Simple advice on how to plan your PhD and minimize the risk of disaster. I first discuss when to take courses and what types of courses I recommend, which are courses directly related to your project or transferable skills such as scientific writing, presentation techniques and project management. Then I'll explain how to create a project plan that maximizes efficiency and minimizes the risk of failure and the dangers of relying on future data. Then I will give some advice on how to do the actual project work and how to publish during your PhD.

0:00 Introduction: simple advice for new PhD students and supervisors on how to prevent disaster
0:23 Course plan: systems vary widely, sooner is better, project relevance and transferable skills
1:05 Project plan: the best part of bioinformatics, multiple projects, risk reduction, stacked risks, minimization of dependencies and parallel work
2:06 Data base: the worst part of bioinformatics, data dependency, data delays, future dates and contingency plan
3:14 Execute projects: view data, automate analysis, use version control, create sample data, and focus on the science
4:38 Publishing: to write a review or not, safe first papers, joint papers and the main paper

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