SYNOPSIS   

Doing a PhD can be considered as being at the highest level of Maslow's triangle of self-actualization. Therefore, it can be implied that doing a PhD should be beneficial to the stakeholders involved in a PhD's thesis life cycle. Some see the PhD as a means to an end rather than the end in itself. It is the former category of achievers that this talk will address, excite and imbue with new ideas, possibilities and achievements. Traditionally, a PhD was done by an individual who goes into a relative or absolute research area, in a desired of field or specialization of choice. Fortunately, or unfortunately due to the changing times, values, perceptions, needs and global forces, a PhD degree has a wider application enabling new opportunities to be opened up. Furthermore, this has been the perception and values held by stakeholders like the government, business and those with extreme ambitions.

In order to cope with the times, there has been a whole variety and range of academics that have come into PhD supervision and subsequently producing PhD graduates with a varying range of abilities, capabilities and thinking processes, if at all. Hence, this talk focuses on the basic needs of a PhD research and its deliverables to successfully graduate with the doctorate title that is useful to all the stakeholders involved. The speaker will also highlight the salient points of failure in the current practices of PhD supervision and research while providing approaches and solutions to overcome them, while being on the pathway to righteousness. A variety of changing expectations, requirements and compliances to existing regulations for a PhD graduation will be discussed in detail, among others. Issues like copyright, patents and intellectual property that are part and parcel of a PhD lifecycle will be addressed and deliberated on, during the discussions. This is in addition on how to make your PhD research not confined to the shelf of a library or a university but available to all.

This talk will specifically focus on not only the existing number of research gaps that have to be addressed by the PhD candidate but also new areas of research gap that has been introduced by the speaker, that will require the Malaysian PhD thesis to be acceptable at the international level. Additionally, the changing requirements for a PhD candidate will be discussed in detail, as well as, why there are lesser number of PhD candidates as time goes on.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Ir. (Dr.) S. Vignaeswaran
PEPC

Ir. (Dr.) S. Vignaeswaran PEPC has more than 40 years of working experience in the electrical, computer, IT, SCADA, project management and tendering field. He has been involved in state-of-the-art applications which includes operational technology (OT) cyber-security from the 1990s. He has an Electrical Engineering degree from Monash University (Clayton, Australia), MSc in IT/BIS from University of Keele, UK and a PhD in CyberSecurity from Alabama, USA. He continues to publish cutting-edge research papers in the Engineering, IT, Computer Security and Project Management fields. These have been based on his role as the Client’s HoD (Electrical & Automation) in a RM 8 billion Saudi Arabian project. All of these three international degrees and his specialized experiences, has allowed the speaker to conduct PhD supervision in Malaysia to the highest standards, requirements and compliances. These requirements are subsequently placed on doctoral students under very desirable outcomes, positive situations, and beneficial circumstances. He was a remote specialist mentor to students in Australia and Malaysia, while being a professionally employed engineer in Malaysia. This is in addition to personally improving and developing new engineering and IT syllabuses for the future engineering and IT students to be acceptable internationally.

His venture into the Smart City market segment consolidates his expertise in the Electrical, Automation, Project Management etc, among others. It is his ambition to bring Smart Cities into reality while opening up new market segments for Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) specialists. He is currently involved in the research of a state-of-art utility automation, IT and engineering systems that applies AI and pre-emptive decision-making models with innovative solution approaches. He has set up MALAYSIA SMART INTELIGENT TECHNOLOGICALLY INTEGRATED CITY (MySITI) special interest group under the MALAYSIAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (MySET) to realize his hopes and achieving his objectives, both locally and internationally