This web page is intended to help researchers of the K.U.Leuven Department of Computer Science (DeptCW) in writing their PhD text following the rules of the Faculty of Engineering. It contains links collected and lessons learned when writing my PhD text. However, I don't guarantee the provided information to be correct, exhaustive, up to date, helpful, relevant, or whatsoever.
Please take the time to send me suggestions about the content of this web page, and updates or additional links to improve it. From now on I won't be very active in maintaining this site; I hope to receive updates from "users" in order to make this web page helpful to other PhD students in the future (e.g. by adding links to the rules and guidelines for theses submitted to the Faculty of Sciences)!
Thanks for keeping this web page useful,K.U.Leuven PhD site Faculty of Engineering PhD site A guide to PhD Research (Good PhD text outline) The computer science PhD program bible (Stanford LaTeX style) How to write a PhD thesis (General tips and tricks, detailed PhD text structure) Dissertation/Thesis guide (Professional, List of 37 detailed tips, lots of links) Notes on the PhD Degree (What is a PhD? FAQ about doing research and getting a PhD) The stages of writing a PhD (From idea till writing the text, FAQ) Advice on getting through Graduate School (Practical tips, sometimes for specific conferences) Surviving Research...
Whitesides' Group: Writing a Paper (G. M. Whitesides) Writing technical articles (H. Schulzrinne) A Referee's plea (by Mark Allman) How to increase the chances your paper is accepted at ACM SIGCOMM (by Craig Partridge) How to get your paper accepted at OOPSLA "An Evaluation of the Ninth SOSP Submissions, or, How (and How Not) to Write a Good Systems Paper" (by Roy Levin and David D. Redell) Writing reviews for systems conferences (T. Roscoe) Writing skills Common Errors in English Online Writing Lab (OWL) (Purdue University) Writing on the Net (Links to online writing labs) Advice on Research and Writing (Carnegie Mellon) hints on writing technical papers (Armando Fox @ Stanford University)
ISI web of science Uni Trier Computer Science Bibliography Science Direct (Journal database) ACM portal (Journal database) IEEE Xplore (Journal database) Wiley Interscience (Journal database) ISI Journal Citation Reports Citeseer Estimated impact of publication venues in Computer Science... Citations search engine on Google...
The Educational dictionary/thesaurus (very good) Merriam-Webster Online (very good) van Dale woordenboek Officieuze groene boekje Online dictionary & thesaurus
Interesting latex template files: main .tex file Put these files in one directory to build the cover pages: DeptCW PhD cover .tex file and the associated style file, the K.U.Leuven logo, and the the K.U.Leuven sedes. If pdflatex doesn't work, try to process the cover file using "tt", the DeptCW tex parser front-end. LaTeX definitions and parameters macro definitions fancy headers LaTeX style file Don't spill too much paper: print 2 pages on 1... LaTeX @ K.U.Leuven Guide to Writing a Thesis in LATEX
Designing effective posters Designing effective poster presentations Do's and Don'ts of poster presentations
- Register as a doctoral student once you are admitted to the doctoral program of your faculty.
- Get familiar with 'My Doctorate' in KULoket... If you are registered as a doctoral student and My Doctorate is not visible in the blue bar, please contact your faculty member responsible. Probably your doctoral project is not in the research database yet or not linked to your student file.
- Check out the PhD student pages of the Arenberg Doctoral School! You may find helpful the PhD plan at the bottom of the page...
- Contact your supervisor to compose a supervisory committee ('begeleidingscomite'); follow the rules stated by the Faculty of Engineering.
- Finish your "Doctoraatsopleiding" as soon as possible...
- Carefully read the regulations and guidelines concerning the doctoral program in engineering within the Arenberg Doctoral School.
- Contact your supervisor to compose an examination board (jury). Follow the rules stated by the Faculty of Engineering. Attention: The Faculty Board doesn't like a jury with a lot of (>2) external jury members...!! In such case, the Faculty Board adds a K.U.Leuven member to the proposed jury.
- [Takes 1 month] Send your text to the examination board. They have at least 4 weeks time to read the text and prepare for the preliminary defense.
- Plan the preliminary defense. Agree on a date with your supervisor/jury as soon as possible. It is helpful for you and your supervisor to have a concrete deadline... The examination board will advice the Faculty whether or not you are allowed to defend your thesis (with or without suggested improvements to the text); see also regulations doctoral programmes within the Arenberg Doctoral School. Make sure to plan the public defense date at the end of the preliminary defense.
- You will get informed by the Faculty when you are allowed to defend your thesis. From this moment you can subscribe to "Doctoraat met verdediging" (Universiteitshallen, Naamsestraat 22, 3000 Leuven). The Faculty of Engineering normally does this for you; you will receive the invoice (243,40 euro). Otherwise, you can have the registration done by simply calling 016/324040.
- [<= 6 weeks before binding of text] Request an ISBN, U.D.C., and D/... number as soon as possible (normally after your text has been approved, but you can do it earlier if time is short). Send an email to Goedele Jonckheere with the
- title of your thesis
- expected number of pages (e.g. 186 + xxii)
- defense date (no problem if you don't have it yet; provide an approximate date in that case)
- abstract of your text (doesn't have to be the final abstract, they only need a rough description of the content)
- whether or not the text contains figures
- You will receive a copyright agreement form that is needed to announce your PhD in some database. Fill in and sign the 'abstract' part, and send back the form.
