Select something you are interested in University of Strathclyde
- AlastairUnited Kingdom
- University Of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
- PhD in Computer Science
If you are considering a Phd, I would advise that firstly you make sure that the topic is something you are interested in. Speak with your potential supervisor and colleagues and just try to get a good idea what life is like in your department.
My main funding for my course comes from a departmental scholarship, which covers my fees and gives me a stipend to live on. I supplement my income by doing various tasks within the department.
My PhD in computer science entails looking for new techniques to solve large constrained combinatorial problems. I spend most of my time running experiments to test out ideas, reading about current developments and writing papers for work shops and conferences. The field itself is very exciting as there are still a lot of large unanswered questions to be tackled, and there is plenty of scope for doing original and innovative work. I have not started writing my thesis yet but it is likely to be about using the structure of constrained problems to aid in their solution.
As I was approaching the end of my undergraduate degree I felt far from finishing my studies, in fact I felt that I was just about to start. I had many lecturers who got you excited about their subjects and I wanted the chance to do that some day.