Contribution to knowledge

These three words are what will ultimately decide whether or not you get awarded your PhD/EngD. In your final viva, your examiners will require you to prove that the work you have done as part of your postgraduate studies has made this much-vaunted contribution to knowledge. Undertaking training then on a piece of equipment, principally designed to solve an ‘industrial problem’, means you have to look for the academic angle. Perhaps the biggest danger associated with the EngD, an industrially based form of postgraduate study, is that you spend the four years “working” as opposed to researching. If you can’t demonstrate that you have produced some research, which importantly is translatable into other situations other than the specific firm under consideration, you won’t get your degree.

Whilst pursuing a particular project with your host company then, it is important to always consider if this could be considered ‘research’. Often, this simply involves a ‘re-dressing’ of what you’ve actually done, such that it could be written up as a conference/journal paper (thus meeting the criteria for a piece of research). Otherwise, it might be necessary to run an extension to what the company has asked you to do so as to meet your academic requirements. If you have good (academic) supervisors, they should make sure that you are meeting these criteria as you progress through your degree. Ultimately, you need to be a little selfish with what work you undertake at the host firm. That way, you make sure you can walk away with the qualification that has taken you four years to achieve.

This will be the final entry in my current spell as guest diarist. Uncharacteristically, I’m actually bothering to do something for bank holiday weekend so tomorrow I’m off to Edinburgh. Alles Gute.