What is Abraham like as an advisor?

Last Updated: March 1 2024

“Advisor” can be a daunting and confusing term. In my view, advisors perform two different jobs. The first is as a being the person who gets you to where you want to go. This means:

1. Mentoring and teaching. I will give you the knowledge necessary for you to thrive. This ranges from teaching you very specific technical skills (e.g., certain research methods), more abstract ‘soft’ skills (paper writing, presenting), and overall knowledge around how academia and research works.
2. Guidance and advice Use my experience and knowledge of research and academia to advise you on how best to reach your goals.

Even if you don’t know what your goals are – that is ok. Part of my job also means helping you figure out where it is you want to go, and what we can do to get you there.

These terms may seem vague. And to some extent, they are. This is because I believe the best advising is that which is tailored to an individual person and their needs and wants. Obviously there are a few broad principles I keep in mind when advising. But I have found that different people work well with different styles. Some students prefer hands-on approach and lots of strict guidance and constant feedback. Other students prefer a more hands-off approach, thriving best when given the freedom to explore and do their own thing. Whatever your style is, know this: I am invested in you succeeding. And I will do whatever it takes to get you to where you want to go.

The second job is that of research manager. Let us not beat around the bush: as part of your PhD or internship journey, you are being hired by a research institute or university (if you choose to work for me, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy) to output research. Thus, my job is to manage you as a researcher. In pratice, this means identifying research topics and projects that suit your needs, providing the necessary resources to accomplish your tasks, and dealing with all the overhead logistics and bureaucracy to make sure you can focus on your research and thrive.

Abraham’s Strengths and Weaknesses as an Advisor

I will be the first to admit: I am not a perfect advisor. While I try my best to adapt to every student and their particular needs and wants, there are some tasks I am better at than others. What follows is a list of what I believe are my best features as well as areas of improvement to let you know whether I am a right fit for you.

Strengths

• Kindness and compassion: Life is tough and difficult. My own PhD journey was frought with insecurity, anxiety, depression, and burnout. I know the struggles of doing a PhD, and my job as a mentor is to protect you to the extent that I can from these struggles so you can succeed. Life is more than research and papers. I view you as a person first, researcher second, and I will prioritize your well-being over research output.
• Freedom and flexibility: I believe that people know best how they work better than I ever could. Thus, I pride myself in being flexible with regards to how I advise my students, whether it is in terms of working hours, working styles, topic and research choices. I will give advice, I will have opinions, but at the end of the day, this will be your journey, and your choices are the ones that ultimately matter. I will support you in your choices, regardless of where they take you, as long as they get you to wher eyou want to go.
• Open to feedback: Part of that flexibility means knowing when I am doing something wrong and how I can do better. I proactively seek my advisees input to know what is going well, what isn’t going well, and how can I adapt to best suit their needs and wants. I also give space for students to meet with me on a weekly basis to express concerns, as well as regularly scheduled check-in sessions where I deliberately make space for students to provide feedback (both positive and negative).
• Teaching skills: I am very confident in my ability to teach you the skills you need to succeed. I am passionate about teaching, going so far as to obtain the CRLT Teaching certificate from University of Michigan. Teaching does not just mean teaching large lecture halls – it also means 1-on-1 teaching and mentoring. If there is a skill you need to learn, and I am an expert in it, I will teach you that skill and you will learn it. If it is a skill that I am not an expert in, I will point you to the right resources and help you learn how to learn the skills you need.
• Areas of expertise: (not an exhaustive list:) Design fiction; scenario construction; impact assessments; interviews; surveys; paper writing; paper reading; public speaking; time management.

Weaknesses

• Don’t have an extensive professional network: An idealistic vision of academia is that it is all about making good science and advancing the collective knowledge of mankind. However, let us be frank: an undeniable aspect of getting a PhD is that it increases one’s job credentials and open up possibilities for more lucrative jobs. Naturally, many students who choose a PhD do so in pursuit of bigger and better job opportunities afterwards, and some may expect their mentors to have lots of professional contacts and can connect their students with grant, internship, and even job opportunities. Partly due to me being an early career researcher, partly due to my topic area, and partly due to my own awkwardness networking, I do not have that professional network established yet. Moreover, I am not yet famous enough so that a letter of recommendation from me automatically opens doors for you. I will do my best to help you get those projects and internships and job opportunities; but if what you are looking for is someone who can easily connect you with a job after graduating, there may be other, more established academics who can do that better than I can.
• Difficulty being strict: The flip side of embracing kindness and compassion is that sometimes it can be difficult for me to be tough on students when I need to be. Some students prefer, and benefit from, no-nonsense bosses who are not afraid to mince words and say “Your work output is garbage, improve”. Some students benefit from strict external motivation that pushes students to work harder. I have a hard time doing that. I am the type of person to sandwich feedback, and I have a hard time telling someone off because I fear crushing the student. I am actively working on recognizing when I need to be strict and when I need to be gentle, but it is a process I am still working on.
• Lack of experience: I am early-career faculty, meaning that I have not had the chance to mentor many PhD students. I have mentored undergraduate and graduate students as interns in the past, but I don’t have experience with guiding soemone throughout a full PhD journey.

Sound good so far? For more information about my research philosophy, please check out my research philosophy page.