PhD Application

Overview

Are you interested in applying for a PhD with our school? If so, you must then read this!

Most of the requests I receive about PhD supervision/application are spam or mass non-targeted requests (i.e., messages sent to many academics). I will only respond to you if I believe they are genuine and informed requests. For that you should show that you know my research interests/expertise and that you have similar interests; otherwise you may never receive a reply.

Unfortunately, I do not generally have funding for students. When I have funding, I advertise them explicitly. There are some scholarship available at RMIT University (see point 7 below), but note these are extremely competitive for international applicants.

Potential student interns: I do not usually have funding for internships. When I do, I try to recruit from good RMIT students. I am unable to consider any requests for paid internships.

If you have any questions about PhD application (including funding), you can contact me or HDR Coordinators A/Prof. Jeffrey Chan or Prof. Xiuzhen (Jenny) Zhang.

Application Process

There are basically four steps to apply to PhD program:

  1. Check for eligibility: can you do a doctorate program?
  2. Identify your topic-project and potential supervisor. In your application you will need that.
  3. Contact the potential supervisor, explain your case: why you want to do PhD in that area and with him/her. If you don’t get his/her potential interest then it makes no sense to continue.
  4. Apply for entrance to the PhD program. This is done in two phases:
    1. Submission of Expression of interest (EOI). This will depend on step 2 above.
    2. Submission of Full Application, if EOI is approved.
  5. Apply for Scholarship to fund the program or part of it.

All this is done via this centralized RMIT system.

So, the major first step is 3.1 which requires step 2: identify a potential supervisor and a potential topic/project.

The list of projects are here: https://www.rmit.edu.au/research/research-degrees/find-a-project

Note these are some ideas of projects. As long as you find an area, topic, or problem that you are interested in, have the background needed to carry work there (e.g., math background), and is compatible with the potential supervisor, it is OK. The projects can be adapted, changed, or even added to the list!

Expression of Interest

So, if you are interested in my supervision, you must do the following to produce an EOI and eventually the full application (step 4 above):

  1. First, familiarize yourself with the DR221 PhD (Computer Science) program at RMIT and make sure you meet the Entry Requirements for such program. Also be very mindful of the funding of your program, see item 7 below.

  2. Then, check and study well my areas of work and my publications and find a common interest. Otherwise, you may need to look for some other staff member in the school. I do not take students working areas that I don’t have expertise and interest in.

  3. Contact me to check if I am taking students at that moment. You need to tell me:

    • The area/topic that you would like to pursue PhD under my supervision (e.g., path planning, reasoning about action, automated planning, agent oriented programming, goal recognition, etc) and what experience you have on them, if any.
    • My 2-3 papers that got your attention and you would be interested in working around. Please explain what you liked about those papers and what you think can be improved or studied further.
    • A title and one small paragraph of a problem/project you would like to work on. Some possible projects are listed on this page,but you are not limited to them at all.

  4. If all goes well, then your next step is to then your next step is to develop a 1-2 page research proposal describing a potential research project (including aims, methodology, expected outcomes, etc).

    • The purpose of this is to allow me/us to evaluate the suitability of your project, the overlap with my research, and its chance of success.
    • The proposal must be original, that is, the product of your own work, and aligned with my areas of work and my publications.
    • Being just a proposal, it does not have to contain technical content or amazing ideas, it is not your PhD, it is just an expression of interest for doing a PhD. However, it should not just be “hand-waving” or general concepts that cannot be trivially extracted from existing material (e.g., from my papers!). For example, writing things like: “I will develop a more powerful system that will help the agent make smarter decisions and in less time” is probably too vague and general. However, saying things like: “One limitation of the current approaches is X because R1, R2 and R2. I will investigate how to overcome such limitation by incorporating Y so that A1 and A2 happens, etc.” is in the right direction.
    • The proposal will also indicate your ability to communicate effectively, so make sure it is written well and with care for detail. Remember a PhD is carried out by high-performing students after a great Honour thesis, so you are meant to show good written communication.

  5. Once you have your proposal written, you can send it to me and I will let you know whether it is reasonable for me to be your potential supervisor in your application.

    • While the proposal is part of the application, it is not a “contract” with the supervisor and you should be flexible on the topic and specific problem.
    • Do not put down my name (or that of any other academic staff!) before following all the above steps. That will most probably significantly reduce your chances to be accepted.

Once you have the above (potential supervisor and a research proposal), you can then start your application via the RMIT submission process.

Funding

Acceptance to the PhD program does not directly mean you will be supported financially, both for tuition fees and living expenses during your program.

You can search the RMIT site to find the webpages for these scholarships:

For international students:

For local students (PR or Citizens):

When applying for the program, you should tick the box in the application on which PhD scholarships he/she wishes to apply for.

Unfortunately, I must warn you that scholarships for international applicants are unfortunately extremely limited and difficult to obtain. :-( You need to have a top grades but may also need publications already to have some chance.

Previous

Last updated on 18 Jan 2022

Edit this page