Literature Search

1
Literature Search

• Perform a thorough literature review, even if it
  means having to understand several different
  areas.
• You don't want to find out after 4-5 years of
  hard work that your dissertation work has already
  been done.
• Also, performing a thorough literature review
  will give you an opportunity to leverage existing
  work, so you don't have to start from scratch.

2
Four key questions

• For every research investigation (along the way
  to completing your dissertation), be able to
  concisely describe
• 1) what is the problem you're addressing(also
  why?)
• 2) what is your hypothesis?
• 3) what is the scope of your proposed solution?
• 4) how will you validate the solution?

3
Never stop writing

• Be sure to write up your research results as you
  go along. DO NOT wait until the end of your
  dissertation to publish papers about your work.
• You need to get feedback from the community as
  you go along. The other side effect is that it
  will be much easier to compile your dissertation.