ROAD TO DISSERTATION

ROAD TO DISSERTATION
Elena Simona Lohan
Senior Researcher, Docent (Adjunct Professor)
Department of Communications Engineerings
Tampere University of Technology
elena‐simona.lohan@tut.fi
http://www.cs.tut.fi/tlt/pos

Outline
• Who am I? Why Finland?
• My GETA experience
• PhD research stages:
‣ Research and publish
‣ Make a plan for Dissertation (target research
results, target number of publications,…)
‣ Actual writing
‣ Dissertation day
‣ After Dissertation
‣ My experience as a woman
researcher in Finland

Who am I?
• Born and raised in Bucharest,
Romania
• 1992-1997: Engineering degree (equivalent of MSc) in 1997 from
«Politehnica» University of Bucharest (in electrical engineering)
• 1997-1998: DEA (equivalent of MSc) from Ecole Polytechnique,
Paris, France, in 1998, after 2-year study in Paris (in Optimization,
game theory, and economical modelling)
• 1998-2003: PhD from Tampere University of Technology (TUT) in
2003 (in wireless communications)
• Since 2003: Senior Researcher, lecturer and technical project
leader at TUT, Department of Communications Engineering.
Nominated in 2007 as a Docent (Adjunct Professor) for 5 years.
Research field: signal processing for wireless positioning
(especially satellite-based positioning)

Why Finland?
The 3 ’S’s: Summer, Sauna, Simplicity

My GETA experience
• GETA student between Aug
2000- Jul 2003
• Participant at 2 GETA courses during my PhD: a ‘core’ course in
telecommunications at Ruka and a course on satellite positioning
in Helsinki
• Attending 3 GETA boat seminars during my PhD studies
• Organizer of a GETA-funded course on ‘Wireless positioning’ at
TUT (summer 2009)

Family in Finland
Husband: Florin.
• Also a former GETA student.
• Now working at Nokia.
• Also co-founder of a small company
focusing on products for the distribution of
digital TV: Ondems.
• Also the author of the MLauncher, a music
player for S60 phones (free download at
http://www.mlauncher.org/)
Daughter: Iris (b. 2007).
• In (Finnish) kindergarten

PhD research stages:
Research and publish (I)
• Your research topic and directions of research are not the
sole responsability of your supervisor -> keep track of
state-of-art results in your field and look for innovative
ideas:
• On-line magazines, news articles
• IEEE database: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org
• The scientific literature digital library Citeseer
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/
• Patent databases, e.g.,
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/
• Look actively for cooperation and/or exchange of ideas with
other research units in Finland and abroad (e.g., web
searches, during conference attendance, …) -> fresh
thoughts

PhD research stages:
Research and publish (II)
• Where to publish?
• http://www.wikicfp.com/: Wiki Call for Papers in various areas; for
both conferences and journals
• http://edas.info/: after creating an account you can see many
upcoming CFPs (conferences/journals), mostly in signal processing
and telecommunications fields
• http://www.ieee.org: links to various IEEE conferences and journals
• http://www.eurasip.org/ : EURASIP journals, typically with specific
CFPs (faster publication)
• Discuss with your supervisor and colleagues about average
review times in chosen journals
• Chose a conference not only according to location, but mostly
according to its significance (relevance to the research field,
impact factor)
-> this is important especially if you think about an Academic career; it’s
also important to make contacts with people in your research field
(opportunity for future common projects)

How many publications are
needed for a PhD?
• This depends on University, field &supervisor
• Example, at Faculty of Computing&Electrical Engineering at
TUT: at least 1 journal and at least 4-5 conference
publications (average in our department: 2 journals+ 5
international conferences)
• Personal experiences:
• My thesis: 2 published journals, 1 journal in ‘accepted’
state and 6 conference papers
• My first (and only, so far) graduated PhD student: 2
published journals + 7 conference papers
• Suggestion: submit journal publications as soon as possible;
(they take long to be accepted); better to submit first your
novel ideas to a journal, then additional results to
conferences

