Get the most out of your time. You come here and spend years doing a PhD, it would be a shame if you just wrote papers and your thesis then went home.
Try to get to know as many people as possible, and do as many projects as possible. This helps you make friends, and focus on something other than your research.
What do you want to do after your PhD?
I want to be to stay in academia, and I am thinking about which other universities I would like to work in. My big dream is to go to the US, but the research is very different there and I would need to learn about it. Asian countries are also very interesting at the moment, so doing a visit to Asia might be helpful.
Is there anything that surprised you about doing a PhD?
At the beginning of my PhD I thought the hardest time would be at the end when the deadlines kicked in. The truth is that is not where you will have the main challenges. There are ups and downs you will face every week. One week you have good results and are happy, then for a month you have no results and feel a bit lost.
But there are resources at King’s to help you deal with this. There are societies you can go to that help you build a support network. There is access to a gym which is less expensive than a normal gym in London. There is a counselling service and even a GP on site.
What advice would you give to someone doing a PhD now?
My advice to everyone doing a PhD is to remember you were selected for a reason. It is easy to wonder if you are the best person to do this, you ask yourself why didn’t they pick that other person with the master's in computer science?