JSPS fellowship, final interview

In a previous post I documented the paper application for the JSPS scholarship fellowship. A number of applicants are accepted outright after this step, however a number are required to give a final interview in the form of a 4-minute powerpoint presentation. I was in this second set, and here is my advice for this final part.

TL;DR

• Read the JSPS ‘About us’ page. This will give you a good idea of what they are looking for.

• Impact and Originality are two key messages that should be emphasized.

• Independent Thought. Which parts of the project are your own ideas, from your own initiative (as opposed to your professor’s)? This is another key point that should be clear.

• Add Japanese Subtitles. Or alternatively make the slides completely in Japanese. You’re allowed to present in English, but having Japanese on the slides will make it easier for the audience to find the thread again if they lose track for a moment.

• Get feedback from a wide audience. The panel will be a mixed crowd (from your general field), so you need to make sure your presentation is both understandable and appealing to a wide audience. Skype with old buddies from back home, ask other PhDs at your uni, hell, go knock on the door of some professors and ask them too. Not all of them will indulge you, but the ones who do will probably give you some really good feedback.

The story

The TL;DR pretty much covers it and most of the reasoning is explained in this post, so I won’t go into too many details. Of course being able to give a solid and compelling presentation is key, but that isn’t specific to the JSPS interview. So I will focus here on the Q&A section. Most of these questions are rather standard, so you should prepare and practice them. With some practice, you can often answer questions in a way that emphasizes things that you think make you a strong candidate but aren’t directly asked for (i.e. I wanted to point out that I have had a lot of international experience, which I think is one of the things that sets me apart from the average Japanese student).

Q&A

Q1: Why do you want to study in Japan?
This is a very standard question, and a perfect excuse to talk about something more important. I quickly mentioned that I like Japanese/Asian culture, then explained the main reason was specifically to join the Ishiguro lab. I had met prof. Ishiguro a year earlier during a summer-school, we got along very well and I really liked both the research topics his lab had as well as the approach they take. Then I took the opportunity to explain that his lab was very much focused on hardware development, whereas my background is more heavy on optimization and optimal control, so this provided a lot of synergy: I would be bringing new know-how into the lab, and at the same time there was a lot of new stuff for me to learn. Lo and behold, the very next question was…

Q2: What is your contribution, and what is from the lab? Actually, this was phrased as “Well, actually you already mentioned this in the previous question, but …”. Having known that this was important to them, I managed to preemptively cover a good part of this question already! This meant that now I could go a little deeper into the details (I had some back-up slides to help illustrate) without losing the audience (with only 6 minutes Q&A, I didn’t want to spend too much time on a single question. Being able to answer concisely is important). They seemed quite impressed and very satisfied.

Q3: What do you expect to be most challenging? This is actually a very standard question that I hadn’t thought of and prepared for. Fortunately, I had been working on my topic for a while already and was able to give a good answer, but you should definitely be ready for this one.

Q4: What are your plans after you PhD? “Do you already have plans to stay with your current lab?”. Reading between the lines… will you stay in Japan? This is a question I was expecting and I was worried might count negatively, since I doubt I will stay in Japan. At the same time, I wanted to be completely honest. I answered that I plan to stay in academia, which means I will have to be flexible and go somewhere that has an interesting project and also funding, so I don’t know what I will do next. I then added (which perhaps wasn’t necessary) that this meant probably I would leave Japan, also because I think it is important to move around in order to continue learning.
Since JSPS is of course interested in fostering the Japanese scientific community, this was a risky statement… but I got the fellowship, so I think they appreciate the honesty and also know that even if you leave the country, it is still likely that you will indirectly help by being a good contact outside of Japan. Regardless, my advice is in any case to be honest and keep your integrity.

Q5: Energy is a big challenge for field robotics, how does your topic relate to this?
This was the last question! A somewhat technical question, but not in the specific details. Also relatively easy to answer, since my research is quite closely related to this problem (or rather, this problem is very related to my research :P).

I have heard from friends that they had more specific technical questions. In general I had the impression that the questions were prepared beforehand: expect that they have read your application well and know exactly what they want to double-check before recommending you. This also means that if you’ve changed your research plan from your original application (indeed, about half a year passed between the paper submission and the interview, so this is possible if not likely), you should be ready to explain what/why you changed the plan.