3rd year PhD student here. I'm from Streeling University doing research in Pyschohistory. Working on a statistical predictive analysis on collective human behavior based on specific events. I should be coming out with my probability set soon enough.

Streeling University.

Haha. Okay, I'm done pulling your leg here. Streeling University is a fictional institute in The Foundation Series from Isaac Asimov. So is psychohistory.

I am a 3rd year PhD student for real though. Monah University (Sunway branch), dealing with a semantic form of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping based on Tamura Textures.

It's boring s--t, though. I totally wish I really could do Psychohistory.

Didn't turn out like how I planned, anyways. Sorry about that.

Anyway, for spikyz. You're not alone in feeling dumb and stupid. I felt that for the whole 3 years I've been here. And since my supervisor isn't one of the more "popular" ones around here, I've been doing my research all by myself as well. The rest of my PhD colleagues get to confer with each other once in a while.

God, I totally wish doing a PhD would get me chicks. Maybe if I did my research in The Mystery Method, maybe.

With a Masters, you'd most likely improve your chances at employment, but doing a PhD pretty much means you'll be either in the academic or research line. You'd be overqualified for a "regular" job in the corporate sector, and it would have been a waste of time doing a doctorate anyways.

Doing my PhD cause I absolutely love lecturing. Hate research though, but that *might* change once I graduate and get to research on what I like, rather than just choosing the best out of a very limited pool.

Plus, I like waking up at whatever time I like. And the student life.

Sorry for the typo. Yeap, Monash Uni.

Autonomous mobile robots. Dealing only with the software side though. I'm coding with MATLAB as well.

Localization and mapping, through Content-Based Image Retrieval techniques.

Not at this stage. My research is meant to classify locations based on semantic information of images, and just solely images. All the work is done by camera.

The reasoning behind this is so that it can be ported from mobile robots to humans, without having to code for the specific platform that drives the camera.

Thanks. Hopefully, it'll be DR. VMSmith soon.

Not to burst your bubble though, but I pretty much lost interest in doing robotics. Once my thesis is done and I've racked up some R&R, I plan to do research in other fields. Hopefully Game Design or Game Theory. (Yes, I know those two are VERY different from each other.

Or you could try watching "Numb3rs" as well. Though Charlie Epps is quite hard to live up to compared to real people.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jun 11 2010, 07:48 PM

Not to mention that you don't even need a Masters to start a consulting company. My ex-boss graduated with a regular Comp. Sci. degree.

zstan: yeap. Monash Uni. pretty much funded all of my research. Of course, 99% of the costs go to registering for conferences, booking hotel rooms for conferences, and flight tickets for conferences...

Apparently, it might not be as easy over in Monash Clayton, one of my PhD friends over there has actually had to fund his own conference fees. Twice!

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jul 8 2010, 03:24 PM

That's okay Dark Lord, if mapping was easy, it would have been solved decades ago. Just keep at it.

And yes, I do believe that if the enhancement is substantial enough, it will be enough for a Masters thesis.

Hm. It normally takes about 3 - 4 year for a full-time student in Monash to graduate.

I'll be 30 later this year. Our first PhD in IT just graduated. At the age of 25. Yikes!

Yeah. He's getting his PhD at an age when I got my Masters!

He's super-smart though. Got really, REALLY good results after finishing his degree with 1st class honors. Then joined the PhD programme straight after that.

I really would like to meet someone who can fund their own PhD studies! Needless to say, everyone here on the PhD programme here in Monash is obviously on some form of scholarship. Our tuition fees is around RM90k over 3 years.

All this talk about getting MPhil after 3 years is giving me the jitters already, I probably should not be post here so often and get back to my research!

What highwind said.

Also, PhD students form a very small fraction of the student population. Pretty much almost all of the money making is from the undergraduates, so you could say I'm only recovering what was spent on my earlier education there. haha

Haha, of course small fraction la. A lot of people prefer to go out to work after 12 - 13 years of studying.

For Masters, I can only speak for the School of IT. There's actually less Masters students than in the PhD programme for reasons I won't reveal publicly.

Regarding postgrad life in Monash, I suppose its no different that postgrad life anywhere else. A lot boils down to who your supervisor is. Some of them have tons of students under them and no time. Some have only a couple of students. Some demand weekly progress reports, and some don't see you more than once a month.

Yes, I know the public's perception about private institutes being "better". But again, like highwind said, public institutes are definitely better funded. Monash's campus here is only 1 branch out of 10. Another one is in South Africa (the students there actually started and finished a week early cause of the World Cup, by the way!), and the rest is in Melbourne. With 8 out of 10 branches over there, they have more funds, and hence, better equipment. All of our LHC colliders and perpetual motion machines can only be found in Melbourne. Haha

Choice of supervisor is also another issue we have to contend with. Over here, about half of our lecturers still haven't obtained their doctorate, so they aren't allow to supervise PhD students, no matter how experienced they are.

This post has been edited by VMSmith: Jul 11 2010, 09:37 PM