Doctoral studies at the University of Trento, Italy

Introduction

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I took up the continuation of an article written more than six months ago about how I went to Italy to do research. The material in this article will be perceived better if you first read the previous one , although, as always, you decide.



I will start from the moment where I finished last time. I'm in Italy, at the University of Trento doing research in the field of social networks, crowdsourcing. In this article I will talk about how I entered the doctoral program, about whether it is difficult to be a PhD student, about how exams are taken here, and what they are.
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University of Trento

The University of Trento is not so well known as Stanford or Massachusetts Technological, but very proud and actively developing university, which is trying to be on par. This university is the top university in Italy and very high attention is paid to the quality of education, the level of teachers and the selection of students.
Undergraduate studies take place in Italian; in the magistracy in half of the specialties (and all technical) occurs in English; almost all studies in English are in doctoral studies, with the exception of sociology and some other disciplines.

Doctoral studies Trento

Further, in the text, the words “postgraduate study”, “doctoral studies” and “PhD” ( Ph ilosophy D octor) will be interchangeable and mean the same thing.
Promotional video for doctoral Information and Communication Technology:



I arrived in Trento for six months to work under a contract, then after six months this contract was extended for another six months (until the end of October 2012). While here I applied for a doctoral program. In order to be considered, you need very good letters of recommendation. Since I was already working here, I had all three reference letters that I had to attach to the questionnaire when submitting from local professors, of whom two occupied a very high post, which helped me in no small measure. When you enter the doctoral program there are no entrance exams, everything happens on the basis of the forms that you submit online. What is important when submitting, in order of importance (my personal subjective opinion): letters of recommendation, research proposal (approximately six page descriptions of what you are going to do, why this area is new and to whom it is useful), a motivation letter (why you submit it in this university is for this specialty, and why you should be taken), the fame of the university from which you (not necessarily in the world, it is necessary for your university to be heard where you apply), an excellent knowledge of English, availability of scientific articles, experiences in the industry (the actual development experience, if it is computer science), your scores in the diploma (I have no diploma with honors and bachelor even had troyki- so the highest score on admission to me it was impossible to count).
So, I collected all the necessary documents, filed and waited for about a month. Then I received an e-mail stating that everything is fine and I did, and I was very pleased.

Doctoral Trento

Officially, I am not yet a PhD student and I will start it only on the 1st of November, but I live the same life as graduate students, I go to the same lectures and pass the same exams.
In the first year you are called the PhD candidate. At the beginning of the second year, you pass the qualification (protection of the chosen topic) and become a PhD student. For all the time of graduate school you need to earn 24 credits for exams. One successful exam gives you 3 credits. For the first year you need to pass at least 5 exams and another 3 for the second. The student is free to choose what exams he wants, but it is necessary that his professor should not be against this (that is, you will not be able to get 3 credits for the “new ways to get grape cake” course, if you are at computer science). There are two exams that are required to pass all. The first is about how to do research and write scientific articles, and the second about how to make presentations, formulate a speech, state your idea so that you are listened, understood, remembered and “bought” to what you are talking about. All these exams are only a necessary part of a PhD and are not the main occupation. The main work is research in your field, putting forward a hypothesis, conducting experiments, obtaining results, writing scientific articles, building new theories, and on the basis of all this, in 3-5 years defense of a doctoral dissertation.

I want to add that the pursuit of science is very complex. Of course, everything depends to a large extent on what field you are in, who is your professor, and so on. This is really a lot of work. An idea may be born in a dream (as legend has it from some scientists), but in a dream you will not conduct experiments, get results, and do not write an article to the conference.

Weekly meeting in which the research group shares the results:


PhD can not do "for fun", from "nothing to do", in parallel with other work. PhD - this is work that takes more than 40 hours a week, usually around 60, sometimes around 80.

Why do PhD?

