Engaging with Supervisors and Documenting Meetings

Just as regular commits to your IRP repository help demonstrate consistent engagement with your project, regular interaction with your supervisor is key to making progress, completing your IRP on time, and maintaining academic integrity.

We expect students to attend all scheduled meetings with their supervisors and to participate actively in the discussions. If you are unwell or taking a planned break, that is understandable, but attendance at all meetings is expected under normal circumstances. You are expected to take an active role in every meeting. This includes discussing your progress since the last meeting, raising any questions or concerns, and outlining your plans for the next phase of your project. This applies equally to individual and group meetings. In group meetings, you should still contribute meaningfully and reflect on how the discussion relates to your work.

Meetings should be held in person whenever your supervisor is available. If an in-person meeting is not possible, for example if your supervisor is working remotely, online meetings must be conducted professionally, with your camera on. These meetings are a formal part of your academic engagement and should be treated accordingly. You are expected to attend all meetings with a stable internet connection. Technical constraints preventing you from using your camera must not become routine and will only be accepted in rare and exceptional circumstances — for example, during fieldwork or when collaborating with partners based in remote areas.

Our administrative team regularly contacts all supervisors to ask whether students attend meetings and engage as expected. If a supervisor reports repeated non-attendance or a lack of engagement, this may result in the matter being escalated and formally investigated.

Supervisory styles vary; some students may meet their supervisors more frequently than others. However, we recommend meeting your main supervisor at least once every two weeks.

logbook.md

After each meeting with any of your supervisors, you are expected to update your logbook.md file in your IRP repository. This should be committed and pushed shortly after the meeting to the main branch. Each logbook entry normally should include, for each meeting: (1) date, (2) who attended, (3) key points discussed, (4) feedback received, and (5) what you plan to do before the next meeting. There should be one entry per meeting in logbook.md. Please do not include anything personal or confidential that is not directly related to your IRP - such information should not be stored in the repository.

If your supervisor is unavailable for a meeting, you could still add a logbook entry as a personal reflection. Use this to summarise what you have worked on, outline any concerns or open questions, and set out your plan for the coming days. This is a good way to demonstrate ownership of your project and to build a clear, time-stamped record of how your thinking and progress have evolved. Also, writing things down, even informally, can often help you clarify your ideas.

While the primary purpose of the logbook is to document meetings with your supervisors, you are also encouraged to record relevant discussions with anyone who has inspired your project - this might include informal chats with peers, external collaborators, or even reflections from solo brainstorming sessions

We do not monitor your logbook during the IRP, but we may review it at any point to understand how your project evolved, particularly if any concerns arise. A clear and consistent meeting record, alongside your commit history, can help demonstrate that your work is your own and that you were actively engaged throughout the project.

An example of a logbook entry

Meeting (17 June 2025)

• Present: Susan Zhang (SZ, student), Marijan Beg (MB, main supervisor)

• Key points discussed:

  • Reviewed the current progress on implementing the numerical solver for the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation with adaptive time-stepping.

  • MB provided clarification on the penalty term in the dynamics equation to preserve the norm of the field.

• Feedback received:

  • MB advised checking the stability of the time integration by running convergence tests with smaller time steps.

  • Supervisor suggested implementing a minimal test case (e.g., skyrmion, meron, or trivial texture) before applying to hopfions.

  • Emphasised the importance of attending the meetings regularly and how to use generative AI responsibly.

  • MB thinks I am not writing enough tests and should take advantage of GitHub Actions. He pointed me to a YouTube video tutorial about test driven development and a webpage about pytest fixtures.

• Work plan before next meeting:

  • Accept and address the first two points from the feedback – run convergence tests with varying time steps and run a minimal test case.

  • Run basic validation tests using known solutions.

  • Now that the penalty term in the LLG equation is clear, I will complete the Methods section in my final report draft.