- #1
RoisinB
- 2
- 0
Hello everyone
I am going to be applying for PhDs this year and have been looking around at what is available. I'm finishing a masters in physics (in the UK) and I have tried to tailor it in the last year so that I have a medical physics/biophysics flavour to it through research projects and reading modules.
Generally I've been looking at medical physics/biophysics PhDs, I'm not particularly certain of one specific area I desperately want to study but something roughly within this field is what I was thinking. However, I found a PhD which caught my eye which is in something called "Psychophysics" which appears to be applications of physics to the field of psychology. The PhD is as part of a research group within the department of physics and the group leader says most people in the group come from an experimental physics background. She encouraged me to apply (even though officially she wanted to get going before I graduate, but said for the right candidate she'd wait). It seems interesting and a great inter-university research project, but I'm a little worried that if I were to do a PhD like this it might restrict my research chances later on. Perhaps if I decided I wanted to move back into a more medical physics research area, would this hold me back?
I worked in a medical physics group during the summer and most of the people there hadn't done medical physics PhDs- they'd done condensed matter, or atomic physics etc. I also know a lot of people though who always did the same thing- people who've never done research in anything other than say, radio astronomy.
Any advice? Do you think I should apply, even if I'm not sure I would do it if it was offered?
I am going to be applying for PhDs this year and have been looking around at what is available. I'm finishing a masters in physics (in the UK) and I have tried to tailor it in the last year so that I have a medical physics/biophysics flavour to it through research projects and reading modules.
Generally I've been looking at medical physics/biophysics PhDs, I'm not particularly certain of one specific area I desperately want to study but something roughly within this field is what I was thinking. However, I found a PhD which caught my eye which is in something called "Psychophysics" which appears to be applications of physics to the field of psychology. The PhD is as part of a research group within the department of physics and the group leader says most people in the group come from an experimental physics background. She encouraged me to apply (even though officially she wanted to get going before I graduate, but said for the right candidate she'd wait). It seems interesting and a great inter-university research project, but I'm a little worried that if I were to do a PhD like this it might restrict my research chances later on. Perhaps if I decided I wanted to move back into a more medical physics research area, would this hold me back?
I worked in a medical physics group during the summer and most of the people there hadn't done medical physics PhDs- they'd done condensed matter, or atomic physics etc. I also know a lot of people though who always did the same thing- people who've never done research in anything other than say, radio astronomy.
Any advice? Do you think I should apply, even if I'm not sure I would do it if it was offered?