- Agree on a PhD defense date with your supervisor/jury as soon as possible. It is helpful for you and your supervisor to have a concrete deadline...
- [1 month before public defense] When you know the defense date you can make reservations for the auditorium and the Salons of the Arenberg castle. Note that, if you don't defend in the castle of Arenberg, you need to order 'togas' yourself (contact Annemie Caproens 016 321353).
- First of all, check out this page (only in Dutch!) and then fill in this webform (only in Dutch!). If you are looking for free slots to reserve a room (for instance the auditorium and the Salons of the castle), you can use KULoket to get an overview of available rooms.
- Choose "Niet student" and subsequently "C. PAV activiteiten, wetenschappelijke congressen, studiedagen, symposia, lezingen, leerstoelen, ..."
- Room numbers of the castle can be found here
- When you have questions you can contact this generic email address, or Krista Dupont.
- Notice that the castle reservation is for exactly 4 hours (K.U.Leuven security _will_ kick you out after 4 hours :-|)!
- You can make reservations for up to 3 slots and decide later (for example depending on who can join the jury or not)
- If you do not (cannot) defend in the Castle, you may want to explicitly reserve "togas" at the Faculty of Engineering!
- [<= 3 weeks] Send the following information to Veronique Cortens. It's a good idea to call her before you send her the information (she might be ill, or on holiday...) She contacts you when she has found a chairman.
- date and time of your PhD defense
- English and Dutch title of your thesis
- PhD defense room
- proposed jury members
- address of external jury members
- [1 month before defense] You could ask LeuCa catering service for your PhD reception (LeuCa). You can save money by preparing the reception yourself and asking LeuCa for providing waiters (or vice versa!).
- [>= 3 weeks before defense] Hand every member of your jury a copy of the text (except for the chair), and deliver 3 copies to the Faculty. In some cases, your supervisor migth allow you to provide the members of the jury with a printed version, and hand over the bound version the day of your public defense. It's a good (and polite) idea to hand over your text in person if possible, so you can give some extra comments (denote the key chapters, provide the key ideas in a nutshell, say thanks).
- Example PhD invitation and route description (very amateurish...)
- Contact a print and bind company. Examples:
- Don't forget to make the back cover of your book ("de rug" in Dutch)!
- Make sure your abstract and copyright notice gets printed along with the cover text! Acco, for instance, ignores copyroght and abstract in the cover.tex file!!
- Approximately 50 copies will certainly do
- [2 weeks] Acco (016/62.80.15 ask for David Daman (@acco.be), Kaboutermanstraat 30, Leuven). Acco is more expensive than Alpha Copy, but the quality seems to be better... Print/copy time is 7-8 work days but Acco provides two proof prints in that period. They certainly do not offer on-desk service, as Alpha Copy does. You can send them a pdf file but make sure that you use vector fonts and that all fonts are included in the pdf file (you could use "ps2pdf -dEmbedAllFonts Thesis.ps"). You might consider to deliver your pdf in the Acco shop here in Heverlee (they provide a free shipping service between Leuven and Heverlee, multiple times a day), but you must insist (!) in this case that the proof prints are actually made at the printer in Leuven (i.e. on the production machine). Attention: double check the cover page since it is reproduced at Acco; reproduction may introduce spelling and/or editing mistakes...
- [2 weeks] Procopia. Has experience with LaTeX, is prepared to give personal advice, and has a considerably shorter delivery time than Acco (i.e. 3 working days after submission of the final manuscript). Disadvantage: seems to be more expensive than Acco (+/- 5%). One reported problem of an unsolvable issue with particular figures.
- [2 weeks] Alpha Copy (016/22.56.01). Deprecated; Alpha Copy does not seem to print PhD texts any longer If you want to print your PhD text generated with LaTeX, you will no longer be able to go to Alpha Copy. The printer drivers of their Xerox 4110 cannot handle postscript type 1 fonts. As a result, random words or characters are printed fatter than others. Alpha Copy has decided to stop printing LaTeX texts because it is bad PR and very frustrating for the PhD students. Apart from that, Alpha Copy used to be good, both in price and service. Print/copy time is 5-6 work days. They also copy your PhD invitations if you like. If you're almost out of time, you can ask them to prepare a few copies right away (e.g. for the Faculty or members of the jury). Contact Alpha Copy.
- Archiving PhD text.
- Do not forget to archive your PhD thesis in LibriDoc (using the MyPhD application in KULoket) following the instructions given here.
- [Only for members of Dept. of Computer Science] When the text is printed, hand over or send a copy to the members of the jury, 3 to the Faculty, and one to the secretariat for the archives of the department.
- [Only for members of Dept. of Computer Science] Send an email with the PhD abstract (in html) and text (in pdf) here.
- [2 weeks before defense] If you want the K.U.Leuven to create and place directions so that people find you on the day of your PhD defense, just contact Theo Everaerts and tell him where you want the placards to be placed. It costs +/- 60 euro (can be refunded by the Faculty).
- [1 week before defense] Final catering arrangements.