Research Supervisors

Research supervisors or principal investigators (PIs) are academic staff members of universities. They can also work at the research units or institutions associated with universities. Many higher education students around the world are actively looking for a future supervisor in their academic journey. They might seek research supervisors as a master’s supervisor, a PhD thesis supervisor, or a postdoc boss. Most of these students are looking for a supervisor to increase their chances of getting a fully-funded position. Nowadays, most applicants are searching for a research supervisor with relevant research areas in a traditional way. It is tiring, time-wasting, and inefficient in most cases.

Research supervisor directory

On this search engine, the Applyindex platform provides a comprehensive directory of research supervisors in academia around the world. Thus, position-seeking candidates do not need to spend weeks or months on the universities’ and departments’ websites to find potential supervisors to get in touch with. In fact, students can filter the PIs against a wide range of parameters. Such parameters are location, research areas, fields of study, h-index, etc. With regard to the type of membership a student activates, the number of academic supervisors they can see varies. Those who use our platform for free (trial students) can access up to 6 supervisors’ contact info. If the registered PIs had advertised any available positions, you can also see them in their profiles.

Applyindex matches you with research supervisors

Applyindex is a supervisor-applicant matchmaker! You no longer have to take the traditional way of finding a research supervisor. In short, we match you with the most relevant supervisors based on the research interests you define in your CV. Therefore, please make sure that you fill out the research interest section of your CV. You can easily contact the matched supervisors via Applyindex if they have any available positions. Otherwise, you can pick up their email address and contact them.

To the best of our knowledge, we are the first start-up that does such matchmaking in academia. We believe that time is the diamond in academia. In other words, position-seeking applicants and research supervisors deserve a non-time-wasting process to find each other.

The traditional way to approach PIs for research opportunities

The traditional way for preparing a potential PhD supervisor list in a country is by searching around universities’ websites. Basically, this pathway usually can take up to weeks. Imagine you are a PhD applicant who wishes to find a PhD supervisor in Sydney, Australia. Therefore, to create a list of potential PhD advisors you need to do the following steps:

(1) Looking up the websites of around 10 universities in Sydney including the University of Sydney, UNSW, Macquarie University, etc.

(2) Opening up all supervisors’ profiles to read through their research activities and fields of work one by one.

(3) Excluding the profiles of those whose research activities are not aligned with your research interests or background.

(4) Taking the emails of those whose research activities are relevant to yours for contacting them. Putting these emails and research activities together, finally, gives you a list of PhD supervisors you should get in touch with them.

(5) Emailing the selected supervisors one by one to see if they (i) have any available PhD positions, (ii) offer you any financial support, or (iii) are willing to support your PhD application.