Is my adviser supposed to be assigning me my research?

Question

I have just finished my bachelor's degree in computer engineering. I am doing an REU with the professor who will be my adviser this fall when I enter grad school. Currently my future Adviser has me working on research that involves image processing. I was hoping to head in other directions in embedded computing and security.

From our weekly research meetings it seems like my adviser will be assigning me research topics through out my grad school career. Is this normal that an adviser would insist on determining the research topic of the PhD students under them. I have not pushed back on this yet but I am not prepared to go in depth in image processing. I am not a math major or CS major and that field gives me little interest.

--ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW--

As far as funding goes I am currently funded by and REU(research experience for undergraduates) and am unsure of where this funding comes from(NSF, department, professor). Here in 2 weeks though I will be funded by a Distinguished Academic Fellowship(DAF) that my university graduate school awarded me.

In order to get my DAF I had to write a research proposal. I proposed research into microprocessor, GPU, FPGA unification. As I understood it from those within my department I am not required to carry out that research as the proposal is more a way for the DAF committee to see that I can write a coherent proposal for later on in my academic career.

Concerning the union of my professors research interest and mine: He focuses on embedded system design for single specific applications. It just happens that in the current path of research he is onto it involves cameras. This then introduces the field of image processing into the project.

It seems that all his grad students are doing peripheral work on UAVs that will be coalesced into a UAV platform of some sort.

Answer 1

This depends very much on:

1. How much interests and your advisor's interests align
2. Where your funding comes from

First, interest alignment: Starting a grad program, you find an advisor with interests that overlap with your own, do the foundational things that need to get done, then expand on it with your own ideas. Later, when you are pitching grants, very much the same thing but with program officers: you have a great idea, and you find a way to dovetail it with their calls for proposals. Finding the common ground between your research and others' research is a fundamental academic skill.

Second, money: if you are funded through a grant that needs image processing research done, do you think that your advisor or the funding sponsor will give you a big thumbs up when you say, "Actually, I have some great ideas for embedded security devices I would rather work on." Nope. If you were in their shoes, shelling out $30-60k on a student for a year, wouldn't you expect them to help get the grant completed successfully? If you want full control over your research, become independently wealthy first.

Successfully doing your own research in academia, in grad school and beyond, involves a lot of meeting in the middle. Given the huge disparity of research topics you mentioned (image processing versus security), I genuinely wonder about the overlap of interests. If there really isn't much overlap, it might be worth looking for a different advisor. You won't become an expert in one field by being mentored by a guy in another field, even if your advisor lets you run wild with any idea that comes into your head.

Update

Since more info was added about the funding and interest overlap, I can note a bit more here. It sounds like your funding is relatively portable and not tied to a project. In that case, you should have pretty strong control over what you want to do. You should not be using this control to just pitch ideas and run with them. The benefit of a PhD program (as opposed to learning how to research while living in a shack) is to apprentice with people who are experts in what you want to do.

However, having your own "batteries included" funding means you should be able to match with the best advisor for your interests. It sounds like you need to discuss the issue of overlapping interests with your current advisor. If you don't want to go in the same direction as the lab, maybe they can suggest another group who does something that is a better fit. Alternatively, maybe they will hit topics that you find more interesting during other phases of projects. It's not uncommon to switch advisors in the first year: I knew a professor in undergrad who actually recommended avoiding even starting in a given lab, so you could just meet with professors to find the best match.

Answer 2

In many fields, it is common for the advisor to "suggest" research projects to graduate students (including PhD students). In my own area of mathematics, for example, this is the case.

Of course, there is give and take between the student and the advisor about exactly what project the student will work on, and one can never know the outcome of a research project before it is done.

It is a well known phenomenon in math that some advisors have a vision for a long-term research program with many required intermediate results, each of which they will assign to a different PhD student as a thesis project. Depending on how many students they advise, not all the students may work on these results, but many of them will.

On the other hand, there are some advisors who give students more flexibility to choose a thesis project. But the project will always need to be in an area where the advisor has real expertise - otherwise, the advisor is not a good choice for the project.

It is also worth keeping in mind that the goal of graduate education is to get students to a point where, at the end, they are able to select their own research projects and carry them out independently. This does not mean that the majority of students are already able to do so when they enter graduate school. It is easy for a graduate student to take on more than they expect, if they choose a thesis project unwisely.

Ideally, you will find an advisor (1) who is very good at advising; (2) who you can work with successfully; (3) who works on topics you are very interested in; and (4) whose students have a history of good jobs after graduation. But sometimes it is not possible to achieve all of (1)-(4), in which case you have to compromise. For some students I have known, giving up on (3) was easy - after all, working on something long enough often makes it interesting. For others, not having (3) would be a deal breaker.

Answer 3

I think the short answer should be "NO", but there are a lot of stuff which have to be taken in consideration.

Is it clear on what type of project you will contribute with your research, or is it a research that is not on the frames of any project?

If it is a research within the frames of a project which has got funding based on its documentation, you will have to work on what that research asks you to. And it is up to you to decide if you want to work on that topic or not.

In both cases, I think that the field of research and the expected outcome of your research should be defined even before the research starts. Of course along the path you might hit obstacles and look at different stuff, but not to the extend of completely switching fields.

Looking at your description it seems that you are working on completely off-topic stuff.

Bear in mind that the Adviser might be testing you, and see your reaction. Maybe if you don't react and accept to do everything that he asks you to, then he will continue with the same later on. Also, he might be testing your patience.

In any case, I strongly recommend that you have a very thorough and mature discussion with your adviser before starting to work on the research. And make sure that this discussion will result in "clearly" defined research goals, at least a well defined topic to focus on!

In general, you are supposed to know the fields of interest of your adviser and expect that he will ask you to do work on those fields.

image processing, security, and embedded are very broad definitions and (at least to me) look very unrelated especially when the granularity of a phd research is considered.

Answer 4

No, it isn't normal or desirable. The point of getting a PhD is to learn how to conduct research, and part of that is learning how to choose research topics. Your advisor should suggest topics and steer you away from bad ones and toward good ones, but summarily giving you research topics for the entirety of your time in grad school is doing you a disservice. Find a different advisor. (In case it helps, my advisor did the same thing: He presented me with a list of topics he found in a paper somewhere, told me to choose one from them, and refused to even entertain my suggestions when I asked for something else to work on. It was one of many reasons why I got nothing out of my time in grad school, and I don't want you to have to go through something similar.)

Answer 5

The answer is YES, sadly. If you do not like it, you got to talk to him/her, or get another advisor if no agreement can be reached.