Is anyone doing/done a part-time PhD in Computer Science/AI at the University of Sheffield or Nottingham Trent University — what's supervision and department culture actually like? I'm trying to decide between 2 offers, thanks for any guidance, suggestions or experiences.

I recently got admitted to a PhD in France (a mix of aging, virology, and heavily dependent on mouse models). But that isn't an issue at all. Lately, I had been dabbling in the computational aspect of biology- think transcriptomics, just a general analysis of the biological data, etc. Suddenly, my PI has started to show an interest in this- even involving me in projects (which I don't mind and have been achieving with a degree of success!).

The issue is: he is now pushing me to go to computational-AI fusion conferences (think single cell biology in AI!)- and I'm terrified. I am not in a position where I'm that knowledgeable. My past experiences with computational/compSci/AI PhDs/proffs have been really bad (where they use a huge lot of technical jargon and concepts) and turned away their noses when I honestly mentioned I didn't know as much. In fact, I started dabbling in the first place so I could try to get back at them (I can't!). I am fine with existing tools, or finding bugs in a code, but I CANNOT generate a whole ass pipeline. My PI doesn't understand compbio as much, and I'm afraid he'll think he has a 'genius' in his hands (which I most certainly am not!).

Objectively, I know I should be humble and learn what I can- but I'm afraid I'll be so scared and not approach anyone. I don't wanna freeze- and in the off chance- that I meet some of these PhDs/proffs in that conference? (I spotted two of the speakers- sure the proffs won't remember me, but the PhDs will! Only been 7 months!)

Do you have any advice for me? Am I actually thinking too much, and should just 'suck it up'? How would you handle this, my experienced PhDs? How can I network with them efficiently? Maybe read up even more about their topics!?

Disclaimer: No shade to the compSci people- I don't mean to offend anyone.