Prospective PhD Students

PostGraduate Research

Information for Year 2 PhD Students

The most important thing for you to do during the second year is to make substantial progress on your research with your supervisor.

Your PhD is supported by Liverpool Doctoral College which provides a focus and oversees all doctoral training and development in the University. The Liverpool Doctoral College provides a range of personal and professional development opportunities to support your PhD. Please see the Liverpool Doctoral College Intranet webpages.

Supervisors and IPAP members

Here is a list of students, their supervisors and IPAP members.

Training and Progress Monitoring Requirements

The expected training and progress monitoring for the year includes completing your Annual Progression Requirements attending seminars including the Postgraduate Workshop and completing the following. Additionally, attending Departmental Seminars and your research group seminars is expected/strongly encouraged. Seminar attendance helps develop transferable skills such as oral communication skills, presentation skills, persuading skills, analytical/logical thinking skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, decision making skills, research skills.

  • Careers Development. Participate in a variety of events to suit your career interests and aspirations such as the Computer Science Ignite Your Future, EEE Thursday seminars, Career Development from the LDC Development team, the School organised career seminars and one off events pertaining to particular research careers etc. The Liverpool Doctoral College also provides Placement Opportunities to help you prepare for a career.

  • In March (sometimes December) you must prepare and present a poster about your research at the Faculty of Science and Engineering Poster Day. This is organised by the Faculty of Science and Engineering and was last held in semester 2, on Thursday 21st March 2019.

    The target audience is ``a degree-educated member of the public''. The Faculty of Science and Engineering expect all year two on-campus students to present posters at the Poster Day in person unless there is a valid reason (eg ill health) not to. Details of the winners from previous years are available with links to some of the award winning posters. Here are some posters from CS PhD students winning prizes or commendations in previous year: Richard Stocker (2011), Anton Minnion(2011). The Departmental poster printer has now broken so posters must be printed using the Computing Services printers. Please make sure you print these early as many students from the Faculty will need to print out posters for this event.

    This helps develop transferable skills such as communication skills, in particular writing, listening and presentation skills, interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills, and working to deadlines.

  • In April/May you must prepare and deliver a 25-minute talk about your research for a general computer science audience. You will present this talk as part of the Postgraduate Workshop. The slides for your presentation should be submitted in advance. Dave Shield will provide more information about how to do this nearer the time. Please send the titles of your talks to the Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research for the webpage. The 2019 workshop was held 1st May and 2nd May 2019 in the Ashton Lecture Theatre. Your talk will be attended by all PhD students in the department. It will also be attended by two relevant academics (usually your two IPAP members) who will give you feedback on the talk. Interested undergraduate, MSc students or EEE staff or research students may also attend. The feedback form is available here. This helps develop transferable skills such as communication skills, in particular writing, listening and presentation skills, interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills, and working to deadlines.

  • You must submit a Second-year progress report by the end of May(for students who started in September/October/November). Please send your report directly to your two IPAP members with copies to your supervisor and Alison. If you have written a (published or unpublished) paper during the course of your PhD work, then this may be submitted as the main part of the report. Please also add a short report to cover the areas below. Otherwise, the report should consist of
    • a succinct statement of the area of work, and the main contributions to the area that the work is intended to make (at most 1 page),
    • a description of the work completed so far (at most 5 pages),
    • a description of the work to be completed during the forthcoming year (at most 1 page), and
    • a time-tabled plan for completion of the thesis over three years.
    Sample year two progress reports from previous years for Kwankamon Dittakan and Mihai Burcea are available. Along with the End of Year report please update and re-submit your Development Needs Analysis (see below). Dates for students starting at other times can be found here. This helps develop transferable skills such as communication skills in particular writing skills, analytical/logical thinking skills, organisational, project management and planning skills.

  • Update your Development Needs Analysis (DNA) in conjunction with your supervisors to help you and your supervisory team identify your training and development requirements. This will allow you to create your own programme of personal and professional development training alongside the core training. More details and the latest version of the form can be found on the Liverpool Doctoral College intranet site. Here are the development opportunities from the LDC. This helps develop transferable skills by analysing your current skill level and identifying development opportunities to improve weaker areas. Please update this and submit it to Alison and your IPAP members along with your End of Year Report.

  • Following the submission of your report and before the end of June you will have a progress interview. Your supervisor will schedule the interview and will arrange a panel of two academics to conduct the interview. Usually this will be your two IPAP members (or their substitute) one of whom will chair the panel. Your supervisor is encouraged also to attend. Please let Alison know when this is scheduled. At the progress interview, you will discuss your report, the research completed, your progress and future research plans. The completion of training and DNA may also be discussed during the interview. A presentation is not normally expected but you can do one with the agreement of the interview panel. The members of the panel (i.e. the two IPAP members or their substitutes) will fill out this feedback form and return it to Alison. (Alison will return page 1 of this form to you, and the form will also be forwarded to the progress committee.) This helps develop transferable skills such as communication skills, interpersonal skills, the ability to learn and adapt and critical thinking skills.

  • In June, you will be asked to complete an Annual Progress Report (APR) via Liverpool Life. This should be completed by all students regardless of start date. Your completed training, picked up by the system, is listed in a box on the report. Following this is a box entitled "any other training courses that are not mentioned above". If you have done all of the relevant things for your year but they are not listed in the box please give details. If you haven't completed the expected training, explain why and say when you will complete it otherwise your form will be returned to you. Additionally please make sure you have the correct number of supervisory meetings listed. If not please add any extra meetings in the box provided. When you have completed the form, it will be passed electronically to your supervisor, the DDPR, and the graduate school. When you have completed this, it will be passed electronically to your supervisor, the DDPR, and the graduate school. This helps develop transferable skills such as working to deadlines.

  • If the IPAP reports are positive we will recommend your PhD registration be continued. If your progress is deemed not to be satisfactory, the Departmental Progress Committee will discuss and review your progress and may suggest some remedial measures or give you a chance to improve and repeating the End of Year Report and Interview. If this is still unsatisfactory your registration be changed to MPhil or terminated altogether.

    • Training for Year 2.

    Successful completion of the training and progression tasks outlined above will result, where possible, in the following training credits being added to your profile on Liverpool Life. (You don't have to worry about how to add these credits - we add them for you.) This is a expected part of your PhD.
    • Departmental Training
      • Speak at Postgraduate Workshop CSCR009
      • Attend Departmental Research Seminars
    • School Training
      • Second-Year Report ECSR022
      • Second-Year Viva ECSR023
    • University Training
      • Careers Development
      • Annual Progression Requirements PDRR002
      • Present a Poster at Poster Day