Propose your PhD

In the past, PhD proposals in our department have come rather late in the PhD process; often they were balanced more toward reporting extensive thesis work so far than toward actually proposing work to be done. It may be useful to model PhD proposals that truly propose work after grant proposals. This page collects references, guidelines, and examples for crafting a PhD proposal document early on in the thesis work. David's vision for the proposal process is for the student's committee to be involved in three evaluations of the research:

1. Review the proposal document before most of the work it proposes has begun
2. Review the student's progress at a formal CS department-style "proposal" presentation
3. Sign off on the student's research at the public thesis defense presentation

The approximate timing of these events would be one year to 18 months between each pair.

NIH-Style PhD Proposals

There are five sections in the NIH grant proposal format relevant to PhD propsals:

1. Vision / Introduction / Summary
   • A (strictly) one-page summary of the context of your work, the "hole in the web of knowledge" that you perceive in this area, and what you plan to do to fill it. The page limit seems short but you only need enough background to give a general picture; arguments to establish novelty and significance go in the Significance section, accompanied with any more specific background required to make those arguments.
2. Contributions
   • An approximately one-page summary of the specific contributions you intend to make; in other words, deliverables. Each one needs only a short blurb to describe it.
3. Significance
   • A longer section explaining the significance and novelty of your proposed work, along with any further background you need to provide in order to argue these points. You need not refer to individual contributions, though that might be useful. This section should be chock-full of references to back up your arguments.
4. Preliminary Work
   • For a PhD proposal, this may include published work, informal feasibility studies for your various contributions, established relationships with collaborators, or unpublished (and perhaps even unpublishable) work demonstrating your familiarity with the field. You should try to cover everything that's relevant at all to your ability to complete the proposed research.
5. Research Plan
   • Arrange your contributions temporally, with milestones.
6. References

The Contributions section should be about one page long, and in total the Contributions, Significance, Preliminary Work, and Research Plan sections should total no more than ten pages---the NIH is strict about this, and David intends to be, too. You may take as much space as you need for references.

Evaluation Rubric

David's rubric for this proposal format follows:

1. Vision
   • concise
   • convincing
2. Contributions
   • contributions clear
   • evaluations of contributions clear
3. Significance
   • well established
   • assertions cited
   • related well to the literature
4. Research Plan
   • clear
   • concise
   • appropriate scale
   • no wasted effort
   • risks identified and sized
   • contingencies

Grant Proposals

Since this brave new world of authentic PhD research proposals is supposed to be modeled after the grant proposal and review process, here are guidelines and examples for two major granting agencies to which the VRL has applied in the past.

NIH

• NIH guide to proposals
• Example proposal: DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White Matter Variation by Laidlaw, Ahrens, Allman, and Bastin
  1. First submission
  2. NIH Reviews
  3. Revision A1, in response to the first round of reviews
  4. NIH Reviews of the revised proposal
  5. Revision A2, in response to the second round of reviews

NSF

• NSF grant proposal guide
• NSF guide to proposal writing

Older PhD Proposal Examples

Most of these example PhD "proposals" from previous years are proposals in the CS department sense: they report on a large body of completed work and propose the completion of the dissertation research.

• Dan Keefe's visualization PhD proposal from 2006
• Tomer Moscovich's graphics PhD proposal from 2006
• Daniel Acevedo's visualization PhD proposal from 2006 (presentation PPT)
• Dana Tenneson's graphics PhD proposal from 2007 (presentation PPT)
• Andy Wald's biomedical engineering PhD proposal from 2007
• Evan Leventhal's biomedical engineering PhD proposal from 2008
• Pepe's ecology & evolutionary biology PhD proposal