Hi,

Thanks for your responses, its really useful to get some other views on it!

I certainly like the idea of perhaps not doing it straight away but have a couple of years to mull it over and keep my eyes on the industry and see how much I will benefit from it. I guess it makes more sense then that I am not driven by time to find one and can afford to be choosy then!

James

Hi all,

I am very confused at the minute and could use some advice from people who have been through it.

I am trying to get a funded PhD in robotics, in particular I am interested in co-operative robotics and robotics as systems. I want to do a PhD because I want to be research cutting edge stuff and contributing to the field and think I would also like to teach one day. Problem is I am struggling to find suitable PhDs. I thought I found one but my funding was rejected. There seems to be very little research of this nature in the UK. I would consider moving abroad but I have a serious girlfriend here who will to some extent be following me so I need to find somewhere that she could work as well.

On the other side I could go back to the company where I was on placement. They are an excellent company to work for but the job isnt quite what I want to do (it is more customer support that R&D). The upside is that they are very supportive and may get time to work on some of my own stuff to try and keep in touch with the robotics world. It is also much more suitable for my personal life. Money, nice area, not far for my girlfriend to move.

So I guess my dilemma is, does a PhD offer you much more professionally for R&D jobs (and ideally lecturing but think I know the answer to that) that it is worth putting as a higher priority now. I would be very interested to hear some opinions.

Thanks,

James