Holidays at PhD Talk

Happy Holidays, dear readers!

I hope you all can take some rest, let go of your research, and recharge your batteries. I'll be spending time with my family in law, trying to talk a lot on Skype with my family and friends in Belgium (missing them gets just a little worse over cozy holidays), and trying to find some holidays spirit while the sun burns (we might schedule a trip to one of the higher towns (> 3000m above sea level), so I get a dose of cold weather to pair with the holidays.

The regular posts will resume on January 5th.

I'm delighted and flattered and happy and more to see how PhD Talk has been growing over the past year. I'm still searching for a direction for PhD Talk now that I finished the PhD - but I decided to just let the topics flow as my life and interests flow, instead of trying to pin myself down. As I evolve, my writing evolves, my academic life evolves and it would be unnatural if the contents of this blog wouldn't evolve with me.

2014 promises to be another year full of challenges: my first year in which I juggle my research position in Delft with my professorship in USFQ - let's see how that goes (and let's see how I do with teaching 3 new courses in 1 semester *__* ).

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: The Curious Case of the Academic Nomads

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Life in academia can take you from one temporal contract in country A to another challenge in country B, with stops for fieldwork in countries C and D and maybe a few months as a visiting scholar in country E. Most academics are hired for a period of 2 to 4 years, depending on the type of work that they might do.

I like to call those that hop from country to country as their career meanders over the years the academic nomads.

Most of us might not be expecting this ever-evolving and ever-traveling path when we start our careers in academia. But then research life happens and you get to know people and opportunities come up, and before you know you're boxing up your life for the umptieth time.

That happened to me. As a student, I enjoyed going on exchanges during the summer holidays, and I was planning an extra post-graduate year after my engineering studies, but I thought I'd try and score a job at Belgium's biggest prefab concrete fabricator, conveniently located in my beloved hometown of Lier, Belgium. But then I received this email to notify me that, with my good grades, I could apply for scholarships to study in the US. And in the process I thought, well, why not set my mind on going on for the PhD afterwards? With 2 prestigious scholarships in my pocket, I set sail for Atlanta, and started my second Masters' degree in Fall 2008. And then the financial crisis hit, and soon it became clear to me that securing funding for a PhD would be difficult. I knew that I wanted to stay in structural concrete research, preferably a topic on shear, torsion or second-order-effects in columns, and I started to look for openings. I learned about the new project in Delft, applied, and got accepted by the end of my first semester at Georgia Tech. I rolled up my sleeves, studied a little harder, got my Masters' by August, and started in Delft in September, leaving a then-boyfriend behind in the US. He finished his PhD and went to work for the industry in the US, and then I finished my PhD. We had to look for a place where both of us could find a job, and so ended up in Ecuador. At the same time, I could secure a part-time position in Delft, to keep involved in research. Don't ask me how often I've moved over the past years...

Very often, I read stories of fellow academics who move from continent to continent, as they amass scholarships, short-term job contracts and the like.

If you are considering graduate school, you might as well get yourself prepared for this roller-coaster of moving from place to place. And now that we're at it, why not consider going to the Netherlands for your PhD? It wasn't part of my original plan, but it worked out like a charm.

My main message is: be prepared for gradually turning into a nomad! You might just get lured into this lifestyle while you follow your excitement over projects....

If you notice that you are headed for a life as an academic nomad, then you might want to take the following tips into account:

1. Go digital

Books are heavy, so to avoid having to move by container all the time, try to buy as many books digital as you can. Similarly, get your music as digital files, scan your important notes, and go paperless as much as you can.

2. Fly the same airline

As an academic nomad, you will be flying a lot. Pick an airline, and be loyal to them in return for getting miles. Mileage status will give you extra perks over time, and you can turn them in for a free flight.

3. Sort out your clutter

Unless you want to keep a room filled with boxes in your parents' house "until you get a tenured position in your homecountry", you might just need to sort through all your stuff and sell/thrash/recycle what you don't need anymore.

4. Identify a few items that you value

Even though the hardcore minimalists might disagree, I think it's perfectly OK to have a couple of items that you cling to, and that you use to make your new place truly feel like you home. I have a number of totally random items (a giant wall backdrop, my "pace" flag, 2 sets of matryoshkas, a teddybear and a small stone for putting essential oils) and my cat that I drag along with my wherever I go. These little things just make me feel more comfortable wherever I try to settle for a little while.

5. Embrace the best of every country

If you move, you get a culture shock. That's the plain truth. But in order to overcome the I-hate-this-place phase, you'll have to learn to find the best in every country. Go out and explore the natural beauty of your new place, visit local festivities and events, and try to bond with the locals. Before you know, you'll have yet another country that you'll miss when you're not there...

How Successful Women Balance Work and Life

Today, we are looking at the topic of balance and employment. Work-life balance and staying sane in graduate school are topics that I write about frequently here at PhD Talk, so I was glad when Ashley Jones pitched me for a guest post on combining work and life. While this post is tailored to women, I think the ideas in here are valid for all of us - regardless of our gender

As women move through their live, the approach to finding a balance between work and life is becoming an important issue in contemporary life. Women are rightfully taking on many of the most demanding occupations that society can offer and as a result are increasingly responsible for a majority of the most difficult jobs in the country.

Among this subset of skilled workers, women with doctoral degrees are particularly accustomed to work schedules that leave little time for personal space and reflection. Accordingly, it may be of benefit to list just some of the ways that successful women are striking balances between their careers and their personal lives.

1. Meditation
Long an activity that stood at the forefront of Eastern philosophies, meditation is now recognized by many health professionals as an engaging way to promote self-care. By reducing rumination and other forms of anxious thinking, meditation is a particularly apt way for successful women to direct the watercraft of their days into calmer waters. Numerous practitioners of meditation find that the activity becomes an anchor of calm in their busy lives and leads to a greater sense of focus and overall health. Whether done by oneself or with the help of experts, meditation is only likely to gain more followers in the future.

2. Creative Work
Even when free-time can seem limited, finding a few minutes a day to do creative work can be a major way to promote a work-life balance. For example, writing fiction or personal essays can provide an outlet for experience that can feel immensely rewarding; even finding an hour a day to write can bring numerous benefits. Other forms of creative work such as painting and sculpture can also provide relief from the stresses of work and create a sense of happiness and satisfaction both on and off the job.

3. Life-long Learning
Learning about new ideas in life doesn't have to stop once a doctoral thesis is finished. Finding area colleges that offer evening or weekend classes are great ways to keep the mind sharp and skills current. By choosing a subject that’s unfamiliar but interesting, successful women can often find that while knowledge is always changing, learning is a life-long process. As a means for socializing, taking classes can also introduce non-traditional students to new friends and even mentors. For many people, a love of learning can become a daily practice even after they’re experts in a field.

4. Love of Travel
Sometimes learning to take time for oneself is among the most important lessons anyone can gain in life. For example, taking a period of time to examine another country will often teach a person more about different cultures than anything else, and travel can often act as a sort of deep breath from our careers. As a field of interest, travel has become one of the most popular ways to understand ourselves and others, and its proponents often wouldn't trade the experiences they've gained in foreign countries for the world.

