King's College London

“[Sameer] has managed to find the right balance between making the students own their research project, thus making them think of themselves as researchers, yet making them understand that they need, at the same time, still educate themselves along the many dimensions of research… [This] includes enhancing knowledge, being self-critical, broadening and deepening their skill set, [and] understanding and accepting that they, like experienced researchers, always work at the limit of what they can do. This approach appears to instil the right mixture of enthusiasm, self-confidence and humbleness that enables them to great things.”

Former Head of the Department of Mathematics Professor Reimer Kuehn and Associate Dean for Doctoral Studies Dr Jean Alexandre

“In my experience the most important point is to get a student to take ownership of the research problem [...] I make it clear that I am their primary resource in the first couple of years, and they should use it well. In addition, I encourage them to talk to other students and staff and learn from others [...] I think it is important to show a student how I go about it when faced with a new problem (I get stuck, I try various computations, read a bit etc). I talk about my own experiences (successes and failures) during my learning curve – the idea is to show that as supervisors we also went through the same struggles that they are now going through.”

Professor Sameer Murthy