Going to graduate school in STEM? Choosing a PhD advisor / PI / lab / - Darren Lipomi - UC San Diego

Darren Lipomi - Professor of NanoEngineering & Chemical Engineering at UC San Diego. My thoughts on choosing a lab, advisor, and school for a PhD program.

Thanks to financial support from NSF CBET-1929748. My views do not necessarily reflect those of my institution or sponsor.

lipomigroup.org



Notes:
This time of year I get a lot of requests for advice on picking a grad school (PhD) and lab. Here are my not rules, but “considerations”

Consideration –1 – Should you go to grad school in the first place?
• Must LOVE research
• Not go just because you’ve always been in school and are afraid of the real world (I admit to falling into this category)
• You’re applying to a PhD knowing it’s more consuming than a full time job
• If you’re applying only to become a professor yourself, know that with this mindset, only around 5% of PhDs in all academic fields are employed as tenure-track professors.

Consideration 0 – Research topic
• The “right” topic will probably be a balance of what you’re most excited about (basic research or the longer-term application) + the PI + the group culture.
• Don’t restrict yourself to the topic of your undergraduate research
• The reason students—or anyone—don’t grow is that they spend their precious minutes doing what they already know how to do
• A good analogy is playing a musical instrument. The reason I’m not a better piano player is that I spend way too much time playing stuff I already sound reasonably good playing.
• There are some fields, however, where some PIs may not hire you unless you had a very specific undergraduate training.
• If you can’t get into these labs, it says more about the PI and maybe the field than you.

Consideration 1 – Established vs. up-and-coming PI?
• Big-name PIs and “superlabs” (say more than 20 grad students and postdocs) often get lots of papers and have a lot of funding, but they have disadvantages:
• Students must be highly self-motivated or they will languish
• Quality control and potential for deep scholarship may be limited due to lack of PI involvement. If a deep, scholarly paper emerges from a superlab, it is almost certainly because of an especially good postdoc or senior graduate student. In smaller labs, the PI is more able to guide you into deeper layers of scholarship.
• Better to look at the “derivative.” In which labs is the output/innovation/depth of scholarship actually accelerating?

Consideration 2 – Group culture
• Months may go by where literally nothing good happens. Maybe years. (E.g., 2008)
• Talk to as many graduate students as possible
• Are the students excited? Healthy? Happy with their progress? Collaborative? Values diversity of sex, race, religion, and perhaps especially personality types?
• Isolation is one of the surest routes to depression. Being united by a common mission—e.g., collaborative projects—is the surest bulwark against despair.

Consideration 3 – PI
• We’re going to assume that most PIs are competent researchers, topic experts, and doing something new and interesting. If the PI doesn’t check these boxes in your eyes, look elsewhere
• Choose the PI who will allow you to flourish
• A lot of what I said about group culture also applies to the PI, because the PI influences the culture by their hiring decisions
• Try to find out not only if people in the lab have gotten the types of positions you want (evidence that the PI will support you after leaving the lab and is invested in your success)
• Also try to find out the attrition rate, or whether students have left the group under less than amicable circumstances
• While PIs will put their best foot forward in the visitation weekend, and it’s thus hard to judge the future, but you can get a sense of trust and openness from an advisor

Consideration 4 – Institution and location
• I’m not going to say that a degree from a fancy school doesn’t matter, because in some superficial sense it does. It’s a type of pre-vetting that says if you got into this highly ranked institution, someone has already done the hard work of judging how good you are
• Some top-tier companies that I won’t name have already placed your PhD institutions into tiers and give a hiring and salary premium to people from those places. In some ways, you can understand this behavior in that it de-risks the process of hiring
• However, this mindset on the part of the applicant can be harmful, especially since PIs at “top” places are not often regarded as the most attentive mentors
• Also, the PI is far more important than the “program,” or “department,” which have very little influence on your life after the first year.
• As to location (cold, warm, distance from home, international), this is a highly personal decision, and I really don’t have any insights about it. Most people committed enough to research will find that they don’t have a lot of options, and just have to go where they got into grad school, postdoc, or job.