THE OBJECTIVE
The Rii Forum 2025 PhD workshop is designed to support doctoral students at any stage of their research journey by addressing key challenges and equipping them with practical strategies. Over the course of 1.5 hours, participants will explore effective collaboration with supervisors, tackle common obstacles doctoral students face, and gain insights into delivering impactful research.
THE APPROACH
The session begins with an introduction to create a collaborative environment, followed by a deep dive into strategies for building productive relationships with supervisors, setting expectations, and managing communication. Participants will then engage in discussions and interactive activities to navigate challenges such as time management, motivation, writer’s block, impostor syndrome, and balancing academic responsibilities.
THE CONTENT
The key focus of the workshop is the “Thesis by Compendium of Publications”, an alternative thesis format structured around published or publishable papers. Attendees will learn how to align research efforts with publication opportunities while maintaining coherence in their thesis. The session concludes with strategies for maximizing research impact through dissemination, networking, and real-world applications. A Q&A and reflection component of the workshop will ensure that participants leave with actionable takeaways, fostering confidence and efficiency in their PhD journey.
THE CONVENERS
The Rii Forum 2025 workshop is facilitated by Professor David Masip (UOC) & Dr Mara Grimaldi (UNISA).
DAVID MASIP
David Masip, Ph.D., Professor, Director of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) Doctoral School since 2015; Professor in the Computer Science Department, UOC since February 2007. He studied Computer Science at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, obtaining an FPI grant in 2001 for starting his Ph.D. degree in the Computer Vision Center (Spain). He obtained the Ph.D. degree in September 2005. He obtained the best Thesis award in Computer Science. Previously, he worked as an assistant professor in the Applied Mathematics Department, Universitat de Barcelona, and in 2013 he was a Research Affiliate at Princeton University. He advised 4 doctoral theses (and 5 ongoing), participated in 14 research projects, being the PI in 4 of them. His research interests are Computer Vision and Machine Learning, particularly Deep Learning (DL) algorithms applied to Affective Computing and Medical Image Analysis in eHealth. His current projects focus on adding explainable layers to DL, training DL models in small sample size problems (transfer and self-supervised learning), uncertainty modeling in DL, and applications of DL models to Retina Imaging.
MARA GRIMALDI
Mara Grimaldi, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the University of Salerno (UNISA), Department of Political and Communication Sciences. Her main areas of interest are services marketing and management, information and knowledge management, strategic innovation management. She participated in several national and international conferences as a chair (Research and Innovation Forum, Naples Forum on Service, etc.). Dr Grimaldi served as Guest Editor in several high-impact journals, including Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy; European Journal of Innovation Management. Dr Grimaldi is the co-editor of several books published by Emerald and Routledge. Currently, Dr Grimaldi is engaged in a number of research projects that aim at exploring the opportunities and the criticalities of big data analysis and data-driven decision-making in business and innovation management.