Research Visit to FZ Jülich, Germany
Report by Hugo Arnichand. Powered by FuseNet

I made my PhD thesis mainly in the Cadarache research center (France) at the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA). It was carried out within the framework of the European program named fusion Doctoral-Consortium (DC). This implied that different universities and research institutes were involved in my research work, and that I had supervisors in different places. In such a case, video-conferences on a regular basis and annual meetings are required! The last meeting with my German co-supervisors at ForchungZentrum-Jülich (FZJ) was funded by fusenet. The topic of my visit was the last results and… the PhD thesis manuscript!

Writing the manuscript is a major step during a PhD thesis, as three years of work have to fit within it! The results obtained have to be selected (even in a manuscript, there is no place to include everything!), sorted, organized and summarized properly. Additionally, the motivations of the research and the basics of your research area have to be introduced. To handle this hard task, the opinion and the help of the PhD supervisors are of great importance!

Step 1 : The title

It may sound strange to look for a title during the last year of the PhD thesis… but in many cases the original title is in fact not the final one! There are many possible reasons for this : the results don't always evolve as it was planned (it would not be research otherwise…), they can led to investigate deeper one sub-topic which becomes THE topic, etc. No need to stress that in a title, each word counts, thus it has to be selected carefully!

Step 2 : The outline

It is the skeleton of the manuscript, thus the better it is arranged, the better the thesis will stand up! It can of course be changed during the redaction, but it is somehow like the schedule in the construction of ITER… the sooner it will be fixed, the faster it will be finished! Thus before starting to write down everything, it is worth it to take a bit of time to think about it.

Step 3 : The writing

Last but not least! The article published during the thesis may help, but still a lot of work will be required and many iterations with the supervisors will be done. Two important points that should not be underestimated: the transitions between each parts (a thesis is a story, if there is no link between chapters, the reader may be lost!) and the figures which take a huge amount of time (especially for the perfectionist).

Writing a PhD Manuscript sounds easy, isn't it? It's up to you to try!