When a graduate student is supervised by a professor, he may be more developing the routines and basic structure of starting a research, in which case mostly he is restricted to the field the supervisor resides. However, when he graduates, all the restrictions disappears and he can search for his research interest on his own. At this moment, new challenges rises along with freedom of choice.
1. Decide on a promising research field that matches the development of the country and the researcher’s interest. Is the field critical to the country’s need so the research will be potentially funded by big money? Does the field actively studied by in recent 3 years? Does the field studied by great guys such as ones in MIT? Do recent works publish on top tier journals such as IEEE network? Do this field studied intensely in my country so I will have to face fierce competition? Is there any research field that advances relatively more in the US but for some reason ignored in my country so I can get funded effortlessly?
2. Once you decided the field you are going to invest your time and effort in, the next important thing is to propose a good question. The question lies on the fast grasp on the recent research advances in literature. For the application research, a good question may propose like: The original scheme is super powerful and applied everywhere, yet new application scenarios emerge and new requirements are imposed, so changes must be made to the original scheme in the context of new application scenarios. So you check the scheme to find the whereabouts to improve it and test the benchmark to prove that it improves in some meaningful way.
3. The third thing is to form a research proposal, and, inquire the experts in the field for their advice, get feedbacks and supports and form research teams. I was told that most research in UESTC is done in research groups. And there are more than 63 groups that could create income more than 10 million RMBs. So form the notion of doing research as a team. Share your research ambition with group members and potentially form various teams within a group. Aim big. Do not aim research projects that only fund several thousand RMBs.