PhD Proposal Advice

I wrote back in January that I had chosen a topic for my PhD. I was tired of my Master's projectand ready to move on. So by March I had written a first draft of my PhD proposal.

During this process my advisor has been very good at moving into the mentoring role - something I realize can often be lacking in student/professor relationships. So what has his advice been?

Earlier this year, I had a really good discussion with my advisor on how to choose a PhD topic, and what the focus of your proposal should be. His points were that you should pick a project that:

1) You are good at

2) Nobody else has done

3) People will care about when you finish

4) Has funding (or can get funding)

5) Has enough depth so that you can work on it for a couple years

6) Ties into the other projects currently under way in the lab

I thought that was a pretty good list. I was surprised that his primary point was that it should be a project that plays to my strengths - I thought the "funding" point or the "people will care" would have been ahead of that. But I'm not arguing. :) So I was thinking to myself, have I managed to do all this?

As a reminder, I have decided to build a machine that puts tiny, precise conductive features onto plastic chips. I was originally planning to put metal onto the plastic chips, but I've had the idea to try conductive polymers as well.

1) You are good at

I'm good at building things, and I ENJOY it. My specialties are machine design and control systems. I built a machine to make plastic chips for my Master's project. I was worried that it wouldn't be advanced or fancy enough to build something for a PhD. I had a conversation with my advisor about this as well. Most of the PhD theses I have seen are on theory, not so much application. So I asked, is there a way I can actually BUILD something for a PhD? My advisor chuckled and said yes, there is. It's just that most people don't like/can't actually build real things. What makes it a PhD-level project, he said, is that you have the theory to explain WHY the thing you build works. You can't just say, "Ta-da, this works. Once." You have to understand the fundamentals.

Okay. I can do fundamental theory, and THEN build something. My proposal is to design, build, and control a machine that puts tiny conductive features onto plastic chips. Actually I've read papers where people have tried this before by various methods, but they were biologists trying it by hand without a machine. It didn't work. That's because you can't do things at the micron scale manually. :) This is an area where I'm doing what I'm good at.

Check!

2) Nobody else has done

People have actually tried to put metal onto microfluidics before, but the only ways that have been successful have been very expensive and slow. Any time someone tried a cheap/fast way, it didn't work because it wasn't precise enough. But I think a good machine design and robust control scheme could fix that - so in this case, nobody else has done it YET. Let the MechE girl take a crack at it.

And actually, people have done what I want to try (inkjet printing and microcontact printing), but NOT IN MY FIELD. They do it for organic LEDs, flat screen displays, and solar cells. So that gives me hope - the concept does work. This is actually a common way people come up with great ideas - I'm taking something that works in one field, and applying it in a new way to a different problem.

Just call me Einstein.

3) People will care about when you finish

I was worried about this one - so I have really tried to reach out to people in industry to see what their needs are. I have gotten consistent feedback from many places that yes, the "putting metal onto the chip" problem is a major hang-up. I talked to a start-up here locally that is launching a company whose product is a small plastic microfluidic chip with metal on it. Turns out they had a bugger of a time getting their chip to work, and the problems were mostly related to manufacturing. They got so excited about my work (both the machine I already built, and the machine I plan to build) that they very nearly handed me a job offer. I've also had people from Singapore contacting me to ask where they can buy the machine I built for my Master's. I gave them a copy of my thesis, and had to tell them unfortunately it's a one-of-a-kind in the world.

Because my expertise is on making the chip, not using the chip, I also talked to a bunch of chemists and biologists who actually use these chips. They told me the same thing. One researcher here at World's Best School actually told me, "If you could build a machine that does this, it would be transformative."

That's what I like to hear - transformative.

4) Has funding (or can get funding)

Check. I have funding to work on microfluidics all the way to the end of the PhD.

5) Has enough depth so that you can work on it for a couple years

Here I think the key is that I am really looking into two things - the manufacturing process (with the associated design and fabrication of a machine to carry out that manufacturing process), and the material (using conductive polymer instead of metal). I am combining a novel manufacturing process with a novel material, using a novel machine, in a novel field. That's enough to last me a year or two... Also the knowledge I generate by solving all those issues will be applicable to broader fields than just my own sub-field, which is useful. A PhD should contribute some general findings to truly have an impact.

Planning to attack several areas should also get me some papers along the way. Never a bad thing.

6) Ties into the other projects currently under way in the lab

Remember how I mentioned that the manufacturing processes I want to try (inkjet and microcontact printing) are currently used in other fields? Such as solar cells? Well the two newest students in the lab have funding to research continuous microcontact printing of solar cells. So the work I do to put metal onto single chips will tie into their work with putting metal onto long rolls of solar cell material. And whatever they learn about alignment issues, I can put to use in my machine design.

My advisor is especially pleased about this. It's a great thing for a PI to have interlinked projects that can feed off each other.

So let the PhD begin!