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 Cluster Convenors

  • Computational Science: Amanda Parker
  • Computing Foundations: Ranald Clouston
  • Intelligent Systems: Patrik Haslum and Jing Zhang
  • Data Science: Chirath Hettiarachchi

HDR Scholarships and Admissions Committee

  • Chair: Associate Director HDR
  • All HDR Cluster Convenors (as above)
  • Additional staff representatives including senior and junior members of staff

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.

The primary supervisor can confirm the Chair of the Panel by logging into ANU ISIS or if that fails, by emailing our HDR Admin Team.

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.

NB! Please include any relevant publications that you have under submission or accepted as an appendix to the CoC proposal report.

Once the proposal is ready, you submit the CoC milestone via ISIS. Make sure to add your report in there. Although the panel chair will then have access to the report and could share it with the other panel members, it would be helpful for the CoC chair (and speed up the process) if instead you share the report with everybody. Nevertheless, make sure to first submit it via ISIS first, anyway. Also note that once you submitted, you should schedule a meeting, check below for details.

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 you (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. This presentation has to occur 10 working days (i.e., at least two weeks) or more after the milestone was submitted (cf. p.4, top-right of CoC Requirements), to give the panel members enough time to read it carefully and provide insightful feedback.

To book a room, please email our administration staff and ask for help: admin.comp@anu.edu.au. Please submit the eForms before that meeting and upload your thesis proposal document as part of it. Submit it early in advance so that the panel and CoC chair has enough time to read the document before the meeting.

Note that the CRP Chair should initiate a 1 on 1 meeting with the candidate about one month before the Confirmation submission to give the candidate a chance to discuss any questions they have about the Confirmation process. However, candidates are referred to this page and are expected to read it carefully as well as the documents and pages linked to it, to reduce the CRP Chair’s work.

Finally, ensure you complete the relevant CoC eForm that will then go to the CoC Chair so that they can complete it for the required outcome to be processed.

CoC Presentation (Public Attendance)

The conduct of the seminar is roughly as follows (the seminars are generally open to the public or other staff and should be advertised at least to the relevant cluster):

  • The primary supervisor introduces the student and their background and points out the panel members present to ask questions.
  • The student gives a talk (generally around 40-45 minutes long to leave time for questions). The student has a right to delay all questions to the end of the talk if they choose so.
  • The CoC chair chairs the final Question and Answer session making sure that the panel members (especially the associate supervisors) have the opportunity to answer all questions they may have before the “decision meeting” that will follow.
  • After the panel member questions were exhausted please encourage audience to ask questions too. Feel free to use the time wisely from the overall two hour slot.

The CoC Decision Meeting that Follows (Restricted Attendance)

The conduct of the “decision meeting” that follows the seminar is roughly as follows (the student is NOT present at this meeting, only the panel members and the CoC chair are allowed in this meeting):

  • To start the meeting, you (the CoC Chair) can choose to briefly summarise what they thought of the presentation and the written report (if you choose to read it) as the external chair to the panel but that’s about it: the panel examines the PhD confirmation of candidature while the chair only ensures the fairness of the process. For example, the CoC Chair is not expected to read the proposal or judge the quality of work as such but let the panel do it.
  • CoC Chair needs to take some notes to support or comment on the final outcome as decided by the panel and chair the meetings to ensure this is done fairly and in an ordered fashion.
  • CoC Chair Can use the ANU CoC Report Template found here in PDF form format: ANU CoC SharePoint. The CoC chair has to fill out this form and upload it as part of the eForm submission.
  • 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.
  • The primary supervisor will be able to talk at length - all we are asking here is to let associate supervisors speak first and speak out loudly what they thought before letting primary supervisor speak and contribute to avoid confirmation bias.
  • This way the primary supervisor who knows the work the closest speaks after the associates - 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 at first and delay any comments until the discussion session. After this everyone can speak to actually make the decision, only the initial statement has to be done in order form associates to primary.
  • 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 CSS 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
  • Finally, please ensure that you checked with the examiners you are nominating that they are happy to examine the thesis before nominating them.
bars search times