Many students are nowadays keen to complete a PhD and, although they clearly understand what is involved in doing the coursework component, starting a PhD thesis is typically a leap in the dark. This naturally leads to anxieties. While such a substantial project should not be taken lightly, and it cannot be denied that doing research is hard work and has inevitable frustrations, I believe that ...

Being a PhD student can be tough at times, but it is also very rewarding. Learning how to work through the tough times will be key to a prosperous PhD process. There are many things to keep track of, balance, learn, and remember. PhD students are knowledge creators, but at the same time also need to acquire knowledge. This paper walks through some aspects of the PhD process, with the intent to ...

T National Institutes of Health roadmap for medical research places great emphasis on translational medicine. Nonetheless, it remains a difficult proposition for PhD scientists trained to study intracellular and molecular mechanisms to appreciate the bigger picture of how their work relates to human systems biology. This difficulty is compounded by the disparate educational curricula that separ...

Although some piecemeal efforts have been made to investigate the validity and use of the Iranian PhD exam, no systematic project has been specifically carried out in this regard. The current study, hence, tried to attend to this void. As such, to ensure a balanced focus on test interpretation and test consequence, and to track evidence derived from a mixed–method study on the validity of Irani...

The goal of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide PhD students with an environment in which they can share and discuss their goals, methods and results before completing their research. Participants will be selected based on the quality of the proposed research, its potential significance and contribution to the OSS domain, and the potential benefit of the Doctoral Consortium to the PhD student...

PhD programs around the world include a variable amount of coursework. Using a curriculum design perspective, this paper explores the pros and cons of using different levels of coursework in PhD education. Inefficient management of coursework can jeopardize the quality of the PhD programs, since the students will be forced to devote less time to their research. On the contrary, coursework can a...