Ashley Jones is the author of many articles with resources for professional women. Her recent work is on the Best Online Master of Science in Education (MSEd) Degree Programs for women who want to work while learning

Silver Linings: the Fruits of Ecuador

One way in which I am enjoying life in Ecuador, is by trying out all the exotic and rare fruits this country has to offer. Generally, there are the exotic fruits from the coast, that grow in the hot and humid climate of Ecuador's coast, and then there are the fruits from the highlands, which are very difficult to find in Europe, because of the unique combination of altitude and year-round mild climate that is so typical for the Andean highlands.

Tropical fruits

I only have this one to share (and it's not a rare fruit at all):



When I ordered coconut water, I didn't expect them to come and drop a coconut with a straw on my table...

And then I discovered that passion fruit is yellow here instead of black (still tastes equally delicious):



Fruits from the highlands

By no means this list is complete, but so far I've tried the following oddities:



Ovos - they are something like a sweet olive. Weird, to say the least.



The chirimoya or custard apple - maybe we had one that was overly ripe, but this thing was revoltingly sweet.



The "pepino dulce" or melon pear tastes like a mixture of melon and cucumber. Odd, and not something I'd recommend.



The "guanabana" or soursop is a delcious fruit that is used for smoothies. It takes quite some time and effort to clean the fruit which contains big seeds, but the flavor of this fruit is amazing.



The "naranjilla" or lulo is family of the tomato (nightshade family), looks like a little orange and tastes like a slightly bitter mashup version of rhubarb and lime. Might sound odd, tastes pretty refreshingly.



"Tuna" is the local prickly pear - and it tastes just a little less sweet than figs.



Tha "babaco" is a large fruit, that is rather sour, and works very well in smoothies.



The "salak" has snake skin, looks like garlic with a pit on the inside, and tastes in between green apples and chestnut.

That's all the oddities I've been sampling so far - and I'll post more when I come across them! Check out my #weridfruitsfromEcuador series on Instagram as well :)

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Cultivating the Art of Writing

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

Let's talk about the nitty-gritty of academia today. If you are thinking about applying to PhD programs (in the Netherlands, or any other place in the world), you'll need to be ready to roll up your sleeves and type and type until your keyboard comes apart. If you are a seasoned researcher, you know that writing is important, and today's post can help you get your focus clear.

Writing is a skill that I always considered very important. However, when Cal Newport from Study Hacks did the math to determine what makes a successful career in science, and found out that it your number of published papers, and how often they are cited, I realized that, more than anything, writing is what matters in academia.

To understand writing in its different aspects, I've been running the Writers' Lab series over the past year. The writers' lab series contains posts about my experiences writing my dissertation, guest posts from academics and writers from all walks of life, and other topics related to (academic) writing.

But let's say that you are a fledgling graduate student, or an early career researcher wanting to be successful in academia. the previous has shown you that, more than anything, you need to cultivate the art of writing. How do we develop the habit of writing so that we can steadily produce our reports, dissertation chapters and papers?

1. Schedule time

If you start writing a conference paper the night before the deadline, something is wrong with your planning. Research has shown that academic writers who write steadily for a certain amount of time every day, have a larger academic output than those who go for binge-writing.
If you are an (aspiring) PhD student, this means that you should continuously report your work, so that you can pull from that material later on when you need to write a paper, or for when you start writing your dissertation.
If you are an early career researcher, this means that you should try to set aside chunks of writing time, preferably every day, so that you can steadily work on your publications.

2. Have a writing planning

When you schedule time consistently throughout your months and weeks, you also need to know what you want to be writing from week to week and from month to month. Make an overview of the reports, chapters and papers that you need to write, and make a planning for your writing.
PhD students, this means that you have the general overview of which chapters you will be writing when (in which year of your program), and keep space to write background reports and papers that will come up along the road.
Early career researchers, you'll need a planning for writing your journal papers. With all other responsibilities popping up in between, I understood that (when the research is done) 2 to 3 months per paper is a good estimate.

3. Write a lot

Train that writing muscle by writing a lot! It sounds like a no-brainer, but it is so important. By the way, writing e-mails and tweets doesn't count towards your "writing a lot". Develop your writing skills by writing for different audiences. Outside of academia, you can further develop your writing skills through journaling, blogging and writing fiction.

4. Learn from examples

Nothing is a better teacher than an example of a paper that you find particularly clear. Did you notice that some papers seem to take you forever to understand, and that you have to read sentences twice? That can be a sign of poor writing, more than of your poor understanding. On the other hand, do you have a paper that you find yourself nodding along, making little side calculations and sketches? Signs are that this is a clear paper. Analyze papers that you appeal to you. How is the sentence length? How much jargon did the author use? How is the structure of the paper? Learn from this example, and apply these lessons to your own work.

5. Become your own critic

It's time to grow up, folks! Nobody is going to come with a red pen and correct your writing anymore. Your adviser might help you out at the beginning of your PhD, but afterwards poor writing will just be sent to the "reject" pile. Learn to become your own critic. Analyze your sentences, analyze the flow of your paragraphs, the structure of your chapter/paper, and the visual clarity of your figures. Give your work a few weeks of rest, and then return with the sharpest eyes.

6. Figures are part of writing too

When we think about writing, we think about words and sentences. Writing is more than that, however. When we ski through a paper, we typically read the abstract, introduction, conclusions and then glance over the figures. As such, figures are a vital part of our writing. Learn how to draw clear figures (admittedly, I still struggle with this area of my writing). For good references on visual information, check out Edward Tufte's books.

7. Revise profoundly

Revising your work is something that needs to be scheduled too. Don't just make a planning based on the time it takes to write your first draft, but plan time for editing, for letting your work rest, and for discussing it with others. What I learned last year, is that editing my dissertation took twice as much time as writing the first draft. Even though I had major parts of my dissertation in conference papers and reports, revising still took much more time than I could have imagined.
When your writing does not flow, erase an entire paragraph, define the message you want to convey in that paragraph (you can do this by talking out loud: "I want this paragraph do describe such and such based on X and Y"), and then rewrite your entire paragraph. Don't be afraid of wiping out text here and there and starting over new. Instead, know that this is an essential step in moving your writing forwards and towards higher quality.

8. Write with others

As a PhD student, you will mostly be writing with your adviser and committee members. But, if possible, try to broaden your pool of co-authors. You might reach out at conferences to fellow researchers, with whom you might like to work on a publication. When you are exposed to other writers, from different institutions, you will learn from their writing styles, and your own writing will mature as well. Break out of the confinement of your fixed group of co-authors and actively seek cooperation across institutions, countries and disciplines.

Paper in Structural Engineering International

I'm excited to announce my most recent publication, in the IABSE journal of Structural Engineering International.
After the IABSE conference in May of 2013, a number of authors were invited to submit a paper to this special edition on "Assessment, Upgrading, Refurbishment and Conservation of Infrastructures" - and we were among these.

You can access the online version of the paper here.

The abstract of the paper is the following:

Upon assessment of existing reinforced concrete short-span solid slab bridges according to the recently implemented Eurocodes that include more conservative shear capacity provisions and heavier axle loads, a number of these structures were found to be shear-critical. The results from recent experimental research on the shear capacity of slabs indicate that slabs benefit from transverse load distribution. Recommendations for the assessment of solid slab bridges in shear are developed on the basis of these experiments. A load spreading method for the concentrated loads is proposed and the applicability of superposition of loading is studied. The resulting most unfavourable position for the design trucks is provided and implemented in the so-called Dutch "Quick Scan" method (QS-EC2). Cases of existing bridges are studied with the previously used QS-VBC as well as with the QS-EC2 that includes the recommendations. As a result of the assumed transverse load distribution, the shear stress to be considered at the support based on the recommendations becomes smaller.

