DC Speaker

As part of the SoCS-23 Doctoral Consortium, we are pleased to welcome an invited talk on career advice for young researchers.

Being a Ph.D student: The Good (joy), the Bad (stress) and the Ugly (competition)

Ariel Felner

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Abstract: Being a scientist in general, and a Ph.D student in particular, is emotionally demanding. After all, we are all humans. The emotional state is relatively unstable with significant ups and downs compared to other occupations. A Ph.D student might experience many periods of joy, but on the other hand, there are many time frames with significant stress. Additionally, due to the demand for high-valued scientific achievements, then competition and comparison with others are also evident. How do we handle all this and still have a good spirit? In this talk, I will focus on these issues and try to give some advice and guidelines for keeping your head up in all situations.
Bio: Ariel Felner is a professor of computer science and currently serves as the chair of the Software and Information Systems Engineering Department at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He received his B.Sc and M.Sc from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his Ph.D from Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is a Senior Member of AAAI and a fellow of EurAI. His research interests involve all aspects of heuristic search, including theoretical foundations, new search algorithms, the study and development of heuristics and applying all these to different domains and settings.Â