From: Dr. Vivek Pandya Assistant Professor School of Technology PDPU-GANDHINAGAR Vivek.pandya@sot.pdpu.ac.

in C-702, PRAMUKH ELEGANCE NEAR RAYSAN PETROL PUMP KOBA-GANDHINAGAR ROAD GANDHINAGAR-GUJARAT 9824225220

Dear All, Warm wishes and greeting from Gandhinagar This is our first correspondence. By this time you must have finished all the formalities for your first semester registration with RKU. Now its high time to equip & gear up towards your aim of acquiring the degree of Ph.D. Following extracts of my experience may be useful to you; 1. The most difficult task when one starts Ph.D. is to finalize the detailed area of work leading to a specific topic of research (forming the title of Research). Perhaps this is the task which we take most lightly but I think we shall take it most seriously. So how do we proceed? Here are some easy steps one can follow. Take a cool-deep breath and have a detailed self introspection about area of your interest. (I shall consider area of interest as those subjects with which I am through fundamentally does not require books to look in to every now & then Can read for number hours In a day without brain reaching to saturation level May not necessarily subject/s in to which I have scored heavily during UG and/or PG - For which I always feel enthusiastic and exited to learn and know new developments irrespective of the demand to prepare from taking teaching work load- Not at all necessary the area of interest or work of your guide ..etc) Once you are ready with broader area of your intended work then its easy to finalize the specific topic or tile i.e: - Try to summarize the problems related to that area initially from books and subsequently from referred journal & conference papers. - During your reading / review of the papers try to look in to the mathematical back ground, algorithms, software tools and techniques, hard ware platforms, the authors of the paper formulate and uses for offering solution to the problem.( Continuously self introspect wrt your abilities to develop and formulate mathematical algorithms, availability of software, cost of hard ware platform, know how to use any soft ware etc) PDPU | Dr. Vivek Pandya, Assistant Professor ,SOT 1

Converge your thought process iterations for deciding specific problem of work where you think that you have right balance between the skill and resources that you need to work towards solution of the problem. (Remember no topic or area is old or out dated till you see the scope of the work and a way how to work on it, because it is you who first have to confidently convince yourself about the thrust area of work then to the rest of world) 2. Literature review stage: - Start with the best of available books around in order to brush up your fundamentals quickly.( if required) - Try to find out latest publication(not more than three papers, otherwise may create confusion) in referred journal (Transactions on _____, IEEE, CIGRE, IJEEE, IEE, IJPST, PES, Springer link,.) of your decided area. - Take a paper a time and try to digest it completely, if found relevant then try to collect papers mentioned in to ref of the paper ----------- repeat the process until you reach the earlier days(oldest) publication of the area. This exercise may lead to you to last paragraph of point 1. - Keep written notes of all your findings, new learnings that you are doing while referring the publication in to a sequential manner in to your hand writing. This may be very much useful to you at advanced stage of your work. - Do not hesitate to create systematic filing of likewise publications in to different files by tagging it. (soft copy & hardcopy both bcos you may lost soft copy due to any reason at one fine morning) - After sufficient literature review (you have to decide where and when to stop ) you are ready with the material - of the topic 2. Analysis of the work done in the area and how you are going to improve / contribute/ add to the work already published) 3. Concrete problem formulation & starting of doing simulations / building up hard ware platform: - This is the phase where you are supposed to build up your resources towards concrete problem formulation and realizing the means for finding the solution for the same. By(1. Increasing your mathematical know how 2. Finalizing the software Technique algorithm on which you will work to find out solution with relevant justifications for its selection 3. Managing the finance and starting building-up of hardware platform etc) - By this time you should start dreaming about your work and solution only(Your loved will feel jealous about your new love) - Generate ample database (readings ) by doing various permutations and combinations which will be very much useful to you for future findings

PDPU | Dr. Vivek Pandya, Assistant Professor ,SOT

You may use the publications available to you to limit / confide yourself for the amount and techniques for creating database of the observations /readings /simulations.

4. ANALYSIS AND LOOK FOR YOUR OWN / NEW FINDINGS: - Do rigorous and neutral analysis of the observations /readings /simulations on your own and try to find out your own new / indigenous findings - Properly tabulate / formulate your findings and prepare minimum one paper to send it to standard journal in the area. (They will confirm or reject your belief of your original new finding in the area and may accordingly suggest the corrective methods / suggestions towards the right direction of work) - If your work is accepted for publication you may approach personally to any expert in the area suggested by guide or decided by you in any of Indian premier institution with a request to review it.(Unofficially) - The para1 and Para 2 you have to repeat until you converge to para 3 of point 4. 5. PREPARATION of SYNOPSIS & THESIS WRITING ( communicating to you in future) 6. FINAL PRESENTATION & DEFENCE (communicating to you in future)

SOME FACTS ABOUT PH.D.: You are the best just of your knowledge in the topic You can introspect best your self Public Presentations are 90% Confidence and 10% Contribution Your guide, Journals, Reviewers, conference chairs may help you to reconsolidate about your findings and its originality 5. Writing a paper is an art and to learn that you first need to read it from different papers 6. The type & Quality of your work is going to boost up / buck up your self confidence and self respect first other then how others look at it. 7. Ph.D. is one of the means to acquire knowledge, name, Fame & Money but certainly not the only. 1. 2. 3. 4.

PDPU | Dr. Vivek Pandya, Assistant Professor ,SOT

APPROXIMATE PERT-CHART FOR PH.D. WORK

Sr. No.
1

Duration

Expected Progress

Publication

Up to May-June 2012

1. 2. 3. 4. 1.

Up to December- 2012

2. 3 Up to May-june- 2012 1. 2.

Finalization of Topic Clearing of course work Ready with Presentation-1 Publish / Present Literature Historical Review paper Publish / Present Literature analytical Review paper (Analysis of the work done in the area and how you are going to improve / contribute/ add to the work already published) Ready with Presentation-2 Formation of concrete topic / problem Start of realizing the means for the same as mentioned in the guidelines Ready with Presentation-3 generation & analysis of the database of readings, observation/simulations for the work Ready with Presentation-4 Starting of Preparation of Synopsis & Thesis Writing (Provided the Expected Progress up to point 4 is satisfactory) Unofficial review of work by subject expert

AT LEAST 01 (Max-02) ( In to any conference in to NIT,IIT,NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED DEEMED UNIVERSITY)

AT LEAST 01 (max-02) ( In to any conference in to NIT,IIT,NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED DEEMED UNIVERSITY)

3. 4. Up to May-june- 2013 1.

AT LEAST 02 (Max.- 04) ( At least one out of two must be in to standard international journal )

2. 5. Up to Dec -2013 1.

You may carry on with further publications of your work at your discretion

2.

PDPU | Dr. Vivek Pandya, Assistant Professor ,SOT