The keywords of this paper are: EFFECTIVE WIDTH; LIVE LOADS; LOAD DISTRIBUTION; REINFORCED CONCRETE; SHEAR; SLAB BRIDGES.

Four Tips That Will Get You Noticed During a Job Interview

Today we are expanding on the topic of finding a job after the PhD. This guest post by Ross Jilling gives you some ideas on how to stand out when you go for a job in the industry.

The economy has made finding a job increasingly difficult, but when you reach the interview stage there are a few steps you can take to increase your chances of landing the position. Being polite, forthcoming, honest, prepared, well-dressed and having extra resumes are all excellent preparation to be made, but if you focus on a few key areas, you’ll stand apart from the pack and increase your chances tremendously. Companies want employees who can communicate well, are personable, and know how to behave in professional settings, and the following will help prove that you are capable of such tasks.

Speak With Authority
The most common mistake people make during interviews is to speak elaborately and meekly. Filler words such as “um” and “like” should be avoided while talking to the interviewer. If necessary, pause while speaking to collect your ideas instead of using filler words. The company wants to see that you can communicate effectively, and as a professional. Verb tense should never be passive, either. A passive tense is typically dull, and many people find it boring. Instead, use active tenses to increase your own energy and raise the interviewer’s interest.

Remaining confident and upbeat can also help, but don’t be disingenuous. An interviewer may think that you come off as fake if you behave with too high-levels of energy. Instead, try to maintain a natural and healthy level of positive energy.

Practice Your Posture
Aside from speech, your posture is the second most important outward trait that others will use to judge you. It’s important not to slouch, recline, or sit awkwardly. It’s also best not to lean against objects while standing and to retain an upright posture. While seated, sit upright, back straight, with your feet planted firmly on the floor, or crossed. Hands should remain at your sides while standing, or in your lap while sitting; never fiddle with objects, play with garments, or fidget since unnecessary distractions may interrupt your thoughts and make conversation awkward.

Eye contact is another important and often-neglected aspect of posture. It may be difficult, but don’t let your eyes wander while speaking to the interviewer. Eye contact creates a human connection, and it also affirms an assertive presence.

Personal Speech
There are common questions asked during nearly every interview. One is surely a variation of “tell me about yourself.” Always prepare for this question by creating a story about your past that has shaped your values, accomplishments, and goals. Make it informative but brief, so the interviewer may ask you questions afterward. Beforehand, do some research about the company and tie the organization’s values into your story as well.

Dress to Succeed
Most interviews will require business dress. For men, that means a button-down shirt and tie, slacks, and dress shoes. For women, it means a business suit, a blouse and skirt, or a dress paired with nice shoes. Appearing at an interview with a slovenly or casual appearance is unacceptable, and most interviewers will discard the interview, no matter how impressive you may be. Choose clothing that fits well and you’ll stand out on your own. Friends or family can help you choose clothing that works best, but remember to dress conservatively and in a way that doesn’t distract from the interview.

It’s important to stand out in a positive way during job interviews. Many interviewers will interview dozens of people, and your chances of getting the job drop dramatically if the interviewer cannot recall much about your time together. Speak clearly, maintain a strong presence, prepare a story that identifies you, dress well, and you’ll stand apart from the crowd.

Ross Jilling writes es all about employment and education. His recent work is a piece titled "Smart Choice 25 Best Online Colleges"

Project #tweetprop: Feynman and uncertainty

The fifth proposition of my dissertation is the following:

I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. (Richard Feynman)

or in Dutch:

Ik kan leven met twijfel, en onzekerheid, en niet weten. Ik denk dat het veel interessanter is te leven met het niet weten dan met antwoorden die misschien verkeerd zijn (Richard Feynman)

This proposition is part of those propositions that are not directly related to the contents of my dissertation, as you might have guessed.

I remember that I was a young child of about 10 years old, and my mother used to read me books before tucking me in for the night. One of the books that she read to me was "Sofie's World" by Jostein Gaarder, a novel about the history of philosophy. Nothing struck me as much as Socrates' "I know that I know nothing".

By the same token, I recall once getting a question at the end of a presentation within our research group. One of my colleagues asked me: "Do you really understand now how shear works in concrete?" I told him that there are two different things here: I do not claim to understand fully how shear in concrete really works - there might be another 100 years of research to fine-tune our findings and keep looking for the ultimate theory on shear. On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that, by now, I have a good understanding of the topic. At the same time, I remain in awe for the big riddle of shear, which, frankly, still amazes me, while I don't fully understand it.

Along those lines lies what I consider a healthy outlook on the value of our scientific work. We can never know it all. We learn, we grasp some concepts, find a breakthrough, and find a number more questions. All the while, we keep our curiosity to look for more answers. That is the joy and beauty of our work.

So, when I stumbled upon this quote by Richard Feynman, I knew I would borrow it for my propositions. Not only does it fully resonate with how I approach the big questions in life (within my research, and outside of that), but it is also a Feynman quote. And Feynman is the bomb.

I blogged about Feynman earlier, and about his way of breaking down problems into their core elements. One of my favorite books ever is Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). In this book, Feynman shows us in a very playful way how much science can be. He manages to lift up topics that are as loaded as the development of the atomic bomb into the quest of a young child trying to solve a number of riddles. If anybody can prove us that science is fun, then it is Richard Feynman.

Finally, this quote also resonates with my liking for the zen concept of the beginner's mind. When we keep an attitude of not knowing, of not boasting with confidence on a topic, but carefully exploring the possible answers, without wanting to find a rigid solution - that is when deep work is done, And that is when we approach science both with the respect it deserves as well as with a playful attitude of toying with ideas.

Scheduling class preparation time

As I've started my new job at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, I got 3 courses assigned to teach in the Spring semester. Three new courses to teach means three new courses to prepare - which initially sounded like a ton of work to me.

For reference, the first lecture I ever taught took me roughly 30 hours to prepare. No way I can spend 15 hours per hour of class when I'm teaching 9 hours of class per week...

To figure out how much time I should schedule, and get a realistic idea of what to expect next semester, I turned to the Biggest Oracle of our World aka the internet.

First of all, I stumbled upon this great resource from University of Chicago on preparing to teach. This document takes you step-by-step through the process of preparing a new course: from the moment you put your syllabus together to the actual delivery of your class.

Then, I found that the American Faculty Association discusses the topic of class preparation time very directly. They give 2 to 4 hours of preparation time as a rule of thumb. My planning is happy with getting a real estimate of the required time.

I also learned (not really to my surprise) that, as with everything, there is a law of diminishing returns for class preparation time. The more time you plan to spend preparing, the more time it will take up. We know that from PhD research too. The guideline from this resource is "Two hours for new lectures and half an hour for lectures you've given before is a good guideline". The authors of the article suggest a "mean and lean" approach to preparing for your class - and I am planning to follow this approach.

