Getting Started with Your PhD Proposal
(A weekend workshop for aspirants to the design PhD programme in IDC)
IDC, IIT Bombay is happy to announce a 2-day workshop from February 23-24, 2013 for aspiring PhD candidates.
Should You Attend?
This workshop is for those who are considering to apply to the PhD programme at IDC. Perhaps you are a practicing designer who has developed a deep understanding about design and are interested in formalising your body of work. May be you invented new methods, tools or techniques and want evaluate them rigorously. You may be interested to explore specific design issues – design pedagogy or design history perhaps. Or you are generally interested in design research, but are in search for a topic. Or you are just not sure if you should take a plunge into a 4-5 year commitment for a PhD. If it sounds like you are one or more of the above, this workshop will help. It is meant for those who are interested in design research, want to do a PhD, but need help to develop a concrete PhD proposal.
Who Will Conduct the Workshop?
This workshop will be conducted by faculty members as well as by current and past PhD students in IDC. The faculty members will talk about their broad areas of interests. You could then decide if you would like to do a PhD in these or related areas. There will be opportunities to explore specific areas of mutual interest and developing a proposal for a PhD.
Following faculty members have confirmed their participation so far:
- Prof. Vijay Bapat (bionics, product design, creative engineering, rapid prototyping)
- Prof. Anirudha Joshi (human-computer interaction, design for people with less education, text input in Indic scripts, integrating interaction design with software engineering, design metrics)
- Prof. Pramod Khambete (pattern languages, user experience, service experience design, human-computer interaction)
- Prof. Ravi Poovaiah (semiotics, interaction design, environment design, communication design, social media, information visualization, information and structuring)
- Prof. GG Ray (ergonomics related to automobiles, products, workstations)
- Prof. Nina Sabnani (illustration, visual narratives, animation studies, visual ethnography, storytelling)
- Prof. Nishant Sharma (vehicle design)
- Prof. GV Sreekumar (typography, typeface design, information design, magazine design)
The workshop will also be an opportunity to interact with current and past PhD students at IDC.
Contents
Day I (Feb 23) |
Day II (Feb 24) |
|
| 9:00 am to 10:30 am | Welcome |
Keynote: What is Research, Prof. Uday Khedker, CSE, IIT Bombay |
| 11:00 am to 12:15 pm | Panel discussion: What is a PhD in design? How is it different from design? Chair: Prof. UA Athavankar Prof. Anirudha Joshi, Porf. Nina Sabnani, Neelakantan K, Shikha Agarwal, Aakash Jhori |
Life as a PhD student Chair: Sharmila Sinha Susmita Sharma, Prof. Santosh Kshirsagar, Abhishek Srivastava, Shikha Agarwal, Ravi Shankar, Prof. GG Ray, Anisha Malhotra, Neelkantan K |
| 12:15 pm to 12:45 pm | Alumnus talk: Before PhD, After PhD, Dr. Girish Dalvi | Alumnus talk (Dr. Rajendra Patsute) |
| 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm | How to prepare a PhD proposal? (Prof. Nina Sabnani, Neelakantan K, Saurabh Singanapalli) | Breakout sessions in smaller groups (Faculty + PhD scholars + PhD aspirants) Vote of thanks |
| 3:15 pm to 5 pm | Introduction to research areas (Prof. Anirudha Joshi, Prof. GV Sreekumar, Prof. Nina Sabnani, Prof. Vijay Bapat, Prof. Nishant Sharma, Prof. Pramod Khambete, Prof. Ravi Poovaiah, Prof. GG Ray) |
To Participate [now closed]
Please mail a 2-page statement of purpose giving information about your academic and professional background, your area of design research interest, and why you are interested to do a PhD, by February 8, 2013 to anirudha[at the rate]iitb.ac.in. Applicants will be shortlisted based on this SoP and intimated by February 15, 2013. Participation in this workshop is free, but participants will have to make arrangements for their travel and accommodation.
About the PhD Programme in IDC
The PhD programme at IDC was launched in 2005. In a short period, it has become very popular. Each year, about 100 researchers apply to IDC’s PhD programme. Already, 6 researchers have completed their PhDs. Another 38 researchers are currently enrolled in the programme; perhaps the largest number of design PhD students anywhere in the world. Research in IDC happens on a wide range of topics. For more about IDC’s research, please visit here and here.