This post is related to an earlier commentary about Factors in Considering Thesis Topics in Renewable Energy. This question – appropriate selection of an advisor – comes up often, so might as well address it in parallel. The two questions are related of course, but there are some differences in how one approaches those selections. Are you choosing them? Are they choosing you? How do you maximize your contributions to the world in this stage of your life?

Getting an MSc can be seen as a transitional stage from your educational to professional careers. It’s time to polish your business development strategy, as you will have to do out there in industry when you are trying to win employment, projects and contracts. Let’s enter the stages of your search for advisors and topics. Take it in small bites.

Get cracking!

A Framework

Here is a framework with some tangible actions for finding an advisor & topic. Some of this content is derived from the steps one would take in a consultancy to build relationships with clients, identify opportunities, and then position yourself to win them. You, and your advisor, are about to commit 0.5-1+ years of your lives to this pursuit. Makes sense to approach it deliberately, so:

  1. Manage your process
  2. Build relationships
  3. Collect data
  4. Seek to understand
  5. Make your pitch

Let us discuss each.

Manage your process

Those who have a process for accomplishing something will invariably be more successful than those without. How you wish to approach finding a topic of interest and supportive advisor will vary based on your personality and preferences. Perhaps you have a firm idea of your topic and came to this particular school with someone in mind. Someone well versed in this field, doing the kind of research you are interested in. They are receptive, or perhaps have even invited you to work with them already. Great. Mission complete.

What if you have zero idea of appropriate topics, nor many connections with professors or industry contacts? Well, as Tim Ferris would say: “That which hinders your task…is your task.” Develop your strategy. Don’t know professors yet? You will need to get to know them, and them you. Don’t have any good thesis ideas? How can you collect data?

First, develop your process for doing so. This pursuit in itself is a research project. As for all projects, good ideas will come to you in time. You will forget them in a minute or two if you do not capture them. Format is up to you but for me, physical notebooks are preferred. There’s something more concrete and serious about paper and ink, but perhaps that’s old school. You may prefer something electronic: OneNote, Evernote, voice memos, something close at hand. Capture your process and ideas in these repositories.

Start with setting up a screening framework. Specifically for those students at the Iceland School of Energy (ISE) where I’ve taught, the figure following shows geothermal-specific thesis topic selections over the past several years. As a first screening step, could you identify a number of categories where you would be happy to focus your interest? If you are into other forms of renewable energy, what would those categories look like? Can you set up a framework to narrow down your fields of search?

Newson J, Gautason B, Gudjonsdottir M, Valfells A, Anton L, Green RM. 2022. Graduate geothermal training at the Iceland School of Energy, Reykjavik University. GRC Transactions, Vol. 46.

Build relationships

Students in courses generally have tunnel vision. The next assignment, the next exam. Try to pull yourself back from the day to day and evaluate your response to each course and instructor. For me, some classes in engineering really clicked, some didn’t. Statics, with a comprehensible textbook and instructor with a delightful Indian accent – solid. Dynamics – disastrous. Not destined for rotating machinery design. Thermodynamics: now the universe started to make sense. Great software (EES). Instructor was doing interesting research. Great candidate for an advisor.

Therefore, assess and build relationships constantly. As you are forming an opinion of the instructor, their interests (do they match yours?), their work (is it fresh? is it relevant?), consider: what impression are you making? Are your skills a match for their interests? Could you collaborate in the fields of your interest? What could you contribute to their research group or publications?

Collect data

If you have set up a process for finding a thesis topic and advisor, and have your note collection mechanism in place, you’ll pick up on more ideas than someone without such tools. As an example this year I was writing a report for an international energy organization. When doing that, more and more article headlines from the BBC, ScienceDirect, LinkedIn or other outlets seemed directly pertinent to my work (a frequency bias), and capable of enriching it. I’d toss them into my repository and then weave them into the work, cited appropriately. Once you have many research sectors, people and ideas jotted down, you’ll notice more and more related topics that you might take to enhance your concepts. You’ll see more connections between topics and think about how they might synthesize.

Same is true in your search for advisors, from either academia or industry. Write down all your professors. Industry experts whose talks you have connected with. Authors of notable papers you found insightful. What are their fields of focus? Who is out there doing the kind of work you want to do? What companies are doing the kind of projects that interest you?