Finally, I turned to Twitter to get advice from more experienced lecturers. Many times, 4 hours of preparation for a new class is coming up. The Storify of this discussion is here at the bottom of this post.

In conclusion: I'm scheduling 4 hours of preparation per class. As suggested in the "mean and lean" approach, I am subdividing that into the following activities:
45 minutes to read the class material
45 minutes to distill all important information
15 minutes to outline the class hour
45 minutes to construct the argument around the "what if" question
45 minutes to prepare an example and possible homework
45 minutes right before class to make some slides with figures that are complicated to draw on the blackboard, or pictures from practice, and to revise all material.

The future of PhD Talk

Today, I'm asking you a little bit of your time, to fill out the following questionnaire. As I'm still in doubt what to do with PhD Talk after the PhD, I'd love to ask you guys your opinion.


Please click this link to go to the very short questionnaire... 1000 times thanks!

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: How to Plan your Career in Science

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

So you just got offered a research position? Congratulations, enjoy the feeling of success and triumph, and celebrate it. Then, fasten your seatbelt, you are in for a bumpy ride.

Regardless of the point in your career in science, you always need to have at least some sort of a plan and roadmap for your next steps (well, unless you are headed for retirement). We are talking about a career in science in general - whether that be at a university as an academic or a position in industry.

And how about planning in these tough economic times? Shouldn't we just ride the waves and hope we find a job somewhere, somehow?

Let me expand on that before you give up on the idea of planning and laying out your roadmap all together.

The key here is that having a plan gives you more determination. If you point your compass to your north and start walking towards it, your chances are much higher than when you simply start roaming around.

However, never forget to be flexible. If your dream position does not show up, then start cobbling together something that makes you happy, and that still more or less points towards your North. Many people (myself included) work a few part-time jobs together to assemble a career for themselves. Create your own possibilities. Don't lean back in defeat when something does not work out - you never did that at first defeat when trying to solve a problem in science, did you?

With that, I assume you are on board with the idea of having a roadmap. Remember that nothing is written in stone, and if you feel like a certain path is plainly making you miserable, then be true to yourself and look for alternatives.
Now, let's look at how you can put your goals into action!

1. Understand the requirements

The first step might sound like a nobrainer, but in reality, the requirements to move forward might not always be that clear. If you are on a tenure-track path, then maybe you have a rigid set of criteria that you need to fulfill within a certain amount of time, before you can move up. In most cases, there is a lot of reading in between the lines going on. Values differ from work place to work place, even from boss to boss. As such, it can be a challenge to see what is valued most highly for a career option in a certain place. When the list of requirements looks endless, the top priority might be hard to find.

When the requirements need some digging to uncover, go and observe people in that workplace. Walking into a place and asking "hey folks, how do things work here" is not what I mean with this. Instead, go to open days, meet people at industry events and listen to their stories. Meeting groups of people from the same place can be particularly interesting to observe their group dynamics.

2. Learn from an example

Who is doing what you would love to do in five or twenty years from now? What did this person do prior to achieving that position? Study a number of people whose career path seems in line with your dreams. Try to identify the tipping points in their careers (from "hit publications" to involvement in industry organizations), and learn from these examples.

To broaden your outlook on achieving excellence in general, look at examples outside of your field. Read biographies of inspiring leaders, and see in which ways you can have a bit of their oomph in your life. Dare to get the best out of yourself.

3. Show up and lean in

Be visible. If you want to climb the academic ladder, then go to the right conferences, get involved in committees, visit other labs, get your name out through publications... You know the drill - or you should have distilled the drill from your examples. If you are shooting for a job in the industry, then start getting involved in industry events, industry organizations and the like.

Don't shoo away into your dark hole where you are slaving away at getting your very best work out. You might be tempted to tell yourself "I'll wait another half year before I go out to a conference and present my work, so that I can be sure it's worth showing to the world." Come out and put yourself out there.

4. Keep your authenticity

With all the previous, you might be tempted to become a copy of successful person who you hold as an example. Keep in mind that an example is just that: an instance serving for illustration. Something to learn from, take your lessons home from, and then add your own sauce to it.

It might sound preachy and fluffy, but only when you are true to yourself, you can stand out. Only when you are true to yourself, people will notice you as being yourself instead of an anonymous copycat of someone who you are not, will never be and can never be.

5. Take your personal life into account

Last but not least - don't forget to plan within the opportunities and constraints of your personal life. If you have a family, moving abroad to your ideal lab might be a big challenge. If you're ready to take the plunge, make sure you have everyone on board in this adventure - otherwise you'll end up either separated from those who give you the energy and love to excel at work, or dragging along a bunch of unhappy people who'll take down your mood and energy levels too.

Your career is an important part of your life. It's something you can take pride in, something that can fulfill you intellectually. But it's just a part of your life - there are other aspects you should never let slip to the back unless you consciously take that choice.
When I decided to move to the Netherlands and leave my then partner / now husband in the USA, it was a conscious choice. It motivated me to work hard and finish quickly. At the same time, we had a plan for afterwards, and having that light at the end of the long distance relationship tunnel was something I had to remind myself of regularly.

Now go and reflect on what your ideal next step looks like, what you need to achieve for that - and make it come true!

Finding employment outside of academia

Recently, I interviewed Samuel Oduneye, after his comment on "Getting a Job, after the PhD".

Samuel was awarded his PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto, and just starting working in management consulting (as a healthcare consultant). You can follow him on Twitter @Samuel_ITL .

As I got curious about the many opportunities freshly graduated doctors have in industry, that rely on the generic skills you learned during your PhD, I invited Samuel for an interview.



I've summarized some of the main points that Samuel taught me during the interview.

First of all, there are 3 things to consider for your post-PhD career:
1. Your title is important. It shows your credentials and it can count as a guarantee for a certain level that can be expected from you.
2. Your degree and your title can help you to get a foot in the door and build an audience, but they won't make your career. You'll need to show that you have something to bring to the table.
3. You need a plan!

Regardless of the career you choose after getting your PhD, there are 3 important skills that you learned in graduate school and that you can use as a selling point when you are applying for positions:
1. Communication: all this writing and presenting we did in the past years make us quite experienced communicators.
2. Teamwork: no PhD is a completely solitary experience. You might be working with lab technicians, other scientists, students or senior faculty, and this all teaches you how to perform in a team.
3. Analytical and problem-solving skills: besides solving riddles that were part of our PhD, we are suited for cracking tough nuts regardless of their field of application.

Finally, there is a number of common professions and career paths that are suitable for young doctors. CaleD wrote a series of posts on the blog of Medical Biophysics at University of Toronto, titled "The Inevitable Career Search". These blog posts help us think out of the box and off the well trodden path of academia. The following are careers that might appeal to you:
1. Management Consultancy: This is the career path Samuel chose, and you can hear his description in the interview.
2. Patent Lawyer or Patent Agent: Intellectual property is a buzzword these days, and your technical understanding can be required in a patent office.
3. Financial Services: The banks need people with strong analytical skills for data analysis.
4. Technical Writer: This career path lies relatively close to all the writing you did during the 4 to 5 years of your PhD.
5. Policy Analyst: Both in the public and private sector, your analytical skills will come in handy to weigh qualitative and/or quantitative data to help make informed decisions.
6. Technology Transfer and Business Development: Working at the intersection of industry, academia and law, you can use your communication skills and analytical skills to find a market for a research proposal.