Most people do PhD in order to engage in scientific activities and make a career scientist. Many do PhD in order to work on top positions in top companies in the departments responsible for the development and new technologies. Some do PhD in order to create their own company, which will work on the basis of technology and innovation, obtained in this academic environment.

Why do I do PhD?

I am at the University of Trento for a little more than six months and I really feel that I am developing, starting to think better and more widely, finding new solutions easier, and so on. Each course that I take here gives you real knowledge, makes you a little better than yesterday. It is quite difficult to explain, but I can say that I would not change my post-graduate studies here for a highly paid job, for example, in Moscow.

Very high level teachers. I have completed 5 courses:

• The course “Research Methodology 1” - a teacher for some time worked at Stanford
• The course “Research Methodology 2” - the teacher worked as a head of research department in HP, California.
• The course “Computer Support Cooperative Work” - teacher received a PhD at Virginia Tech, worked at Xerox PARC in California, now works at Xerox Grenoble, France
• The “Experimental Design” course was led by two teachers - one from Microsoft Research, the other from Google Research
• The course "Business Intelligence" - a teacher from HP Labs, California.

These people really have something to tell you and it is interesting to listen to them. The general list of courses for 2012 is here .

Design Thinking Center (DTC)

This year, in our university, together with the Trento Rise center, a new program appeared with the strange name Design Thinking Center . Its goal is to give the student skills not only directly related to the subject of his research, but also skills associated with design, personal development, in order to help convert academic innovations into start-up.
It could not interest me.
Promo video of the first course:



You can enroll in this program for children who have entered the PhD school of Information and Communication Technology this year and have been accepted. In order to enroll, it was necessary to make a 3-minute video clip describing a business idea and tell on one page how you are going to turn your idea into reality.
I caught fire and suggested the idea of ​​a LiveTrack-mobile application, which by various parameters understands what your mood is, where you are, and plays the appropriate music for you.



A few weeks ago, the results appeared and I found out that I went to this program, and I was very pleased with it. Starting in the fall, I will study there, and I think that everything will be fine ... wait, wait ... gratis!

Conclusion

This article was devoted to my university affairs and admission to a doctoral program. Here I talked about how great it is to study abroad in the beautiful and beautiful country of Italy. But I would like to make a reservation that I consider this a very good experience for myself — I chose this path, such a life. Some of my friends and work colleagues were surprised by my departure from work in favor of studying in Italy. I am not saying that this is the ideal way of life that suits everyone. When my professor asked me to advise him to good graduates of my faculty in Ufa, I thought it was very good and many guys would want to try themselves in entering Trento doctoral studies. Due to the fact that my peers (25-26 years old) graduated from the university several years ago, now many of them work in very good companies in well-paid positions. As a result, all the people to whom I proposed, refused. Everyone chooses his own way. There is no perfect. The main thing to be happy on your way.

The next article (it is almost finished) will be devoted to work in the field of start-ups, communication with representatives of business incubators, the creation of several sites, participation in StartupWeekend Trento, participation in the Innovaction Lab and much more. Here I will tell you what rake I attacked, what came of it and what lessons I learned.

Other topics

Speech by Donald Knuth in Trento

Apple Computer Museum in our faculty library

Politics

On March 4, the entire "Trentino cell" went to the Russian embassy of the city of Verona to vote. We spent about 500-600 rubles each on the road, but my candidate did not become president. Maybe another time.

Cataclysms

Before I came to Italy, I had never heard of earthquakes. Here I managed to survive them about 4-5 times. Most of the buildings in our city are built taking into account the possibility of earthquakes, so even when a cabinet of 2.8 meters high hits a wall where it hits, I wake up when the bed shakes under me, but there are no cracks on the walls. It is unfortunate that these natural phenomena / disasters this year in Emilia-Romagna and Milan brought such destruction and sacrifice.

A life

In general, I just want to write more about life here, about people, culture, food, and so on. But since Habra is not a resource for such topics, I will probably write in some third-party blog and post the link in the next article.