Sounds like you're in a field that involves no bench work so I'm not sure where you should be at really. In my field it's thought that you've done very well if you have a couple of figures you could put in a thesis after your first year!

Can only echo what has already been said. Imposter syndrome is common. The nature of a PhD means that you work exclusively with very bright, motivated people.

I suffered with it before starting my PhD and a year and a bit in I still suffer from it every time I see a peer give a great seminar or they have a really cool poster.

What I need to remember is that my peers probably think exactly the same thing about me when I speak or present a poster.

Microbiology and virology are not dead! Look at fields like synthetic microbiology and see if anything catches your interest there.

My PhD is four years long. Don't worry if you go over by a few months. The funding deadline does not dictate when your work should actually be ready and it doesn't make you a failure.

Seems likely to me. Even if it wasn't that he just didn't care but that he was distracted. I guess moving labs in the middle of a research programme is a bit of a faff on.

As I say, I'm good friends with one of his own students and she says the group's being split with some being left behind here and some moving with him. So he's going to have to commute between here and Oxford until those left behind finish up. On top of that, his research assistant, who has been with him for 10+ years, had been threatening to just quit the lab altogether. His student who has supposed to start in October has told him to "P*ss off." essentially, saying that he didn't apply to do his research at Oxford. Seems like a lot of stress!

So yeah, I can understand if his mind has been elsewhere!

Wow, in an unexpected turn of events the Professor in question is to leave soon and take up a position at Oxford University. Problem solved!

You will definitely stand a great chance of getting on the Cambridge MPhil. If you're already pulling in 90% grades at Oxford (and have evidence you've already secured an internship in the financial services industry) they'll definitely be interested in you.

With regards to funding... I got a PhD offer from Cambridge so know a bit about this. The application for post-grad courses is a little convoluted and so is finding sources of funding. Typically the colleges all have their own bursaries and scholarships. On top of this, university wide scholarships exist for specific subjects. I think there's a centralised database for you to search through these. Of course, the college funding is only available for those who have been accepted by the college offering the scholarship. They're also awarded on academic merit, but you'll have no problems there I'd imagine.

Go to one of the big colleges as well, like Trinity or St Johns. They have more money to support you.

Yes, he has to be present at all of my progress review meetings (4 per annum). Has to approve all of the reports I submit and agree on a 'grade' (not that this means anything) with my primary supervisor.

If it was just that I wouldn't be worried, I'd just let him keep on not really caring because that stuff's just a load of form filling to keep the funding body happy. I'm just accutely aware that many of my peers have secondary supervisors who are truly engaged in their project and having valuable input into it. Someone who can see things from a different perspective to you and your supervisor has to be a good thing at times and I suppose I feel I'm missing out on that.

I think this is the point: that's just how he is. I'm quite good friends with one of his own students who tells me he really is a bit of a sycophant who is too quick to praise and too slow to criticise.

I'll try to talk to him anyway.

So nearly a year in to my doctoral research and I'm really enjoying it. Been given a lot of freedom and a lot of avenues to pursue which I'm now starting to pull together into something a lot more coherent as I enter the final few months of my first year. I like my labmates, who are all helpful and feel like I have a productive working relationship with my supervisor. However, my advisor is a different story. He's a PI from a different department who is supposed to 'provide detached, critical assessment' of my work and suggest improvements I could make or different things I might try. However, in our meetings he does little but say what I'm doing seems like great work and I'm also fairly certain he's merely feigning interest in my project. Whilst the flattery is nice, I know that I could make improvements and it would be nice to have someone who is willing to actually think about my work properly, someone who could have real input.

So obviously I want rid of him but how do I do that without 'offending' this Professor? And, moreover, how on earth do I get a feel for whether my new advisor (who I'll have to decide on pretty soon) will actually be useful to me?

I wouldn't neccesarily be looking at whether or not I'd be accepted onto another PhD programme (which I feel is unlikely), but whether or not I'd have any real hope of career progression if I held two PhDs (presumably in a similar area). Doing a second PhD just seems like stagnation and in any career, but especially academia, you need to be seen to be progressing all the time.

Go with your wife to South Florida but think seriously about whether or not a second PhD is a sensible idea.

That said, I doubt they'd offer you a place if you already hold a doctorate.

You're applying to do a PhD for a reason: you have a real desire to answer a key question in your chosen research area. I'm afraid you have no chance of forgetting about it!

Is sending an e-mail to whoever coordinates admissions a possibility? Following things up in that way is never a bad thing.