Gao Xiang
Nationality: China
Faculty & Year of Study: School of Computing, Year 5
Undergraduate: Shandong University, China
"Think in abstract and do in concrete."
Why Did You Choose To Pursue A PhD?
I read a blog (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/) when I was an undergraduate student. The author of this blog represented the knowledge of humans with a circle. With a bachelor’s degree, you can have a specialty. A master’s degree deepens that specialty. Then, you can reach the edge of human knowledge by reading research papers. As a PhD, you will be on the way to break the boundary. I choose to do a PhD because I want to be the one who creates new knowledge.
Why Did You Choose To Pursue Your PhD At NUS?
My bachelor thesis supervisor did his PhD at NUS. He also encouraged me to pursue my PhD at NUS because of the good academic environment, the professional management, the great supervisors, and, of course, the high ranking. I would say that enrolling as a PhD student at NUS has been one of the best decisions in my life.
Can you tell us briefly about your research topic?
I am majoring in computer science, especially software engineering. My research focuses on helping people to efficiently write high-quality programs. I mainly use program analysis, test generation and formal method to aid users in fixing software bugs and writing programs.
Why did you choose to do this research for your PhD?
I chose this research topic because I think it is interesting. Imagine you can use techniques to detect and fix the bugs or vulnerabilities made by humans (software developers). That sounds super cool, right?
How does PhD graduate education compare with your undergraduate experience?
When I was an undergraduate student, I think I mainly learned established and mutual knowledge. In contrast, as a PhD student, I mainly learned the newly created knowledge which may or may not have been applied in the real world. More importantly, PhD students will think about new ideas, conduct novel research, and even create new knowledge.
What do you like most about graduate school?
The academic activities, e.g. research week, seminars, conferences.
What challenges have you faced during your stint as a PhD student?
The biggest challenge I have faced during my study is the academic writing. How to share your ideas with others is very important. Graduate students have to improve their writing skills.
Any other words of wisdom to share?
Think in abstract and do in concrete.