretical concepts. A demonstration might give the impression that the focus has been too much on the implementation. In contrary, a well performed demonstration can ease the understanding of the work that has been performed. The decision on this has to be made dependent on the regulations at the university, time conditions, adviser preferences and the suitability of topic and demonstration.

The main issue of the following discussion was the choice of PhD students about their career paths after graduation, i.e. between academia and industry. The advantage of a position in academia that has been highlighted is the chance that you can select your research topic in contrast to the industry where your work is much dependent on the context of (e.g.) a current project. The mentors were referencing colleagues who are a bit frustrated about this over time. However, a disadvantage of academia is that when you do a straight path to it you do not have direct experience in the industry world which is considered as a disadvantage when preparing students for a start in an industry position.

Petr Tuma cited a Czech proverb which says that those people who do not know how to perform things (in reality) teach them. In general, there has been the advice that Post doc positions can be an interesting opportunity to seek for an interesting position later. Here, the duration has to be selected with care for which an advice of two years has been given by the mentors (especially not shorter). A student wanted to know whether the continuation of the PhD research topic is a good idea. The mentors are slightly opposed to this since the research field of the former student should not be to narrow. An exception can be when very valuable results are expected as outcome of this research.