This course is designed to enhance students' abilities related to scientific research during their Ph.D program. Various capabilities will be trained including but not limited to 1. How to grasp the frontiers in their own research; 2. Reading; 3. Justification; 4. Time management; 5. Summarization; 6. Data analysis; 7. Communication skills; 8. Scientific writing; 9. Perseverance; 10. Presentation; 11. Logical thinking etc to make students ready for their research journey. 

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:  
1. How to describe Frontiers in Materials in their own research fields;
2. To outline some possible elements related to their own research;
3. To use library resources to provide a summary on Frontiers in Materials related to their own research fields;
4. To enhance their ability how to effectively work/communicate with their academic advisor;
5. To understand the importance of timeline for completion of their thesis/dissertation;
6. To reduce/eliminate barriers how to develop a high-quality research result;
7. To learn how to select a research topic of importance to the profession;
8. To learn how to write a narrative that presents a compelling need for their study;
9. To develop a clear and concise purpose statement, delineated by research objectives;
10. To learn how to identify and explain an appropriate theory base for their research;
11. To develop a conceptual model relevant to their research;
12. To learn how to prepare a comprehensive review of the empirical literature related to their topic;
13. To learn how to describe in detail the procedures to be used for their study;
14. To learn how to prepare for the successful defence of their thesis/dissertation proposal.  

In class presentation (up to 20 minutes). Your presentation needs to include the following slides: title, what is known about this topic, current knowledge gap and need for the study, problem statement, purpose of the study, research questions/objectives, research design/methods, data source(s), data analysis, and why this study intrigues you. The presentation will be evaluated by all students in the class. 

Recorded thesis proposal presentation. The presentation includes:  

1. Introduction, basic knowledge of this topic, operation mechanism, working principle;

2. Literature review about this field, current status of this field, what progress has already been achieved, what kind of problem still needs to be resolved;

3. Motivation and objective, what kinds of problem you want to solve, why you want to solve this kind of problem, how you are going to solve this kind of problem, from synthesis, characterization, and application aspects, etc. also what is the impact;

4. Research methods, future research direction, what kind of research directions you are going to do, list 1, 2, 3 4 research directions, for each research direction, what kind of problem you want to solve, list the main characterization techniques that want to use to conduct your research, introduce these main characterization techniques, including the operation mechanism, working principle of these characterization techniques, different students can mention different aspects of the same characterization technique, such as TEM, SEM, XRD, XPS, etc. what kind of results you expect to obtain, what kind of improvements you expect to achieve. 

5. Project timetable, list the research schedule and milestones. 

Written thesis proposal. At the end of this course, each student needs to submit a written thesis proposal.