On the impact factor
• Impact factor measures the average number of citations to an
article (or a collection of articles)
• Typically, a higher impact factor can be achieved when publishing
in journals&conferences with high impact factor. Of course, the
main criterion remains the quality, timeliness and clarity of your
published work
• Some tools to count the impact factor:
• http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm: ” Publish or Perish” free software
that retrieves and analyzes academic citations (e.g., impact factor,
citations per year, etc); based on Google engine (self-citations are
also counted)
• www.isiknowledge.com: ISI citation index
• Why it’s important?
• Own ‘pride’: feeling good when your work is cited by the others
• Project fundings are more and more dependent on this (e.g., EU
projects)
• Reviewers may consider your impact factor in their evaluation

What conferences to
avoid?
• The so-called ’multiconferences’, covering for example
everything from power electronics to software systems and
wireless signal processing.
• Examples: WSEAS and IASTED chains of conferences
• Reasons:
• Low quality of the presentations&papers; people are
usually not attending the actual conference session but
go only for sightseeing
• Many Reviewers are aware of the (lack of) quality of
such conferences and may be not satisfied with the list
of publication

‘Enthusiasm’ graph
“Keep on going, and the chances
are that you will stumble on
something, perhaps when you
are least expecting it. I never
heard of anyone ever stumbling
on something sitting down”
~Charles F. Kettering (American
inventor, born end of 19th
century)

Make a plan
• What to include in the thesis?
‣ Unified ideas (if you worked in different areas, it’s
important to find and justify the link between them;
alternatively, you can focus only on related areas)
• Discuss with your supervisor & senior colleagues
‣ Gather suggestions
‣ Take a decision
‣ Discuss your decision/plan with supervisor again
• Compendium or monograph?

Compendium or monograph?
Compendium
‣ Summary of 30-60 pages of
research area +
published/accepted papers.
Results from the articles are not
to be reproduced in the
introductory part
+ Easier to write
+ Faster to review
- Not well-recognized outside
Finland (make sure that
Reviewers understand the
concept)
Monograph
‣ Own contributions are
incorporated in the thesis body;
your publications are only given
as references (not added in the
thesis)
+ Unified notations/formulas
+ Can copy&paste from your
articles, but need to use same
notations within the thesis
+ May include articles still under
review process
+ Most countries have monographtype
of theses
- May take longer to write and
review

Writing process ‐
suggestions
• Best motivation: when is the deadline?
• Write down a document with references (+ few notes about
each reference: why useful?, what you found in there?)
already during the thesis -> much easier to put everything
together
• if you use Latex as Text Editor (personally, I would strongly
recommend it) -> you can save a large bibliography file to
be used for all articles & thesis. It also has a Windowsfriendly
version: Lyx.

Writing and review process
statistics
•Based on own statistics among 14 friends with PhD (from TUT, HUT
and Oulu Univ.)
•On average: 7-8 months from starting the writing till Dissertation

Review process –things to
consider
• If you send your thesis before summer/winter holidays =>
reduced chances that Reviewers will read it during the
holiday months =>some additional time is lost
• Risks:
‣ Reviewers not satisfied with the quality or quantity and asking for
additional publications. Mitigation: have sufficient publications when
submitting the thesis and check the requirements of a PhD thesis in
the country where the Reviewer comes from (e.g., 'Compendium'
concept is sometimes difficult to be understood outside Nordic
countries)
‣ Reviewers not exactly in your research field => comments hard to
understand or comply with. Mitigation: chose people close to your
research area.
‣ Delays in the review process. Mitigation: it helps if the supervisor
knows the Reviewers enough such that he can push them in
completing the review within a certain period.

Some recommendations
for PhD students
• Based on a query made to my friends& colleagues who completed their
PhDs during past 10 years (in Tampere, Helsinki or Oulu). Question:
• With your experience of today, what would you recommend to a PhD
student?
Answers:
Be dedicated to the work
Have an open mind for different views of the research problem
You should like what you're doing (choice of the research area is also
important to your future)
Keep on going and trust yourself
Write your thesis in a group where some senior researchers are actively
involved in you research.
Make a plan. Then break the long term goals into smaller plans of 3-5
months. Make sure that at the end of each period of 3-5 months you are
where you estimated you will be.
Process "PhD work" in small steps, if you go forward only a small step
everyday, eventually you will find yourself defending your work in
dissertation.