If you have more questions on the possible career paths after your PhD, or management consultancy in particular, you can contact Samuel on Twitter.

Preparing for life after the PhD: re-train your brain

Today, I have the pleasure to host Dr Chris Humphrey who shines his light on that dreaded topic of getting a job after the PhD.  

Dr Humphrey is the founder of Jobs on Toast, a blog dedicated to helping masters students and PhDs to find fulfilling careers outside of academia. Chris obtained his PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK) in 1997, and he is the author of The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England. 

Since leaving academia in 2000, Chris has worked in a range of project and programme management roles in the areas of sustainability, finance, transport and training. 

Chris regularly gives workshops at UK universities on the subject of marketing yourself for a career outside academia, and he will shortly be launching an online directory of paid-for products and services benefiting doctoral researchers. Follow Chris on twitter: @chrishumphrey.

In the final stages of your PhD you can get so absorbed in finishing that the last thing on your mind is what happens next! The risk of becoming too focussed however is that you don’t make the mind-set changes you’ll need to sustain yourself in post-PhD life. Life after the PhD is going to be very different, but no-one really warns you or helps you to prepare for it. In this post I’m going to explain a new attitude that you need to cultivate in order to survive and thrive post-PhD, drawing on my own experience of making the transition from a PhD and post-doc in Medieval Studies into a business career.

My story
During my post-doc I was interviewed for a number of permanent academic posts around the UK. After my fifth interview rejection the third and final year of my funding was coming to an end. So I decided to leave academia and get a job in business instead. The main driver for me quitting academia was my unwillingness to accept part-time teaching and associated pay just to 'stay in the game' for a permanent academic post. My choice of sector, e-learning and web-based training, left the door open to a return to academia, but once I started in business I knew there was no going back.

Reflecting on this decision more than a decade later, especially now that I'm thinking about serious stuff like paying into my pension and when (if!) I might ever be able to retire, I realise how costly those years of low wages and insecurity could have been. I’m glad I made the decision that I did. If I had hung on in there and taught part-time after my post-doc funding ended, when I was already 30 years old, as a family we would definitely have been scraping by financially (my wife was a newly-qualified teacher at that point and we had a toddler too).

To some people I’m sure this would have been a price worth paying, as the prize of a lectureship or professorship would outweigh the prospect of a few months of hardship. In my case it wasn’t a price I was prepared to pay. It got me thinking about how my attitude changed at some point, especially since I’d subsisted on a very low grant income throughout my PhD.

Making the switch
As I said in my introduction, life after the PhD is very different and you need to be mentally prepared for this difference. One major change I believe you need to make in the final six months is to gradually switch off a powerful force that has sustained you for so long: deferred gratification. Delaying gratification is the ability to make do with less now, in the anticipation of future gains. It’s great when you’re in a structured environment like education, as it keeps you focussed on the end goal of achieving your qualification. It gives you the power to knuckle down and write that chapter, read that book, rather than give in to distractions and interruptions. But it’s not such a great capability when it comes to the next major priority after completing your PhD: finding a secure job that will pay you a decent salary and has benefits like a pension and health insurance.

So after having spent more than two decades of your life in school deferring gratification, you are suddenly in the position towards at the end of your PhD where you need to start to embrace it! All those things that we as PhDs have had to put off: having a family, buying and furnishing a home, going on holiday, paying off debt, suddenly become a real possibility. In fact you have to transition quite rapidly from the approach of just getting by, into someone who can really start to ‘make a living’. You have to quickly learn how to present yourself to a hiring committee (i.e. no longer act like a grad student), negotiate yourself a good salary and benefits package, and start work in an unfamiliar place with sufficient professionalism to get you through your probation. The Professor Is In website has lots of great advice in this area by the way, relevant to both academic and non-academic careers.

The true cost of adjuncting
Already I can hear people yelling ‘Yeah great in principle Chris we would wholeheartedly love to embrace gratification like you say, but where are all the well-paid jobs in academia?!’ True enough, the academic job market is currently terrible. Many of our peers are toiling away in under-employment as a result: working as adjuncts, or employed in the university bookshop, as a lab assistant or as a local tour guides, waiting for things to improve. However, what started as a few months of ‘staying in the game’ can easily extend into a few years and then into a whole adjunct or under-employed way of life. As many of our peers have found to their cost, especially in the US, temporary and part-time work is now entrenched in the higher education system. In the US there is the now infamous statistic that 75% of faculty work part-time on temporary contracts, while in the UK, more than a third of academics are now on fixed-term contracts, according to a recent story in The Guardian. The dream job that so many aspire to may turn out to be just that: a dream that will never materialize. Ironically the academy, that last bastion of tenure, is today fronted by an army of casual workers on short-term and temporary contracts.

So in my view adjuncting and other kinds of under-employment done ‘while I’m waiting for my professorship to come up’ reflect to a degree the mind-set that I’ve already identified: a willingness to delay gratification for the prospect of future gain. Yes there's a chance that things’ll work out next year on the academic job track, but you have to weigh that slim chance against the impact on your whole life of things not working out. Although some folks are willing to take a hit on their income in the short term, as already mentioned this can turn into a serious long-term problem, putting at risk many of the things that will help to define a ‘good life’ for them and their family. This is what we can describe as ‘the true cost of adjuncting’: the risk of becoming permanently locked into under-employment. Many of our peers are facing up to the harsh reality that they are becoming LESS employable as they go on in under-employment, rather than more employable. This is a crushing blow if you’re still wedded to the idea of accepting less now in the prospect of getting more tomorrow.

Empower yourself economically
So what’s the take-away here? Well to me the first thing is to recognise that your ability to delay gratification has been a powerful force that has sustained you throughout your university career. But as you near the completion of your PhD, you need to acknowledge that this driver has done its job, and you need to start to train yourself in the art and science of making a living instead. The blunt message is that you’ve used up all the slack in your life by doing a PhD: now you need to start taking serious steps to assure the comfort, health and dignity of you and your family, not just post-PhD, but for the rest of your life.

Having learned to empower ourselves intellectually, as PhDs we also need to learn how to empower ourselves economically. This doesn’t mean throwing away our principles in the blind pursuit of money. What I’m talking about here is a principled way forward, rejecting the exploitation of low paid and insecure work (adjuncting) or working for free (unpaid internships), in favour of a decent wage in return for our valuable skills and experience. As mature, educated and committed workers we can be of tremendous value to all kinds of organisations outside of academia, including charities, government or business. Check out the profiles on PhDs at Work to see some real-life examples, including my own story. Take some time to read about people who’ve successfully shifted their focus from just getting by (as a grad student), to getting on in life (as a professional with a great job and career). The sooner you can make this mental shift for yourself, the sooner you can begin to realise your full potential and enjoy life after the PhD!

So don’t sleepwalk down the academic job route just because you’re still in delayed gratification mode, or because you’re afraid of upsetting your supervisors. Once you’re awarded your PhD you’re not a student any more – you are your own person who has to make their way in a very challenging world. Yes it can feel like ‘selling out’ or ‘giving up everything’ to go for a job outside of academia. Yes it can sound crass and materialistic to even talk in terms of a desire to own property or assure yourself a decent retirement income. But if higher education can’t offer you a means to support yourself and your family now and in the future, that is a structural problem that isn’t going to be fixed in the near future. Be bold and take matters into your own hands. Make a start today and consider your options for a career outside of academia, even if that plan is only your Plan B. There’s a very good chance it’ll become your Plan A before too long.

