Finding the right supervisor is critical to the PhD journey. Every PhD student needs to have at least two supervisors, usually a primary and a co-supervisor. As you prepare your application, reach out relatively early to start the conversation with potential supervisors to find out a few things:

1. Do they have capacity to supervise? Some are ineligible to be lead supervisor or are already supervising so many PhDs that another would be too much.
2. Are they interested in your topic? Ideally, they’ll be a subject matter expert in an area related to your PhD. If not, then they might be extremely curious about the topic or methodology and generally interested in supporting you to learn along side you and to to focus their guidance on the process or journey of becoming a ‘doctor’ of somethingorother.
3. Can they give you guidnace on your topic? Interested supervisors will usually help candidates go through 2-3 iterations of their research proposal. This provides an opportunity to test drive each other’s working styles and responsiveness to feedback. And, it helps increase the chances the proposal will pass the PhD application review committees
4. Do they ‘get’ what the Entrepreneurial PhD is about? Do they see how it’s a commitment to developing a research project, but also developing an entrepreneurial mindset and new venture? Some supervisors may only be interested in publications. Others will be more interested in impact (given a minumum number of publications).

Search the UTS Profiles pages for a potential supervisor: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/search?by=text&type=user&v=startups

Contact us to be your concierge and help find supervisors via our relationships to each faculty’s HDR Coordinator and Associate Dean Research.

Your supervision panel can include people outside UTS, though they often don’t get much credit for guiding someone in another organisation. :(

As you craft your proposal and iterate on it with your supervisor, you’ll want to gain a sense of assurance that they’ll write a strong supervision statement to accompany your application when it does to the relevane PhD application review committee. Some of those committees are currently unlikely to be familliar with what to look for in Entreprenuerial PhD and unfamilliar with NTRO-based PhDs. In their statement, they should be able to support you as a PhD candidate and draw attention to the entrepreneurial nature of the PhD.

Setting expectations with your supervisors

Over time, especially upon starting the program, you’ll want to have some conversations with your supervisor. Set aside some time for each of you to think about these prompts and to discuss them together: https://bit.ly/UTS_TDSVCards

The journey through Entrepreneurial PhD will be underpinned by supporting you in other ways, beyond academic supervision. The academic supervision is only the main required component to keeping students on track towards completion. To help co-design the journey and the community supporting you through the PhD, come join **Workshop 1** on Tue 5 Nov.

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