Reviewers & Opponents
• Choice belongs to the Supervisor but it is good to discuss
your preferences with her/him
• 3 different persons need to be involved in the process:
minimum 2 Reviewers + 1 Opponent. If 2 Opponents, it is
customary to choose one of the Reviewers also as
Opponent.
• At TUT, there is a strong recommendation that at least 1
Finnish person should be involved in the process (or, at
least, someone who got the PhD degree in Finland) ->
easier to explain the requirements
• When chosing the Reviewers/Opponents, check
beforehand the PhD requirements in their countries -> very
different requirements might hinder a smooth process.

Dissertation day –Lectio
Precursoriae
• In English or
Finnish
• General
introduction in
the research field
targeting a nonexpert
audience
• 15’-20’
• Keep it simple
• Avoid complicated
formulas and block
diagrams;
• Focus on
applications &
motivation: why is
your research work
important? what are
the possible uses of
the results?

Dissertation day –actual
‘defense’
• Starts with the Opponent’s speech on the significance of the
studied topics
• Continues with questions regarding your thesis, your research
area and related issues to the research topic (typically about 2-3 h;
in my case 3h30’ all together)
• Ends with the Opponent(s)’ statement regarding your thesis (at
TUT, 3 recommendations are possible: ‘passed’, ‘passed with
honors’ or ‘failed’). The Faculty Council decides the final ‘grade’,
based on the Opponents’ recommendation.

Dissertation evening:
karonkka
• Karonkka dinner is a custom in Finland to honor the
Opponents (and people who contributed/help in your
research work: opponents, supervisor, reviewers, coauthors,
secretaries of the department, close family,
friends,…).
• Number of invited people is up to your budget (at
minimum: Opponent(s)+Supervisor(s)).
• Code dress and certain customs regarding the
placement at dinner table (depends on you how strictly
you want to follow the protocol)
• A ‘thanks’ speech to be held during Dinner (for me ->
the second most stressful event of the day, after the
actual defense); better to prepare it beforehand if you
are not good at speeches

After Dissertation
• Thesis approval by the faculty Council
• Graduation ceremony
• Time to move on:
Academic career
Industry career
Plan for the future is wiser to be done already when starting the thesis
writing (e.g., discuss the academic possibilities, apply for jobs, buy
’around the world’ flight ticket, etc.)

My work after Dissertation
• Current group: 3 PhD students (1 currently in maternity leave) and 2 MSc
students
• Number of graduated students under my supervision: 9 MSc and 1 PhD
• Research interests: baseband GNSS receiver processing, fading channel
models, CDMA signal processing with applications in positioning, Binary
Offset Carrier modulation studies
• Group page: http://www.cs.tut.fi/tlt/pos/
• Participation in the following projects since 2003:
• 2 EU-funded projects in the field of Galileo mass-market receivers
(2006-2008 and 2009-2011)
• 2 Academy projects: Academy postdoctoral researcher (2004-2007);
principal investigator in an Academy research project (2008-2012)
• 3 Tekes-funded projects in the field of satellite-based positioning (2003-
2006, 2006-2007, and 2007-2009)
• Teaching activities: Communication Theory, Basics of Wireless
Communications & Spread Spectrum Techniques-focus on positioning, plus
various invited speeches at TUT.

My experience as a woman
researcher in Finland
• Easy to combine research & family life due to good
public day-care system, husband’s support and
understanding boss
• Flexible hours possible or working from home when
child is sick
• Typically, some work during weekends and holidays
also needed.
• Maternity leaves introduce significant delays in the
research work -> need to consider this aspect in your
family planning
=>Positive personal experience with Finnish system

Conclusions
“Consider the postage stamp: its
usefulness consists in the
ability to stick to one thing till it
gets there” ~Josh Billings
(humorist, 19th century)