PhD/PsyD Dissertation Topic and Future Research Directions

[syzergy]

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This is a question for people who have pursued research careers after grad school. Can you speak a little bit about the match between your dissertation topic and your current research? Are they closely related or have you shifted your focus? If you have shifted topics, do you feel this impacted your ability to obtain external funding?

I'm planning to write an F31 for my comps/dissertation and hope to become a professor after grad school. I intend to pursue grant funding throughout my career and wondering how closely my past research needs to match my future research. I know my research is all going to be in the same general area but I can imagine focusing on different aspects within that (broad) area.

 

[Ollie123]

Not there yet, but I will say I have yet to see an individual whose entire research program flowed directly from their dissertation.

The leap from "The role of the community in children's academic performance" to "Neural manifestations of affective processing in schizophrenia" is much bigger than one from "Neural manifestations of cognitive processing in schizophrenia", but I assume you are talking about something more like the latter. Grad school limits the types of projects you can do since many types of research are too time-consuming or costly to pursue as a student.

VERY few people seem to pursue exactly what they did for their dissertation for the rest of the career. Science evolves, so that isn't realistic in any scenario. Its nice if it can get in a good journal, is generally relevant to what you want to pursue and sets you up to build a program of research for larger grant applications down the road. Part of science means it might fail catastrophically (my thesis sure did!) in which case its reasonable to abandon that and move in a different direction. Think about something that motivates you and you wouldn't mind pursuing, but you are putting way too much pressure on yourself if you want your dissertation to define the rest of your career. Most faculty will tell you its generally one of smaller/less important things they've done.

 

[deadmau5]

I think people's interests change, they collaborate with new people, they have access to different populations. So many things can influence our interests, I dont think a dissertation should tie you down in any way. For funding, I get that it can look weird though, so I'm interested in hearing people's opinions on this.