Hello,

I would like to ask if it is ok to quit my current PhD project and apply another project at different university after a year? Also, how would I convince the prof from other university that I am not a quitter?

Here are my reasons. My current university's research facilities such as lab equipment and lab itself are unsatisfactory. I am working on watertreatment project and require HPLC to analyse the samples, however the department does not have it. So, I have to go the pharmaceutical department teaching lab and use it, but I couldn't use it whenever I need of course since it is teaching lab. I am allowed to use 3 days a week. So, I am supposed to keep my samples in fridge before I can analyse them. Here again, our engineering lab does not have fridge again. I put up with those despite the lab conditions and facilities for the sake of getting PhD. Hoping that I will be fine if my supervisor is helpful.

However, recently, I found out that my supervisor is incompetent and lack of basic knowledge for the research. She did not help me intellectually or getting assess of the equipment from other department. Since, the start of the project, she told me she has four kids and busy person, so she cannot be at uni all the time. She never participate in discussion during weekly meeting, apart from listening to what I have done so far. In the last meeting, I showed her the experimental results, which have high error %, and told her we need to optimised the condition. She told me the results are fine and tried to lead me to different direction again rather than sort out the current issue. To me she clearly does not understand simple data analysis. Also, whenever I asked to order things like HPLC virals, she asked me to order less and wanted me to wash them and reuse them again. All in all she does not help me in anyway, even lab demonstration opportunities.