The appropriate selection of an advisor could consider wider aspects than their current research. I sought out a specific MSc advisor because of his comprehensive powerplant textbook. My goal was to absorb everything possible. My prime doctoral advisor was a very effective, intuitive teacher, and there were aspects of his style I wanted to emulate by working with him. These were selected based on mentorship opportunities rather than specific research topic decisions.

Hence, collect data not just on opportunities, but on yourself. What are your priorities? How would you weight them (say, 1-5)? If you assessed scores to each advisor/topic (say 1-10), how would the products of those rank? Consider developing a scoring table similar to the following. As yourself if a funding opportunity a “go/no-go” criteria, or a smaller factor in your decision? Would you prefer a topic close to industry? Practical? Experimental? Or something more academic? Theoretical? What tuning to the topic could improve the score?

It’s your life, your priorities. Articulate them to yourself. Capture these thoughts, citations, people , topics and your thoughts about them viewed through whatever prism you prefer.

Seek to understand

Let’s say you’ve identified a research group or industry connection you’d like to work with for your thesis. Seek to understand their motivation to work with you. It is a significant investment of time to mentor anyone. How would helping you advance knowledge in this field benefit that person, industry or community? What is their expected return on investment by engaging with you?

Everyone’s motivations differ, but a few common ones may be:

  • Academics: publications and grants are some of their marks of achievement. Can your work lead to either? Can it enhance the overall output of the research group, if not directly publishable? It could be that they have an existing research program aligned to your skills. Are they motivated to engage a hard working, easy-to-mentor, self-starting graduate student? Will your work result in demonstrably good outcomes for the world, that will help everyone sleep better at night?
  • Industry: companies often encounter challenges, often interesting “what-ifs,” but lack the time, humans or computing power to address rigorously. Could they turn these challenges over to you, to find solutions? Are you a young student with an agile mind and access to new software that can provide older engineers with fresh insights or visualizations? Would this work help them discover future talent (you or your colleagues) they can then hire? Think about what benefits to them your collaboration might bring. One of the great merits of ISE is the close connection to Icelandic industry. Leverage that if you desire, good way to network and build your CV for your future.
  • Communities: small governments or businesses (e.g. startups) are usually 1) low on funds 2) low on engineering talent to solve energy-related issues 3) in need of solutions to improve citizens’ lives. Can your attention to some of their challenges related to energy, food, water, climate resilience or all of the above help identify solutions? Perhaps your work could serve as a prefeasibility study that the community or small business could then follow up in more detail; seeking grants or engaging other professional firms. Can you identify new ventures? An engineer – even if a newly minted one – paying attention to underfunded problems is a great boon. Pitch your value in exchange for access to data and worthwhile problems.

Evergreen tip: If you understand better what motivates individuals or organizations, you’ll more capably sell yourself.

Make your pitch

Once you have a basket of potential ideas and advisors, you’ll have to make approaches to them to see if you can make a match. You’ve researched the intersection of your skills, many candidate topics and their expertise to know that technically it could be a match. You understand their motivations and can articulate what kind of value you can deliver by doing research with them. If you’ve had prior dealings with them – being an active student in their class, reading their papers, meeting at a conference – you may have been able to develop a positive relationship already. It’s the same strategy you will use when dealing with clients later in your career. Show genuine interest and understanding towards clients, if you expect them to show interest in you and your projects.

Ideally you could come to the table with a 50-75+% formed concept of what you would like to research and why. How can you maximize your delivered value/mentor effort required ratio?

Be prepared for rejection: they may simply not have the bandwidth. Nothing personal.

Be prepared for modification: they may have suggestions how to tune your idea to be more realistic, impactful, or closer to their own interests/expertise.

Even closed doors may lead to other opportunities. If they cannot advise, can they suggest someone else that would be a better candidate? If that topic seems inadequate, can they suggest others that would be a better fit?

Different academic programs may have more structured matchmaking procedures for aligning graduate students with advisors and projects. If they exist, learn about and harness them. If they do not, be earlier than your colleagues in doing this sort of research and marketing, if you want to have more selection opportunities.

Summary

Selecting a thesis topic and advisor is an important decision that warrants organized effort. It’s recoverable if you make a terrible choice (few ask me now about my topics), but you might as well make the most of your time in the program. Have a plan, build relationships, collect data, understand the client, and then make your pitch with a focus on delivering maximum value. Those are recipes for success in many endeavors.