How to Broaden Your Research Horizons

by Prof Mai Yiu Wing, former Head, Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management

How to recommend ways for all postgraduate students to "broaden research horizons" is a complex task, particularly considering the wide spectrum of research disciplines of studies offered at our University. Often, postgraduate students have varied backgrounds, experiences, goals and objectives. In what follows, I will endeavour to give a personal perspective on this issue and hope that you will find it beneficial.

Our ultimate pursuit in research is excellence. And achieving excellence is like reaching the apex of a pyramid that has a broad base. The higher the apex is then the more we see. There is certainly truth in the old Chinese saying that "to see a thousand miles away, go up one more floor". If we assume geometric similarity of all pyramids, then the broader the base, the higher the apex. But the base needs to be strong and stiff to provide the foundation to support the structure. Likewise, broadening horizons will provide the basic elements needed to achieve research excellence. How then should we broaden our horizons?

One criticism of today's postgraduate students is their narrow breadth and shallow depth, not only in their chosen fields of research but also in related disciplines. Narrow breadth and shallow depth, along with a general lack of enthusiasm, can stifle creativity and limit imagination. My experience suggests that, to broaden our horizons, the golden rules of "read more, listen more, see more and write more" remain largely valid. 

Read more

I think we need to develop a genuine interest to read beyond what is usually related to our own research projects. What apparently appears to be unrelated may turn out to be very much intertwined with our work. This is the importance of cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies. An example is the new research area "biomimetics", which involves learning from nature and brings together the two fields of materials and biology. We may find some techniques and analytical models developed for other fields can be applied to our own research with much neater and more accurate solutions. I believe we should read more and learn more, remove the pedestrian and retain the central information. This is not a difficult task anymore. With today's availability of the Internet and the Web, such information is readily at our fingertips.

Listen more

Within our University there are many seminars every week. One easy way to broaden our horizons is to attend seminars that are even remotely related to our own work. We may be delightfully surprised to hear that a civil engineering research student is solving a foundation problem on piling with similar analytical tools and numerical techniques that are applied by a materials postgraduate student to a fibre push-in problem on composite interfaces. Team research is another effective way to bring about a broad perspective on research through group discussions and presentations. I sadly miss the tearoom culture in which I could listen to wild ideas and hot debates between learned colleagues on any research topic. It is this kind of environment that generates new concepts and novel ideas. Outside the University, I would encourage you to attend research workshops and conferences and listen to great minds and accomplished research leaders in order to keep up with the frontiers in your fields and see how these may help your own studies.

See more

"It is better to walk a million miles than to read a million scrolls". What eternal truth! Nothing is more valuable and enlightening than to personally see and witness the occurrence of events as they unfold, landmarks that only appear in history books, cultures of different kinds, and so on. When this is translated to research I advocate an outreach experience for all postgraduate students, with periods of placement at various overseas centres of excellence. This experience will surely broaden your research horizons and give you an international exposure and an opportunity to network with the very best in your research fields.

Write more

Reading more, listening more and seeing more are insufficient without an integration of these three elements. We need to write more: to write down what we read, hear and see, lest we forget! We have to attend to details, to analyse with good depth and to form novel ideas. Only in this way does the broadening of horizons lead to innovative and original research.

These are my personal views about how to broaden research horizons, which hopefully will lead to successful research outcomes. But whether we can become a researcher of distinction also depends very much on being in the right place at the right time! I wish you every success in your pursuit of a research degree at CityUHK.