**Publication date**: Jan. 14, 2024

In the early of 2024, my fellowship body, i.e., SFI ADVANCE CRT, organized induction event for the 5th cohort at University College Cork (UCC), Cork, Ireland. This was a great opportunity for the new cohort to connect, study, and plan for next steps in their PhD journey in Ireland.

I. Traveling from Dublin to Cork - Day 1 (09/01/2024)

I started by going to Dublin Pearse station by Dart at 07:20, then took the No.26 bus to Dublin Heuston, and went to Cork Kent station by train at 09:00. After arriving at Cork Kent station around 12:00, I took the No.215 bus to go to Blarney Castle & Gardens, which is a beautiful and attractive place for tourists. No wonder, the nature is always the most attractive part of Ireland for me. You can find more pictures I took of this place here.

After 3 hours of walking around, I went back to the Kingsley Hotel, where the organisers had booked rooms for us from the 9th to the 13th (The scholarship agent is so generous. They also booked us a 4 star hotel in Clayton for the Limerick trip ^^).

II. Induction - Day 2 (10/01/2024)

This day was all about information about our PhD training process, e.g. responsibilities, benefits,… and then each PhD student gave a short presentation about themselves, their research topics and hobbies. Finally, we had the opportunity to listen to the experiences of the veterans of the 1st cohort.

III. Personal Development Training - Day 3 (11/01/2024)

The third day was the day I feel I gained the most from this event, where we were introduced to the Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF). This was the time where I had to revisit the reasons why I chose to do a PhD, know the skills needed to become an independent researcher, and understand the role of the supervisor in my career and professional development by listening to the opinions of professors and peers. In addition, STAR and SMARTER techniques are also introduced to us for self-assessment and research topic/career goal finding.

Here are few key takeaways condensed from these two techniques:

- STAR: for self-assessment

• Situation: the situation you had to deal with, i.e., when, where, with whom. E.g., You are a PhD student.

• Task: the task you were given to do. E.g., you need to publish papers and articles to graduate in 4 years.

• Action: the action you took to achieve your goals. E.g., Planning, learning fundamentals, applying learned things to your problems, running experiments, and publish work.

• Result: what happened as a result of your action and what you learned from the experience. E.g., Your published work are enough for graduation?

- SMARTER: for planning, evaluating, and revising your goals

• Specific:

  • What do I want to achieve? E.g., Receive a PhD degree & Land a good industrial job after graduating

  • How will I achieve this? E.g., Publish papers and articles at top-tier conferences and journals & Have solid technical skills such as designing architecture, building projects using programming languages and open-sources, and grasping math foundation.

  • Who is involved in this project? E.g., You, your supervisor, and collaborators

• Measurable:

  • What are your metrics to reach your goals? E.g., 2 top-tier conference papers and 2 transactions articles

  • How do I know if I’ve reached my objective? E.g., Your work are accepted by publication venues

  • When do I want to reach this objective? E.g., December, 2026

• Achievable:

  • Do I have the required human resources? E.g., Yes, your supervisor and collaborators

  • Do I have the financial means to reach my goal? E.g., Yes, funding from agents and other work like demonstrators or teaching assistant

  • Do I have the necessary technology or equipment? E.g., Yes, laptops, servers (?) and other devices (?)

• Relevant:

  • Are my goals relevant to my business context? E.g., Yes, it is good for both academic or professional career

  • Do my goals align with those set by my supervisor, department, or organization? E.g., Yes, publications are all you need

  • Is the market ready or saturated for my offer? E.g., No, currently, i.e., Jan. 2024, the job market for blockchain and federated learning is still hectic. There are shortage of skilled workers.

• Timely:

  • What can I achieve in 3, 6, and 12 months? E.g., In the next 3 months, you will try to submit a conference paper, then extend it to a journal version in the next 3 months.

  • What’s my deadline? E.g., conference/journal deadlines

  • Do I need to establish a timeline? If so, what are my smaller objectives? E.g., Yes, firstly, you need to finish problem formulation, then solve it using mathematical knowledge (you can divide this part into smaller objectives like time for learning and applying knowledge to your problems). After that, you can build your experimental framework to run your scenarios using your proposed solutions.

• Evaluate:

  • Weekly evaluation

  • Monthly evaluation

• Readjust:

  • Is based on the Evaluation step.

In the evening, we drank beer and went bowling with another guy at the Mardyke Entertainment Complex. I also caught up with trying chicken ball, spring roll, braised beef noodle and Chicken Yakitori rice at Noodle-UCC restaurant (You know I am obssed with noodles, so I always want to try every kind of noodle wherever I visit ^^).

IV. Systems Thinking - Day 4 (12/01/2024)

Systems Thinking

V. Coming back to Dublin - Day 5 (13/01/2024)

After breakfast at 09:00, I checked out and walked to some places, i.e. the Glucksman Gallery in UCC and the English Market in the city centre, before going to Cork Kent Station. Finally, I went home at 16:00 and official ending my journey to theADVANCE CRT Induction event.

Such a great trip!