Introduction

You can find more information in the Programs and Courses system as well as the following pages:

Useful Information

  • Our colleague Pascal maintains a nice resource of the available awards you can apply for.
  • ANU provides useful LaTeX templates.
  • Pascal also provides a list of useful LaTeX templates.
  • Hanna provided wise advice on surviving a PhD using the following slides, presented at the SOCO HDR Retreat April 2024 slides.
  • Ulli and Penny gave a talk on how PhD candidates at the ANU can engage with industry during their candidature using the following slides, presented at the SOCO HDR Retreat April 2024 slides.

HDR Student Representatives

HDR students representatives meet with the Associate Director HDR and HDR Staff twice a year (in August and in February) to discuss any matters arising among the HDR students. Please feel free to reach out to your cluster representative at any point if you do not wish to contact Associate Director HDR directly with any issues. Or, of course, feel free to reach out to the Associate Director HDR (Alex Potanin) at any point with any issues as well!

Confirmation of Candidature (was Thesis Proposal Review before 2024)

Generally, as a PhD student, your major milestone is your Confirmation of Candidature stage which is around nine months to one year after your initial enrolment (if full-time). Please take the deadline very seriously as anyone over 3 months will likely have their scholarship and enrolment terminated.

Please see all the ANU HDR Policies and Procedures here.

SOCO CoC Thesis Proposal Requirements

The full proposal should provide evidence of the viability of the proposed research topic and the capacity of the student to carry out the proposed research. The full proposal should try to be no longer than 40 pages (A4, font 12pt) and between 5,000 and 10,000 words. If there is more work to report than can be fit within these limits, details should be put into an appendix.

Note: The university has no official page/word limit for the full proposal; this mandate is from the SOCO HDR Committee.

The full proposal is expected to contain the following elements:

  • A clear motivation(s) for the proposed research.
  • The clear goals/objectives/research questions/hypotheses of the proposed research, including the overall goal and the specific objectives.
  • A literature survey of related research. This should make clear the difference between the proposed work and the existing work.
  • A description of what the student has done so far related to the research goals in the provisional registration periods; giving details of published/accepted papers, if any.
  • An outline of the project, including a detailed plan for the goals/objectives to be carried out in the following years (particularly the next six months) a timeline for the thesis (including writing), a possible thesis outline, and the proposed major contributions.
  • Special facility/materials needed for the thesis (if any).
  • A list of relevant references.

SOCO CoC Meeting Procedure

Please note that the Confirmation of Candidature process involves both a report and a presentation followed by the meeting of the entire panel that you will chair.

Note: We expect the HDR student to organise a room and a time for a 2-hour slot with the oral presentation taking place in the first hour and the meeting of the panel happening right after.

The conduct of the meeting is roughly as follows:

  • You summarise what you thought of the written report and the presentation as the external chair to the panel and take notes of this.
  • The panel members starting with the most removed (i.e. associate supervisors) to the closest members (i.e. primary supervisor) then speak in turn with what their thoughts were on the report and the presentation and you take notes as the chair.
  • This way the primary supervisor who knows the work the closest speaks last - this is very important to ensure that any external feedback is taken into account as someone too close to the student may miss things that are sometimes obvious. Please ask the primary supervisor not to speak and delay any comments until the discussion session.
  • Once everyone has spoken in the above turn, you open the discussion as the chair aiming to arrive at the outcome which can range from accepting the candidate’s thesis proposal as is to recommending withdrawal from the program or conversion to Master of Philosophy.

More information can also be found here:

More Information for Staff

Please see our internal SharePoint for SOCO for more HDR Procedures and Information.

Thesis Examiners Nominations

When it comes to the examination, if you are a current HDR supervisor at the School of Computing, please note that the following rules are applied within CECC when it comes to nominating examiners. Please see the ANU HDR Procedure: Submission and Examination of Theses here.

  • We require 3, not just 2 examiners to prevent frequent issues with non-timely return of the reports or conflicting results. We think that it is in the students and our best interest to have three.
  • We can only accept clearly non-conflicted examiners who have supervised students before and are publishing actively and where there was no publication with any of the panel members in the last 5 years (or ideally longer). Generally, it’s also better for the student as they don’t need to argue that there was no CoI in the context of their thesis examination. This excludes but is not limited to the following:
    • Joint paper with a student or panel member in the last five years
    • Joint recipient of a grant with a student or panel member in the last five years
    • Supervisor/supervisee relationship ever
    • Close personal relationship with a student or panel member
    • Financial or other interest in research results
    • Employment at an institution involved in research
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