azriamy is doing his phd in architecture..he's a lecturer in UTM...
How about TS start the ball rolling by letting us know your details 1st?

Nice project..
I am a 1st year PhD student at Australian National University..My research area is protein engineering and crystallography..
My main methods for protein engineering are directed evolution which mimics the process of protein evolution and rational design..
These methods are used to improve enzyme properties and for my case predict bacterial antibiotic resistance uprising...

haha...not quite right..directed evolution mimics the process of evolution where mutations occurs randomly whereas rational design is the mutation you do the the DNA with the desired mutation...central dogma of gene expression is DNA->RNA->protein..so the mutation would translate into the protein..

protein engineering generally is to improve enzyme properties...such as better thermostability, better solubility, or substrate preference...
For my case..i'm investigating the uprising of bacterial resistance towards antibiotic...the enzyme responsible for most of the resistance is beta-lactamses..
But they have different activity towards different antibiotics..so my job is to predict how would the enzyme evolve so that the data could be used in designing new antibiotic drug by chemistry people..



This post has been edited by highwind85: Jun 6 2010, 07:03 PM

yeah..nothing came up except Striling University in Scotland...
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=U...ling+University

haha...you got me...

Depending on what field you wanna go in...PhD in economics would render you overqualified for most of the jobs available whereas PhD in chemistry or biology is essential so that you could work in a certain position..
Pick-up chicks? Other PhD chicks maybe...but normal chicks in society...rarely..lol

LYN???

wow...biasiswa agong...that's a tough one...but the interview panel is not that professional though...have a friend that told me her experience during the interview..

My friend's panel know her supervisor well (she's worked as RA while trying to secure funds to go overseas)...and the panel kept on telling her that her supervisor is very good and she should continue her PhD here and stuffs like the university really needs someone like her calibre...and thus denied her a scholarship to go overseas...

yup...luckily she persevered and is now in the same university as i am...she is here 1 year earlier than me...
that's why i say the panel she met isn't professional...

1) there is depending on the university and country...Malaysia and Aus is 5 years for full time...US is longer
2) depends on what field you're in...if you have to do your research in the lab, it's difficult to work other than lab demonstrator or tutor...
3) more on research articles i guess...text books are for fundamentals...these are long established knowledge...research articles have latest developments on the other hand..
4) i'm 25 this year...if things go smoothly, i should graduate in 3-4 years..(this could be affected by the PhD systems of different countries as well)

wow...25...that's really young...

not that much if you consider our number here versus the number of total lyn members....besides, all of us are doing something different...

It is possible to fail...if the panel decides that your research is up to standard, you'll get MPhil instead of PhD...
Haha..at least you depend on your own for the PhD studies...If you are good with financial management, you'll be able to save enough money to buy house or car.
I personally have a friend who studied his PhD in USM....He already bought his 1st property..

"PhD grads are considered fresh grads"
Yup..no question about that..but the salary you get definitely isn't 23 year old fresh grad salary...just that your salary will be lower compared to your peers who has more than 5 years of working experience..In malaysia fresh PhD grads earn around rm4k -rm5k, depending on field and position..

He is my best friend...a condominium worth rm300k...you can do it if you manage well..

It is not impossible just because you don't know how..i know his family and his family is not the extremely rich type..and his parents has two younger children to support..
are you thinking you can only buy a house with only cash? even a rich person isn't going to pay the house in full with cash...he started his PhD last year..

MPhil is the research degree for Masters...it's the inferior form of PhD....if a person gets that, all his hard work throughout the years would go to waste..

you have to apply for it...no one is going to give you money without effort...there are a few ways to do PhD:

1) self funded (only a fool would do that especially for PhD in overseas), still possible with local IPTA though..
2) Research grant funded - the PI pay you to do the research...but bear in mind that tuition fees are not included and the allowance is quite little..
3) fellowship and scholarship - this is the more common method of funding...almost all overseas PhD students are funded by scholarship..if not, your expenses could easily hit rm100k per year including tuition fee...

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Added on July 11, 2010, 8:03 pmhe's doing medical research on breast cancer...depends on universities and systems, some masters do not have classes, some have..

PhD in the US has classes and exams..that's why their PhD takes longer time to complete...and depending on how you fair in the exam, you could do PhD if you score well and only masters if you didn't do so good...it's 2+1 years (Masters) and 2+3 years (PhD) system...

This post has been edited by highwind85: Jul 11 2010, 08:03 PM

Yeah...doing a PhD straight with 1st class does save you a few years...but to graduate at 25 is really impressive...

Haha...there are people that fund their studies...in IPTA of course...tuition fees in UKM is rm2000+ per semester...other IPTAs are roughly the same...
But i agree with you...My fees are AU$28k per year and projected living cost is AU$22k per year...it would really be nuts to sponsor my own studies...

Haha...don't be too worry about the MPhil thingy..it's just what written on paper...so far i have never seen one...most of the time, if your project isn't getting much progress, the supervisory panel would have already advised you to change from PhD to MPhil...so don't worry to much...

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Added on July 11, 2010, 8:29 pmpostgraduate programs aren't like undergraduate programs...it might be true that monash or any other IPTS milk their student dry..
but postgraduate programs especially research programs, they have research grants...some funds comes from MOSTI and other sources...and to make sure there are future fundings, the university needs people to work on projects...thus scholarships for research students..
this is the case for most of the universities around the work..getting a student to work on the project is far cheaper than hiring a postdoc to do it..

This post has been edited by highwind85: Jul 11 2010, 08:29 PM

haha...lol-ed at the pig part..i agree that some of the lecturers are lazy...however public universities still has more funding than IPTS...especially the Big Four...
Not sure about other fields, but for engineering, physic, bio fields, public universities are better equipped...DNA sequencers, Mass spectrometer are not cheap...