Phil Mercy

Phil Mercy is studying for a PhD in Electronic Engineering and is a member of the Antennas and Electromagnetics Research Group

What’s your thesis title?

Bias of the world: Biased interactions and the emergence of sub-optimal equilibria in systems

Can you summarise your research in one sentence?

Much of what appears frustratingly poor or inefficient, in diverse systems ranging from governments and businesses to nature’s ecosystems and economic markets, can be explained by the presence of bias when system agents interact.

Why did you choose to do your doctoral research at QMUL?

I had worked previously with Prof Martin Neil and Prof Norman Fenton when I was working at Motorola, and then Nokia. I contacted them for their insight on a thread of work I was investigating at Nokia, line of enquiry involving inefficient performance in business. Those discussions led to my embarking on a part time PhD.

How does your research group support you?

I’m remote and part time, so my interaction with the RIM group has been virtually non-existent… no fault of theirs. My primary supervisor Martin, on the other hand, has been incredibly supportive and our weekly 30 minute catch up sessions have been essential for keeping me on track.

What’s a typical research day like for you?

Well, for a part time PhD, you don’t do research every day. I have been in a fairly pressured full on day job, but I did negotiate a free morning every Monday to focus on my studies. A typical Monday morning has changed as my PhD has progressed. Initially, I alternated between doing a lot of reading into related subjects and then experimenting with ideas as they arose to see if they had merit. There was a phase of prolonged experimentation and documentation, building up a repository of experimental results, followed by a period of formalising the key concepts in papers for publication. Now, I’m in the final ‘writing up’ phase and a typical Monday is focussed on fitting the work I’ve done into a narrative that makes sense to other academics.

What’s been your most exciting research experience so far?

There was a kind of eureka moment when a mathematical approach I’d reasoned from first principles led to a result I knew to be important, the emergence of equilibria. That was a watershed moment, the point where the research into a concept that might have had some merit turned into a program to explore and document a powerful new approach. That was a good day.

Any advice for anyone about to start their PhD journey?

I can only imagine that the part-time PhD experience for a mature candidate is different to a normal post-graduate one. Whilst the process is longer and the time you can spend focussed on it is less, there are factors that make mature PhD research worthwhile. You bring extensive experience, so your perspective can be more widely informed than a typical post-graduate. As such, your studies are likely to be broader and cross disciplinary boundaries, and that’s often where the interesting discoveries lie. It’s not all roses, though. Switching from a day job, to family life, to a PhD, and back again is non-trivial, and it can sometimes take a while to get back ‘in the zone’. The reading can be difficult if you’ve spent a lifetime acquiring knowledge without referencing precisely where it came from. It feels like a needless chore, but it’s essential to success. Finally, academic writing is a different class of writing to writing for business or writing for casual articles or blogs. If you’re not used to it, the norms, conventions, and restrictions of academic writing can take a while to acquire. Overall, though, a PhD is well worth doing and it has stimulated my brain in ways that are difficult to achieve in a typical business environment.