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Mehta, D., Vavitsas, K. PhD supervisors: be better mentors. Nature 545, 158 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/545158a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/545158a
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PhD supervisors: A designable guidance (By He-Ping Li, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China; liheping@tsinghua.edu.cn)
A non-proper guidance of a supervisor would have great risks that results in a growing ?supervisor phobia? of his/her graduate students due to his/her failure to find out the interests and potential of the students, or an un-appropriate way to discuss with the students during their research (E. Diamandis, Nature 544, 129; 2017).
In my opinion, as supervisors, a ?designable? guidance for different students is necessary. On one hand, the supervisor should first establish a good group academic atmosphere to let every graduate student in his/her group know that the scientific thinking method and the rigorous scientific attitude are the two necessary aspects for becoming an excellent researcher. On the other hand, the supervisors should recognize that each student has his/her own unique potential, for example, some students are good at theoretical analysis, while others always have good ideas on experiments; some students are interested in theoretical studies, while others like applications. So, the supervisors should design different projects to fulfil the unique potential of each student; especially encourage them to obtain the first good result to be published in a journal or to be filed as a patent as early as possible, e.g., in the second year of their PhD program. This would help the students to establish their strong self-confidence when they are start out in research. In my opinion, this is the third key point for the students, because this ?strong self-confidence? would become an inner strength to help them overcome difficulties in their future research. This personalized guidance is the supervisor?s ?artistic design? for each student based on the enough time, energy and intellective investment of the supervisors during his whole guidance to each student.