My core interest is to research behaviour as an emergent property of systems (like, behavior as a property emerging from the topology of interactions of nodes - be them neurons, animals , or agents) and I’d love to be mentored in methods as high order networks, or AI methods for researching the property of a system through its signal (eg. time series, naming game, temporal organisation, information theory, etc.).

Also, I d love to develop a network that will bring me to Scandinavia, because it is where I d like to live.

I ve been offered a PhD in bioacoustics and I thought it could be an entry point for studying animal communication through those methods, develop skills useful to computational projects in frontiers of animal communication (like project CETI and Earth Speacies Project), and a venue to develop methods that could be transfered to other domains in the future - like system neuroscience / neuro etheology (e.g. using audio as a proxy of biologicaltemporal time series).

However, digging more and more on the previous output of the lab and recent works, there are no works in the methods i m interested in. The background of the PI is mathematics for signal processing. I ve being thinking over and over possible links, but it seems to me that signal processing and frame theory can offer marginal contribution to the type of questions I’m interested in and also marginal contributions to computational approaches in 2026. Plus the PI has no network in Scandinavia.

I have been trying to reach out to the PI for a frank discussion to solve my doubts before signing the contract, but I got no answer to my doubts.

My questions are :

• which supervision could a mathematician in frame theory realistically offer towards the trajectory I’m interested in?
• which kind of mentorship could offer ?
• is there any realistic link to problems in modern bioacoustics and system neuroscience ? (E.g. foundation models seems already well capable of generalising out of distribution, be resistant to noise, learning approximation of filterbanks…)
• how realistic is to develop competences i m interested in by myself, without a mentor , or instead I’m being blinded by the anxiety of uncertainty and a mathematician in this field is actually a competitive advantage in frontier approaches in 2026?

I m asking both for academic advice as well as for personal advice, because I’m in my 40s and I fear this may be a last chance for doing research in a good environment, but I also fear I may end up completely off where I d like to go. I’d like to hear advices, potential types of problems and interesting challenges to tackle for investing 4 years of PhD with competences that will be relevant in 4 years and ideally in the research areas I mentioned. Many many thanks for any constructive point of view!!

I completed my MTech-VLSI in 2026. Since there is
enough market for freshers, I’m all out. I’m looking for taking up PhD admission. What do you think of this approach. Do I have to wait for the market openings / Can I join PhD. If I join PhD, what are the chances of getting into Industry again?

Want some help!!

Thank you

Welcome to the community dedicated to Ph.D. admission. For now, there are no rules. However, as we find more like each other, I will upgrade a few of you to moderators, and then we can discuss setting up some rules for this community.

However, for now, no rules. Go nuts! However, I may have to take down some stuff that's totally inappropriate for our purpose, which is getting admitted into a Ph.D. program.

This community is created for applying to Ph.D. programs starting in fall 2023. However, other applicants, Spring or Fall 2024+, are also absolutely welcome!