What to expect with graduate studies?
If you have a bachelor or if you are about to graduate, you might wonder if graduate studies are for you. There are many ways to answer this question and the most common is to calculate if it is a good investment. In Texas A&M Aerospace Department, master and Ph.D. students are paid so it is not the question. The main reason to pursue a Graduate Degree in our group should be the love of Science and the willingness to push the limits of the understanding.
During your bachelor, you have learned basic concepts that are necessary to grasp the different aspects of your field. During Graduate Studies, you choose a subject you are passionate about and you try to go further than anyone else on this subject. It requires a lot of work and investment on a specific subject and this is the reason why the first question to ask yourself before starting a Ph.D. should not be “Will it be good for my careeer?”, or “Am I good enough?”, but “Am I passionate about this? Will I be willing to spend years working on it? Am I excited by this?”
How does this translate? How can you start from nothing to become The specialist of your topic? To sum up, your advervisor will guide you and you will benefit from the experience of other faculty and Ph.D. students, until you’re fully independant. Most of the time, the PI is having an idea he wants to further investigate and he will hire you to work on this specific topic. You will first read everything you can read on the subject to have a broad view on the problem, to understand the technicalities, the limitations and what we can expect to improve. Then you will work with your advisor to create a frame of your work and little by little you will arrive with your own ideas and take your own direction, so this work, that was the PI’s idea to begin with, will become your specialty, your own expertise.
Once you’re advanced enough, you will be asked to write journal articles and to participate to conferences and almost do the job of a researcher. You might also be able to teach as a teaching assistant, which can mean grading, leading a lab or helping students. You will also be able to mentor undergraduate students if you wish to.
Approximately 2 to 5 years after your started, depending of your credit requirements and your progression, you will start writing your Ph.D. defense and will be able to defend it to graduate!
During your Ph.D. you will acquire a broad professional experience. Of course, you will have become an expert in your field with a solid scientific background, but you will also have been teaching and mentoring people, you will have negociate quotes with companies and managing work on your part of the lab, you will have try to find fundings and new collaborations. So, once you graduate, of course you will be perfectly fit to continue in academia, but many options will be offered and you will be a good fit for many companies as well, in industrie or else!
Why work with E²ML
In E²ML, we try to promote freedom and team spirit. We encourage initiatives and ideas and as a group we try to support each other and confront our ideas so we have a rich scientific emulation. In the same spirit, we encourage each student to organize his/her workload like he/she wants as we think we all have different lives and different ways to work and the only important thing is the progress!
We also think it is important that each student works on experiments and simulations, so he/she has a full view of his/her topic.
So if you love science, if you like challenging thermo-mechanical conditions, if you want to mix experiments and simulations and are independant, E²ML is for you!
Open Positions
Here are the positions we are currently trying to fill. For more details, please click on the picture.
Other ways to work with us
While we don’t always have funding to open new positions, there are other ways to join the team. If you are brilliant, creative and love sciences, we would love to work with you! Here are a few options we have to fund your work
- Von Humboldt fellowship
Prof. le Graverend is a Von Humboldt fellow and is able to host academics from Germany through this fondation. If you want more information, click here.
- Fullbright fellowship
The Fullbright fundation offers fellowships for post-docs and PhD. For more information, click here.
There are many other options so feel free to investigate and contact us to express your interest. If we want to work together, we will find a way!