Writing an abstract before finishing the research

It's Q&A time!

Recently, I received this mail from a reader:

I'm an early-stage PhD student in humanities, and my question is whether or not it is advisable to write an abstract for a conference before doing much of the research or any of the writing. I did this quite successfully for a graduate student conference, but I'm a bit more apprehensive about doing the same for my first professional conference.

Here's what Auntie Eva has to say on this topic:

I'd say - as goes with so many questions - "It depends".

IMO it depends on a few things:

1. Time schedule

There's a good number of conferences that require you to submit an abstract 2 years before the actual conference. For that situation, you have plenty of time between submitting the abstract and the due date of the paper - so you can plan to do your research in those months.

2. Contents of the abstract

How much of a grasp of the research do you have to make a conclusion to your abstract? Your concluding sentence does not need to be something like "it was found that property Y depends for X% on parameter Z", but you need to tell them if you are going to come up with recommendations, parallels - you need to point in the direction of what will be the result of the research already. So, if you have a schedule and know what you'll be digging into, you can have an idea of what TYPE of results you can promise in the abstract (the precise quantity can come later). Note that I write this from an engineering point of view - it might slightly differ in the humanities, although the general setup of abstracts and papers is the same along disciplines.

3. Tools

Do you have everything in your hands to get started on the research, or do you still need to sharpen your pencil and collect materials to make up your mind about where you will be going with this research? This question ties back to the time schedule part again as well.

With that said, I wrote my first abstract (for a conference for PhD students only, though) when I was less than 2 months in Delft, and the paper within 4 months of starting. It was all very preliminary, but it was a good lesson. By all means, conferences are one of the best places to learn, so if you have the chance, go to as many places as you can!

Project #tweetprop: Shear capacity at the continuous support

The fourth proposition of my dissertation is the following:

The shear capacity of reinforced concrete members near to continuous supports is at least equal to the shear capacity near to simple supports, contrarily to the recommendations of NEN6720:1995

or in Dutch:

De dwarskrachtcapaciteit van gewapend betonnen elementen nabij doorgaande opleggingen is minstens gelijk aan de capaciteit nabij vrije opleggingen, in tegenstelling tot het NEN 6720:1995 voorschrift

The old Dutch Code (NEN 6720:1995 [1]) prescribes an increase in capacity for loads close to the support, but only if their are placed near to a simple support (or end support). This effect was expressed through the factor kλ, which was applied as an enhancement factor on the shear capacity.

In Eurocode 2 (NEN-EN 1992-1-1:2005 [2]), the effect of direct load transfer is taken into account by reducing the contribution to the shear stress at the support for loads close to the support. The code does not make a difference between simple and continuous supports anymore.

In our experiments, we tested with the concentrated load close to the simple support and close to the continuous support. These experiments taught us that the capacity at the continuous support is often larger than at the simple support, and that it is by all means safe to say that the capacity at the continuous support is at least equal to the capacity at the simple support. You can find the entire parameter analysis for the influence of the moment distribution at the support in §4.5 of my dissertation.

The experimental analysis shows that the shear capacity at the continuous support is at least equal to the shear capacity at the simple support. As such, the recommendations from the old Dutch code do not correspond to our experimental results.

[1] Normcommissie 351001, 1995, "NEN 6720 Technische Grondslagen voor Bouwvoorschriften, Voorschriften Beton TGB 1990 – Constructieve Eisen en Rekenmethoden (VBC 1995)," Civieltechnisch centrum uitvoering research en regelgeving, Nederlands Normalisatie-instituut, ; Delft, The Netherlands, 245 pp.

[2] CEN, 2005, "Eurocode 2: Design of Concrete Structures - Part 1-1 General Rules and Rules for Buildings. NEN-EN 1992-1-1:2005," Comité Européen de Normalisation, Brussels, Belgium, 229 pp.

Project #tweetprop: There is still life in "dead" slabs

The third proposition of my dissertation is the following:

The very large redistribution capacity of slabs is demonstrated, amongst others, by carrying out experiments on severely damaged and locally failed specimens that led, on average, to a capacity of about 80% of a virgin specimen.

or in Dutch:

Het zeer grote vermogen tot herverdeling van platen is onder andere aangetoond door proeven uit te voeren op zwaar beschadigde en lokaal bezweken laten, waarbij gemiddeld een capaciteit van ongeveer 80% van een onbeschadigd proefstuk gehaald werd.

This proposition is based on a story.

Initially, we were planning to do two or four tests per slab. For testing with the concentrated load in the middle of the width, we were planning two tests per slab: one at each support. For testing with the concentrated load near the edge, we were planning four tests: two close to every support (one east, and one west).

As we were testing our first slab, with loads in the middle of the width, we suddenly grew curious. What if we would test this completely damaged slab with the concentrated load near the edge? So, we wouldn't be loading exactly at the location of were the slab already failed completely, but at less than 1m away from the failed part.

And if I say "failed", I mean huge cracks. Like this case here, our cracks were 2cm wide, I could almost stick my fingers into it.



We didn't expect much from this experiment. We didn't plan to mark cracks, we didn't plan for load steps. We assumed we'd reach failure before 200kN (which would be the first load step in an experiment on a virgin specimen).

We were so wrong.

The load kept on increasing, and I started slowly moving towards the exit of the lab, as I thought we'd be seeing some extremely explosive failure, with all that energy held within the specimen.

We reached a large failure load, and the failure mode was very similar to an experiment on a virgin specimen - much to our surprise.

For that reason, we started to do 6 experiments per slab: either 2 "virgin" (or "uncracked") ones in the middle, and then 4 "cracked" ones at the edges, or the other way around.



This testing sequence meant of course more experiments, but also more data... and we used the comparison between the "uncracked" and "cracked" tests to see the effect of redistribution in slabs: we saw experimentally that the "cracked" tests had on average 80% of the capacity of an "uncracked" test.

In beams, the least bit of cracking might have a negative influence on the shear capacity, as we learned from experiments on beams that were also done in Delft [1].

Slabs, on the other hand, have the ability to redistribute forces. Even a local failure can't stop them from doing so. And that -again- is a reason why slabs behave structurally very different in shear than beams.

[1] Yang, Y., 2011, "Report of Experimental Research on Shear Capacity of Beams Close to Intermediate Supports," V. Stevinrapport 25.5-11-10, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, 58 pp.

PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: Finding Housing in the Netherlands when Coming from Abroad

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands.

If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic!

For many students and employees who move to the Netherlands, finding housing can be a serious challenge. Housing was something that kept me awake at night during my first months in Delft. The key to finding a suitable place to live, is just giving yourself enough time to look around.

If you are coming to the Netherlands by yourself, I advise you to look for a temporary place where you can stay a few weeks first. From there, you can visit other places and look for a room or house that suits your fancy. Don't book housing for an entire year from abroad - you always get disappointed. The following websites can help you finding temporary housing:
Air BnB
Housing Anywhere
Otherwise, you can stay in a hostel, bed and breakfast, hotel or camping site for a few days while trying to secure your spot.

