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Typical Viva Questions
Ref: School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of Nottingham
Overview
* In one sentence, what is your thesis?
* What have you done that merits a PhD?
* Summarise your key findings.
* What's original about your work? What is your original contribution?
* How would you describe your methodology and why did you decide to use this?
* How do your findings relate to the literature?
* What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?
* How did your research questions emerge?
* What are the motivations for your research? Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
* What is the relevance of your contributions to other researchers? ?
* What is the relevance of your contributions to industry?
* Who are your envisioned users? What use would your work be in situation X?
* What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?
* What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD? Remember that the aim of the PhD process is to train you to be a fully professional researcher - passing your PhD means that you know the state of the art in your area and the directions in which it could be extended, and that you have proved you are capable of making such extensions.
* What do you consider the weaknesses of your study? (try not to take up too much time here)
* Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the research?
* What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD?
* Have you achieved your research aims?
Basic knowledge in areas related to the topic.
* What have you done?
* Why have you done it?
* How did you do it?
* What have you found?
* What are the implications of these?
* Why did you do the research this way?
* Why not that way?
Questions about specific aspects
* For topic X:
* How does your work relate to X?
* What do you know about the history of X?
* What is the current state of the art in X? (capabilities and limitations of existing systems)
* Where do current technologies fail such that you (could) make a contribution?
* How does/could your work enhance the state of the art in X?
* Who are the main `players' in X? (Hint: you should cluster together papers written by the same people)
* Who are your competitors?
* Which are the three most important papers in X?
* What are the recent major developments in X?
* How do you expect X to progress over the next five years? How long-term is your contribution, given the anticipated future developments in X?
A chance to defend your methodology.
* Why have you done it this way? You need to justify your approach - don't assume the examiners share your views.
* Why didn't you do it the way everyone else does it? This requires having done extensive reading?
* What are the alternatives to your approach?
* What do you gain by your approach?
* What would you gain by approach X?
* Looking back, what might you have done differently? This requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.
* How have you evaluated your work?
* How have you demonstrated that it works, and how well it performs?
* how have you demonstrated its usefulness for a specific application context?
* What do your results mean?
* How would your system cope with bigger examples? Does it scale up? This is especially important if you have only run your system on `toy' examples, and they think it has `learned its test-data'.
* How do you know that your algorithm/rules are correct?
* How could you improve your work?
* How do your contributions generalise?
* To what extent would they generalise to systems other than the one you've worked on?
* Under what circumstances would your approach be useable?
* Looking back, what might you have done differently? Requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.
Future dissemination / plans?
* Outline where you think future development of your ideas could lead and how this might be done?
* What is the area in which you wish to be examined? (particularly difficult and important if your thesis fits into several areas, or has several aspects, or seems to fit into an area of its own as mine does).
* Which topics overlap with your area?
* Where will you publish your work - which journals? Think about which journals and conferences your research would best suit. Just as popular musicians promote their latest albums by releasing singles and going on tour, you should promote your thesis by publishing papers in journals and presenting them at conferences. This takes your work to a much wider audience; this is how academics establish themselves.
* You discuss future work in your conclusion chapter. How long would it take to implement X, and what are the likely problems you envisage? Do not underestimate the time and the difficulties - you might be talking about your own resubmission order!
Typical Viva Questions
Ref: School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of Nottingham
Overview
* In one sentence, what is your thesis?
* What have you done that merits a PhD?
* Summarise your key findings.
* What's original about your work? What is your original contribution?
* How would you describe your methodology and why did you decide to use this?
* How do your findings relate to the literature?
* What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?
* How did your research questions emerge?
* What are the motivations for your research? Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
* What is the relevance of your contributions to other researchers? ?
* What is the relevance of your contributions to industry?
* Who are your envisioned users? What use would your work be in situation X?
* What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?
* What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD? Remember that the aim of the PhD process is to train you to be a fully professional researcher - passing your PhD means that you know the state of the art in your area and the directions in which it could be extended, and that you have proved you are capable of making such extensions.
* What do you consider the weaknesses of your study? (try not to take up too much time here)
* Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the research?
* What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD?
* Have you achieved your research aims?
Basic knowledge in areas related to the topic.
* What have you done?
* Why have you done it?
* How did you do it?
* What have you found?
* What are the implications of these?
* Why did you do the research this way?
* Why not that way?
Questions about specific aspects
* For topic X:
* How does your work relate to X?
* What do you know about the history of X?
* What is the current state of the art in X? (capabilities and limitations of existing systems)
* Where do current technologies fail such that you (could) make a contribution?
* How does/could your work enhance the state of the art in X?
* Who are the main `players' in X? (Hint: you should cluster together papers written by the same people)
* Who are your competitors?
* Which are the three most important papers in X?
* What are the recent major developments in X?
* How do you expect X to progress over the next five years? How long-term is your contribution, given the anticipated future developments in X?
A chance to defend your methodology.
* Why have you done it this way? You need to justify your approach - don't assume the examiners share your views.
* Why didn't you do it the way everyone else does it? This requires having done extensive reading?
* What are the alternatives to your approach?
* What do you gain by your approach?
* What would you gain by approach X?
* Looking back, what might you have done differently? This requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.
* How have you evaluated your work?
* How have you demonstrated that it works, and how well it performs?
* how have you demonstrated its usefulness for a specific application context?
* What do your results mean?
* How would your system cope with bigger examples? Does it scale up? This is especially important if you have only run your system on `toy' examples, and they think it has `learned its test-data'.
* How do you know that your algorithm/rules are correct?
* How could you improve your work?
* How do your contributions generalise?
* To what extent would they generalise to systems other than the one you've worked on?
* Under what circumstances would your approach be useable?
* Looking back, what might you have done differently? Requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.
Future dissemination / plans?
* Outline where you think future development of your ideas could lead and how this might be done?
* What is the area in which you wish to be examined? (particularly difficult and important if your thesis fits into several areas, or has several aspects, or seems to fit into an area of its own as mine does).
* Which topics overlap with your area?
* Where will you publish your work - which journals? Think about which journals and conferences your research would best suit. Just as popular musicians promote their latest albums by releasing singles and going on tour, you should promote your thesis by publishing papers in journals and presenting them at conferences. This takes your work to a much wider audience; this is how academics establish themselves.
* You discuss future work in your conclusion chapter. How long would it take to implement X, and what are the likely problems you envisage? Do not underestimate the time and the difficulties - you might be talking about your own resubmission order!
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