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I enrolled in a PhD student in computer science at an Italian university that started 1 month ago. Before that, I was a research fellow at the same uni. I initially decided to enroll in this program mainly for personal reasons, one of them being the proximity of the university to my hometown.

During my fellowship, I did research on a topic that I realized I'm not really interested in. I later managed to find another topic which interests me a lot. However, my current PhD advisor is not an expert on it, so he told me I'm the one who has to figure out the research plan, finding research questions, etc. I should note that this arrangement was proposed during my research fellowship (aka, before the application).

For now, I managed to secure a collaboration with a professor from another university, who is an expert in the topic I am interested in. The problem is that, as of now, I can't independently think of any plan for after we publish the results of our current project. I can ask this professor to continue the collaboration and to formally be my co-advisor. I am enjoying the project I am currently working on. I have full support from my advisor for this plan.

Despite that, I am wondering if I made the right decision with this program: sure, the fact that the uni is near my hometown is good, but I want to do a great PhD since my future plan would be to do academic career, and AFAIK a PhD is not a riskless path even in average cases.

I am looking for some advice on how to handle this situation.

  • Question 1: is working mostly with an external co-advisor a good idea for pursuing a PhD?
  • Question 2: is finding external collaborations and visiting other institutions hoping to find additional projects to work in a good idea for pursuing a PhD? I ask this if I fail to find a suitable co-advisor.
  • Question 3: given my situation, would it be best to leave the program right now since I am just a few weeks in and start over somewhere else?

Note that I already have a specific topic to work on in my mind. What I lack of is a laid out research line and an advisor that can help me finding the right problems/projects.

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    Can you shorten this? Commented yesterday
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    There are a lot of questions and related issues here -- living near your hometown, moving to Europe, concerns about a stapler thesis. We cannot really help you untangle all the pieces, we are not career counselors. I recommend you edit your post to boil this down to a single question -- i.e., what question is currently an unknown, but getting the answer would help you figure this out? Commented yesterday
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    That said, to me the key unknown is whether this professor you're collaborating with will continue to work with you after you finish this project. If they will, I am not sure I see a problem. Commented yesterday
  • @cag51, I tried to shorten the question a little and untangle the pieces. I hope this version is clearer. Commented 20 hours ago
  • Are you worried about your advisor's lack of deep expertise in your topic, or that your advisor will be almost completely hands off during your program? Commented 9 hours ago

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Usually the way the Ph.D. works is that the advisor advises- he directs the student to work on a topic that (1) he knows is interesting/ important and (2) he knows something about. OP has chosen not to do things that way. His advisor is presumably happy to take the credit for OP getting the degree (if he manages to do that) without any need to do much in the way of work.

By the way, it's worth saying something about the reward system (at least as it is in the US, probably somewhat similar elsewhere). OP's advisor gets credit (which contributes to status, pay, advancement, etc.) by publishing things and by advising Ph.D. students. So why not let a self-directed and self-supported student do his own thing?

As far as OP is concerned this could be good or bad. If he finds a good research direction then he gets the degree then he has a leg up for the future, as he has done something students don't normally do, that is, originate research. If he doesn't, and he flounders and finishes with a poor thesis or maybe none at all, then he has wasted his opportunity.

Outside collaborators may help. But keep in mind the reward system. An outside person does not get much credit for advising a student when he is not the official advisor. He does, however, get publication co-authorship and intellectual rewards.

Best wishes to OP, who has chosen a more difficult and uncertain path.

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  • I edited my question just in order to untangle the pieces as cag51 suggested. I must confess you point of view is something I haven't considered. I admit I have to ponder in the back of my mind what you said about my advisor. Meanwhile, If the external person becomes my actual co-advisor, would this help in this "reward system"? Commented 20 hours ago
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I'm troubled by the fact that I do not have a plan, a research question or ideas for future projects.

This is a big issue as far as I see it. The best PhD projects are driven by the student, not the supervisor. If you cannot see an interesting research gap in the field then that is a problem. You need to spend some time working out where these gaps are so that you can work to fill them.

As to whether a thesis can be a range of only loosely-related projects, it's no problem. My own had three closely related chapters and an outlier. A current student of mine will have three disparate topics in their thesis. But remember the word thesis implies that there should be a common thread through the entirety of the work.

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  • Thanks for your answer. I edited my question to structure it a bit and I failed to mention that I formally started my PhD just a few weeks ago. While I agree that " The best PhD projects are driven by the student, not the supervisor", isn't the supervisor's task to direct the student at least in the earlier stages? This is what I feel missing, and this is what scares me the most. As for the topic, I believe that there is a common thread in any case since I am fascinated by a specific subtopic that few people are doing research in. Commented 20 hours ago
  • @fuxgrabx, yes it is true that the supervisor has an important role to play in guiding. But where I am a student can formally spend up to a year initially reading and thinking to formulate their research questions. The supervisor can suggest, but it's up to the student to find out. Commented 3 hours ago
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I don't think the questions as you pose them are answerable, because they are very person-specific:

  • "is working mostly with an external co-advisor a good idea?" <- that depends on the personality of your main advisor (are they okay with letting the reins a little looser, do they enjoy working in a wider team?), your co-advisor (are they happy to 'only' get co-authorship on your joint papers (I would) or do they want official credits for the supervision?), and yourself (can you handle multiple captains on a single ship?)
  • "is finding external collaborations and visiting other institutions hoping to find additional projects to work in a good idea" <- generally, yeah, I guess, but it again depends on the involved personalities
  • "would it be best to leave the program right now" <- this is such an individual choice with enormous implications on your personal life, that no-one on the internet can possible give you good advice.

What I can offer you, is the perspective of another faculty member in a subfield of computer science.

When a PhD student in my lab has been working for 1 month, I expect them to be reading papers. Lots and lots of papers. Not much else is required at this stage: best to get to know the current state of the art in the field really well.

When a PhD student in my lab reaches the end of their first year, I expect them to have created one publishable manuscript for submission, preferably submitted to a conference or a journal. Realistically, to achieve this, they must have a rough idea of what the research question for this first manuscript is going to be after 3-6 months in my lab.

When the PhD student publishes their first paper, they likely get to present this at a conference somewhere. There, they are exposed to other scientists, other open questions, and I expect them to return from that conference full of ideas. Hence, realistically, sometime in year 2 or 3 I expect the PhD to really start rolling: generating many ideas to work on with many co-authors. From that moment on, the contours of the PhD thesis start to become clear.

You have been enrolled for a month. Your supervisor is supportive of the trajectory that you are on. You are working with someone you want to work with, on a project you want to work on.

Why worry?

If you were in my lab, and you would not voice your questions to me, I would be under the impression that you were thriving. I would let you follow your natural curiosity in the external collaboration that you arranged, and I would assume that you would be happy to do so. For an outside observer, it is not at all clear from what you describe that you are not doing well: your situation looks pretty good. You write:

I can't independently think of any plan for after we publish the results of our current project

but I would expect you to start figuring that out after* you publish the results of your current project. Open problems may emerge. New ideas may pop up. It'll be very hard to imagine where the science will lead you, before your current project is more mature.

*perhaps already during the final 25% of the process of working on the project. It's hard to predict when inspiration strikes. But it's unlikely to be there at the start of a project.

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