If you are coming to the Netherlands with your family, it might be better to apply for university housing. University housing typically gives you a place to live for the first year, while you accommodate your family in the country. Many universities cooperate with Duwo - and there are good and bad stories about university housing. The major advantage of renting through a centralized housing agency is the security that you will have a place when you arrive - something that I consider a big *must* for families. The disadvantage, however, is that they tend to charge a lot of extra application and administration fees.

When it comes to finding your place for the next few years, you might get scared off at first. Some housing is very expensive in the Netherlands - there is a shortage of student rooms. There is public housing, provided by for example Woonnet Haaglanden, but the waiting lists are very long: at least 3 years of waiting time. If you are coming for a PhD program of 4 years, then your chances of finally getting public housing are rather small. Private housing companies, such as RotsVast and Van der Vorm (from whom I rented - but their administration is a massive mess), fill the void in the housing market and offer apartments for rent - at prices higher than the public sector.

When you want to live in a room in a shared house, you often have to go to an "instemming" (literally translated: "voting in"). Sometimes that means that 100 students vying for one room are gathered in a house, get to introduce themselves in one sentence, and then the residents of the house randomly point at a number of faces they like, to further interview these folks. You might take your chances at such an event, but I must say that I never got to the second round.
Moreover, an "instemming" is typical for Bachelor's and Master's students. As a PhD student in the Netherlands, you are an employee of the university, and you're typically expected to show up to your office early in the morning. The "student life" thing just might not fit you anymore...

If you want to cut costs, I recommend you looking for a shared house/apartment. Many PhD students in the Netherlands live in shared accommodation. A good website to look for a room for rent or prospective roommates (when you decide to take a contract and look for peers to share costs) is Kamernet. Also, when you move to the Netherlands by yourself, it can be nice to be in a shared house, so that you can make friends and ask for advice from senior PhD students, who might have had to do all the paperwork that you are about to embark upon.

The best advice that I can give you, is to let all your colleagues know upfront that you are looking for housing.
I found my first room in Delft because a schoolmate from high school told a friend in Delft that I was going there too, and his roommate happened to be away for a semester to study abroad - that was the sublet from where I could get started on finding a place. I then found my home in Delft because my colleague knew a PhD student who was finishing and he asked her if her room would be available. I ended up taking over her room, and buying all her furniture.

Introducing PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer

Starting Thursday, you will find a new biweekly series titled "PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer" showing up here on PhD Talk.

These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, the portal for academic job positions in the Netherlands - and the contents of this series is aimed at those of you who might be toying with the idea of coming to the Netherlands for an academic position, or who are thinking of starting a career in science in the Netherlands by applying to one of the PhD programs. 

Why would I do a series of sponsored posts?

In short, my 4 years in Holland were the bomb (don't tell anyone in Belgium I said that, though, especially not next summer when the soccer craze will hit). I landed a PhD program in the Netherlands by accident, and at that time it felt like a Plan B since securing funding in the USA was just not going to work out for me. 

But a few months after starting in The Netherlands I realized I was in a very good place. Social security. Awesome lab. Great colleagues. Funding for traveling to conferences. No coursework. Seriously, you'd be surprised to see how much that tiny country by the North Sea has to offer.

Now allow me to introduce AcademicTransfer to you - in their own words:

Since 1997 AcademicTransfer supplies all academic job openings at non-profit research institutes, universities and university medical centers in the Netherlands. In recent years, jobs in the corporate sector have also been added in response to intense demand for talented researchers.

Our goal is to promote PhD positions, research and post-doctoral positions and job openings for assistant, associate and full professors.
Although AcademicTransfer focuses on providing access to jobs in the Netherlands, the website is published in several languages. All job openings that specifically solicit foreign applicants are also offered in English.
AcademicTransfer originated as initiative of three Dutch organisations:

• VSNU, Association of Universities in the Netherlands
• NFU, Dutch Federation of University Medical Centers
• WVOI, Employers Association of Research Institutions (Dutch)

Using AcademicTransfer for your next step in excellence

Job-seekers can use AcademicTransfer completely free of charge. A job search field is placed prominently at the top of the home page, followed by the latest ten jobs posted on the site. Notable or unusual job openings are featured in text boxes, with a short summary of the position.
Ready for your next step in excellence? AcademicTransfer enables you to build your scientific career.

Finding relevant jobs

Start your search by browsing all jobs, entering a search string, or searching for employers in our employer listing, or refine your search results by adding extra criteria in an advanced search, such as academic field, salary or occupation.
Once your search results have been tailored to your preferences, you can set up an RSS feed or email alert for new jobs that match those parameters. You will be notified if new job openings are added that match your criteria.

Applying for jobs

You are always free to apply for a job that interests you, even if you are not a registered user. However, once you reach this point, it may be advisable to join us, since AcademicTransfer supports job applications by providing a user profile. Registered users can create a CV in their profile; you can choose to allow potential employers to access your CV, or send it along with a job application. When applying for a job, you can also attach up to five additional documents. In addition, you can use the ‘Match’ button to ask the system to display suitable job openings based on your profile.

Learn more about employers

Next to the job opening information most employers provide additional information. This information can be accessed by clicking the employer logo shown in job openings or via the employers section. The information provided by employers may include application procedures, tenure tracks, PhD programmes, frequently asked application questions and contact details.

Your guide to additional career information

AcademicTransfer also offers a number of external links to websites with career related information. These links are moderated: checked for relevancy and reliability and provided with a short description. Furthermore they are categorized to facilitate quick access to more information on topics relevant to academic career building. Topics include expat information, career counseling, post-doc programmes and job opening listings in the Netherlands and abroad.

Coming to the Netherlands

The English section of the AcademicTransfer provides many links to information that will be specifically interesting to people from other countries who are considering coming to the Netherlands. This section includes information on visas, housing, cultural tips, taxation, social security and insurance. The information in this section is provided in part by Euraxess.nl, AcademicTransfer’s European partner in the Netherlands.

Expand your horizon

Interested in expanding your horizon beyond the Netherlands? AcademicTransfer to the rescue! In 2008, AcademicTransfer acquired Career|edu, a job board for the international academic and research community. Originally American, Career|edu now operates in 38 countries. AcademicTransfer is also the preferred supplier of job openings in Dutch research organisations for Euraxess, a European initiative. The European Euraxess website offers an overview of all the research jobs in Europe.

Stay informed when and wherever

Always and everywhere informed about the newest job openings on AcademicTransfer or Career|edu? The AcademicTransfer iPhone app might be of help: supplying all the latest job openings in Dutch and English on AcademicTransfer and Career|edu on your mobile.

Posting your job opening on AcademicTransfer

Do you have a job opening and are you considering a posting on AcademicTransfer or Career|edu?
Please let us inform you about the benefits and post your job on AcademicTransfer and/or Career|edu.

Project #tweetprop: the Modified Bond Model

The second proposition of my dissertation is the following:

By combining two-way quadrants and one-way strips, the Modified Bond Model bridges the gap between the one-way and two-way shear approaches.

or in Dutch (as the propositions are in English and Dutch:

Door in twee richtingen dragende kwadranten te combineren met stroken die in één richting dragen overbrugt het Modified Bond Model de kloof tussen de methodes voor pons en dwarskracht

Admittedly, this proposition is more difficult to explain without dwelling upon all the technical details - but bear with me for this one, the lighter propositions will be up soon.

