As for aiming for a prestigious institution (Russell group or others) for post-doc, you'll usually need to demonstrate that you're at the top of your game, and more importantly, have something significant to contribute to that research group. One doesn't necessarily need to go to such a prestigious institution to do good quality, impactful research. That said, it is usually the most impactful research that is carried out at these institutions.

All the best,
Jamie

Hi there,

It's good that you're ambitious but I think you need to align your attitude with your goals, because when you say "currently I don't have any first-authored papers, and my supervisor isn't planning on making me write one.", it appears as if you think it's your supervisors PhD and career, especially when you use the phrase "making me write one".

I read your later reply about your supervisor using parts of your data for other peoples papers. A good supervisor should be able to balance their own research goals with keeping plan to guide the PhD student to develop and have enough peer-reviewed material for their PhD and viva. When this doesn't happen, the PhD student/candidate should ensure the supervisor is reminded of this and is not jeopardising their PhD. I think your supervisor has let you down in this regard, but then I also think you have let yourself down for not challenging this and standing up for your PhD -- believe me, unless you have very easy-going examiners, you'll need to stand up for your PhD in the viva!

After the first year(s) up until the upgrade to PhD-proper (usually 1-2 years) and when one becomes a PhD candidate, really it doesn't make sense to not take full responsibility for your own development and publishing, even if that appears daunting. Ideally, PhD candidates would have gotten a feel and developed a bit of confidence in their first 1-2 years submitting to and presenting at conferences, and submitting papers (even if they are reject or have significant amendments) - it's part of the learning and development process.

By the sounds of it, you've been fortunate with your experiments and results - as you know, in the sciences experiments can go wrong - your supervisor is making use of those results to compliment others work. I think you need to be more proactive, especially now that you're approaching the end.

...I mean trees just dumped in the street do nothing to spruce up the area.

Haha, thanks Tudor. Yeah, I am totally with you on working in softer ambient light.

We may have missed the local councils Tree collection :-)

So, to sum up. I absolutely love Linux (it's necessary for my research and computation work), but I hate it for Microsoft Office (it can be run using Wine) or LibreOffice. It's OK for Latex editing in Texmaker, but prefer Mac or Windows for that. It's alright for viewing PDFs, but again my mac/windows laptops are just nicer for this.

Eng, that's the funniest operating system analogy I've heard, it made me laugh out loud!

Tudor, you're most welcome.

Nead, VMs (virtual machines) are a useful tool, especially when running them to provide compatibility for software or servers (although this is being superseded by the containerisation tools such as Docker and Singularity). They are, however, often quite slow when it comes to graphical user interfaces, also requiring a lot of RAM and CPU resources.

This is my cluster, now in my living room. They each run Ubuntu 16.04-LTS, have 6 cores (12 hyperthreaded cores), and 32GB RAM each. But the badass part is I managed to get it working with Infiniband and I'm getting ~8 Gbit/sec (8x faster bandwidth than Gigabit ethernet)...Computation is done with Openlava (Opensource IBM LSF) and Apache Spark (Hadoop platform).

I usually use it via my MacBook Air, my desk (on the left), or sometimes via my windows laptop.

[url=https://ibb.co/L0CFbbt][/img]
[url=https://ibb.co/vLMjMFP][/img]

Hi Tudor,

Hope the following helps...

Thank you Tudor, you too! Yes, Prague was lovely.

Bring on 2020! :-)

Hi all,

Sorry for the slow response, I've been in Prague.

I had good times being a member of the Tennis, Photography and Cyber-security societies of my uni during my PhD. I think now I'd probably only join one or two sports societies as the others are probably too "studenty" lol. I did a fair bit of teaching my PhD my students were always inviting me to parties and trying to get me drunk!

I did find out that Imperial college union offers an associate membership which one pays for monthly. It's available to staff and other non university members, so if I have the time I'll get one of those.

Bewildered, you raise an important point, which I'll keep in mind.

Thanks Tudor for your good wishes, I really appreciate it :-) I do hope you are enjoying the Christmas vacation. When you say "isn't one of the perks of academia to sort of be your own boss when it comes to that sort of thing - as long as the work gets done?" that's my sentiment exactly, and one of the reasons I took a post-doc and one of the positives of working in academia.

How's everyone?

Merry Christmas,
Jamie

Hi all,

I'm excited to have secured a Post-doc in Imperial starting in about a months time :-) . I found that Imperial have a college union, and I wondered if it's ok for Post-docs to join? I would like to join their Tennis society and perhaps take up martial arts again.

I am also wondering whether it's OK or usually accepted for post-docs to come in and leave after rush hour as I'll be commuting from Greater london and the rush hour is usually pretty hectic. I did this during my PhD for which I had to travel quite a distance in to uni, which was cut by half the time avoiding rush hour. Same question for some days working from home - I've been able to work from home 1-2 days from my current job in a large research institute.

Of course I'd have these discussions with my new PI, but just wondered what was the norm/acceptable. I want to be as productive as possible, which i find doesn't always fit 9-5 (aside from when I will have to be in early to give a lecture/workshop).

Cheers,
Jamie

rcty, it's not such a bad start. At the very least you have a post-doc of sorts and employment. If you want a different post-doc, I'd start looking now, as they tend to be quite specific and also can be competitive. Given you have finished your PhD, I think if you can demonstrate to a prospective post-doc PI that your research, skills and knowledge from your PhD would further their research you shouldn't have any problem securing another post-doc.

I'm very sorry for your loss. I too lost a parent (my father) relatively suddenly when I was halfway through my PhD. It was tough. I decided to keep my mind busy by being active and presented at a conference 2 weeks later and another a month later, and continued with sports. I did, however, make sure that whenever I felt feelings of grief I'd not block them and I think that helped a lot. If I had decided I needed time away I wouldn't have hesitated to organise this with my supervisor. In my case, I felt I was enjoying the progress with my PhD, my father would have wanted me to carry on and so I did and dedicated my Thesis to him.

Also, sorry to hear about your situation with your supervisors. I would follow the advice eng has provided and try and work out a way forwards, particularly as eng says, by setting achievable milestones that you all are satisfied with, failing that then it seems the only choice would be to move on. Best of luck.