On writing a PhD proposal
As a late-stage (final year!) PhD student, I have gotten and get a lot of questions from younger students at the cusp of entering a Master’s or continuing onto a PhD, usually looking to make a slight jump into a human spaceflight discipline. One key one is: how do write a PhD proposal? Specificially, how do you turn a set of interests and ideas into a tangible, detailed research proposal that will guide you over the next 3-5 years (and even better, get funded)? While it might be a requirement after your 1st or 2nd year, I advocate for write at least a pre-proposal before starting a PhD, or in the first semester. I attribute most of my success in graduate school to the first two months of my first year that I spent drafting and honing my fellowship grant proposal. I wrote a 5-page document detailing my anticipated contributions, which got funded by NASA, and it has served as my shining beacon in some cloudy and uncertain times (which happens maybe once a week). I discuss in this post specifically about the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (NSTGRO) which I was awarded in 2022 and funded me for 4 years of my 5-year program.
You’ll need to borrow a set of ‘pre-activities’ from another post of mine, how to know what you want to do. Ideally, your research proposal is aligned with your broader life and/or career trajectory and interests, so we’ll need data from there. If you haven’t yet, go do those first! You’ll need (A) the Venn diagram, (C) your lists of skills and goals, and (D) your one-liner.
The first draft of your proposal should be 2-5 pages. Then, you can develop each section so the finalized document, with the appended logistics, is around 30-50 pages. Depending on your program requirements and how early you are in the PhD, you might choose to stop anywhere between the pre-proposal and the final proposal. The closer you are to finishing, the more valuable it will be to expand your proposal, as it will be closer to your thesis.
Your First Draft
1. Literature Review
Using the three spheres of work from your activity (A), you want to guide the readers so they understand the relevant fields contributing to your work, and how your work is uniquely situated at the intersection. I will caveat this by saying that the nature of the Venn Diagram exercise and this setup assumes that your research is somewhat interdisciplinary. I can imagine in theses that are more straightforward, you won’t necessarily have the three sphere of career interest inform your PhD directly; in this case, you might want to redo activity (A) but specifically for your PhD topic. I find that 2-3 spheres of prior work and context is necessary and sufficient for the readers to understand the broader impacts your work can have, and to situate it in the field.Finding your taglines for these three topics drive your literature review. You can get specific with these; for instance, mine were 1) Isolated, confined, and extreme environments and associated behavioral health and psychological challenges; 2) Measures and countermeasures for behavioral health and performance risks in ICE environments; and 3) Environmental psychology and habitability. If I imagine these topics as conversations in a room, I want them to be happening right next to me as I discuss my research. Breaking their contributions down specifically, 1) discussed the importance of the problem to NASA and broader impacts in Earth-based ICE environments; 2) reviewed state of the art measures for BHP risks, and countermeasures that have been developed so I could situate my measures/countermeasures as complements to existing work; 3) I borrow theory heavily from human-environment interaction as a discipline, and it’s called environmental psychology for most Earth contexts, and habitability for most space contexts. I introduce the parallels here.
Together, these three spheres are different lenses into my work; these are the mirrors that converge incident light into the brighter, narrow point of my thesis. These sphere should make clear your research topic; the resultant literature review should make clear the gap you’re seeking to address.
2. Expected Contributions
From your literature review, you will have identified a gap in the field. That is, the three sphere ideally create this smaller space in which little work has been done to merge these three concepts together; or, if they have, there are some next steps to push that intersection forward. Going from the narrow gap into the specific aims is a tough part that I don’t lay out -- this is highly dependent on your (C) skillsets and goals, and your committee, your department, and what is possible/available to you. This is also the part of the PhD that everyone just has to grapple with, and the only way out is through. Try to find flexible contributions that allow you to flex and learn things you might want for your next role; explore methods you find interesting and valuable; bring you to places that you’d like to experience; create offerings in the medium that suit you creatively and professionally.This is the shortened summary of your approach and methodology; essentially, what you hope to provide, and then in the next section you will detail the how. Sometimes it can be easier to write the approach section first, then come back to this.
3. Approach and Methodology
For the approach to addressing your 2-4 specific aims, you can pick from a ton of methods. A PhD might be pushing forward one methodology applied to slightly different problems, multiple methodologies toward a linear progression of problems, or any combination of # of methods and kinds of problem formulation. Personally, I used multiple methods to address slightly tangential problems that together all fit into the research gap.1. What is the design space for architecture in extreme environments?
2. How does habitability and habitat design impact wellbeing in isolation and confinement?
3. How can we design for adequate privacy in confined spaces?
1. Causal diagramming, semi-guided interviews, participatory co-design, literature review
2. Statistical analysis, data visualization, psychometric evaluation, analog research
3. Rapid-prototyping, machine knitting, psychometric development, human participant experiments, technology development, Bayesian modeling, design research
A set of methodologies might be chosen for personal interest (what do you want your day-to-day to look like?), state-of-the-art for the field that intersect your research gap, or what is available to you based on other constraints (financial, knowledge, mentorship), or ideally these intersect! The selection of the methodology should also be a smaller-scope literature review with lots of critical thinking to make sure that the data you are getting adequately answers your questions in the ways you want to.
The next steps are to let other people read this and give you feedback! I find that proposals are an interative process, even once they’re awarded. Good luck!
VIEWS MY OWN
I am, among many things, a PhD candidate at MIT AeroAstro. Motivated to always learn, categorize, and create frameworks for my experiences, I write and share reflections on my PhD journey in a collection called fieldnotes. Fieldnotes are detailed observations collected by anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnographers while situated in an environment of interest; the obsessive intensity to learn and grasp and make sense of phenomena during the collection of fieldnotes is the way that feels most reflective of the way I live life.