The Modified Bond Model is the theoretical model that I propose to determine the capacity of a slab subjected to a concentrated load close to the support. As its name suggests, it is a modification of the Bond Model by Alexander and Simmonds [1], which was developed for concentric punching shear in slabs.

In other words: while the Bond Model studies a single load (or column) on an infinitely large slab, the Modified Bond Model looks at the practical case of a slab with a certain geometry subjected to a concentrated load.

The Bond Model divides the slab into 4 strips, that branch out from the load, and 4 quadrants. All loading is carried from the slab to the column, via the strips. As such, the governing cross-section is the interface between the quadrants and strips. The capacity is defined as the sum of the capacities of the 4 radial strips.



The Modified Bond Model goes one step further. As we found in the experiments that the geometry is decisive for the shear capacity of slabs subjected to concentrated loads close to supports, we defined reduction factors that reduce the capacity of the strips. One of the advantages of the Modified Bond Model is that it is easy to calculate (you can do it by hand), and that it can incorporate a variety of different geometries.

So these ideas explain you the Modified Bond Model. But how does it bridge the gap between one-way and two-way shear approaches, and what is so cool about that?

Let me start by saying that our experiments, and thus the case of a slab subjected to a concentrated load close to the support, is a type of shear failure that is in-between the typical beam shear failure and punching shear failure modes. We see inclined cracks at the bottom face, but also punching damage and shear cracks at the side faces. The codes deal with these two failure modes in a very separated way, while in reality there is a transition zone. You can understand that it is thus important to find a method that describes this transition zone.

The Modified Bond Model does exactly that. The strips work in arching action, and the quadrants work in beam shear. The strips carry load in one direction (cfr. one-way shear) and the quadrants carry load in both directions (cfr. punching shear), off to the two strips that border each quadrant.

As such, the Modified Bond Model uses elements of one-way and two-way shear approaches, and helps us to describe the transition zone between pure beam shear behavior and punching shear behavior.

[1] Alexander, S. D. B. and Simmonds, S. H., 1992, "Bond Model for Concentric Punching Shear," ACI Structural Journal, V. 89, No. 3, pp. 325-334.

Project #tweetprop: On Slabs versus Beams

The first proposition of my dissertation is the following:

The two-dimenional shear-carrying behaviour of one-way slabs under concentrated loads close to supports should be treated differently than the one-dimensional shear-caryring behaviour of beams.

or in Dutch (as the propositions are in English and Dutch:

Het tweedimensionale afschuifdraagvermogen van in één richting dragende platen onder geconcentreerde belastingen nabij de opleggingen moet anders behandeld worden dan het eendimensionale afschuifdraagvermogen van balken.

This proposition is one of the main findings of my research, and a conclusions that I have previously published in the ACI Structural Journal as well as in a number of conference papers.

Let me break the justification of this proposition down into the observations, and the explanations based on the experimental evidence as well as theoretical reasons.

What did we observe?

In our shear experiments, we subjected slabs to a concentrated load close to the support. We studied the influence of different parameters on the shear capacity. Most shear experiments in the literature are experiments on beams, that typically have a small cross-section, that are heavily reinforced in bending and that are tested in four-point bending. Our understanding of how different parameters effect the shear capacity is thus mostly supported by these experiments. When we compared our experiments to the knowledge from beams, we found differences. The shear capacity of slabs depends mostly on geometric parameters. In beam shear experiments, the capacity depends strongly on the concrete compressive strength. For the range of concrete strengths that we tested, we did not see such a strong dependence.

To study how the behavior changes from beam to slab, we tested a series of specimens with an increasing width. We found how the dependence of the shear capacity on parameters changes as the specimen width changes. We also saw how different the cracking pattern is for slabs as compared to beams.

In this figure, we see the bottom face after an experiment of a specimen of 0,5m wide and a specimen of 2,5m wide. All other parameters are kept identical. The "beam" specimen only has horizontal cracks, while the "slab" specimen has a grid-like pattern of horizontal and vertical cracks following the rebar, but also has inclined cracks on the bottom that indicate shear distress, and even some punching damage.

How can we explain this?

Let's talk strut-and-tie models here. If we have a beam with a load close to the support, the load is carried by a compression strut between the load and the support - that's in the Eurocode as well.
But what happens when we apply this to a slab? If we have a concentrated load, we know that the forces can "fan out" in the width direction.

This figure shows why the influence of the distance between the load and the support is different for slabs as compared to beams. We see the top view of a slab subjected to a concentrated load. In a beam, our compression strut is the line of a/dl = 1 from the figure. In a slab, we have many struts that can develop - an entire fan of them. So, we can say that in a slab, we develop a three-dimensional strut-an-tie model. Now, two dimensions play a role in our shear capacity: the distance between the load and the support (a or av), and the width of the specimen. If we then apply this idea to the effect of the distance between the load and the support to the shear capacity, we see that we need to account for a sort of "average distance" for all these struts in a slab (a/dl > 1 on average), while for a beam this is defined only by a/dl = 1.

To conclude: we saw in our experiments a difference between slabs and beams in their dependency on parameters to define the shear capacity. This difference can be explained by acknowledging that slabs carry concentrated loads in what can be represented by a three-dimensional strut-and-tie model. As such, slabs have a two-dimensional load-carrying behavior, which is different from the one-dimensional load-carrying behavior in shear that we know from beams (and that is well-documented in the literature).

Writers' Lab: Introducing Project #tweetprop

Through Wetenschapper 2.0, reblogged from Roy Meijer, I discovered Project #Tweetprop.

Project #Tweetprop was initiated by Felienne Hermans, who blogged about the 10 propositions of her PhD thesis. Subsequently, Eric Bouwers, Rolf Hut and Sander van der Burg blogged about their propositions.

Besides discussing their propositions, the researchers in these blog posts explain why in the Netherlands, a PhD defense is not only about the dissertation, but also about the 10 propositions. In short: it comes from the Old Days when only the propositions were used during the defense, and the candidate had to show his eloquence and general ability to argue upon a point.

In some defenses nowadays, the committee members stick to the contents of the dissertation only. In mine, as in many others', there can be a discussion about the propositions as well. Good news for the paranymphs - for they are asked to stand up and read the propositions out loud before the candidate replies to the committee member (prevents the paranymphs from falling asleep).

I agree with Roy Meijer and Felienne Hermans that the propositions are great material for blog posts. As Roy wrote (and I translate): "It gives some material for your blog, it should be fairly easy to write because you already did the research, and it's a good platform to prevent that those propositions that cost you blood, sweat and tears will be forever forgotten." Wise words!

Over the next few weeks, and in between other posts, you will see #tweetprop posts, in which I'll discuss the 10 propositions of my PhD thesis.

And you might wonder, why devote a Writers' Lab post to it? Well, the answer is simple: because I would like you to blog about your propositions as well! Not doing a PhD in the Netherlands and not writing propositions at all? In that case, I have a challenge for you: give me 5 statements from your research (or remotely related to this) that condense the wisdom of your dissertation, and blog about them. Yes, 3rd and 4th year PhD students as well as post-docs, I am looking at you. Are you reading to join this challenge?