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It's been a long haul for the four PhD students The Times Higher is following. Michael North finds them pondering their next career moves.

Two years into their research, Michael North finds out how academia is treating the four PhD students whose progress The Times Higher is charting

"The third in our series tracking four PhD students sees how they are faring after their first year of study. Michael North and Chris Bunting report "

It came as a bit of a shock to Lisa Willats when, two weeks after she started her PhD, the men who pioneered her area of research, magnetic-resonance imaging, were awarded a Nobel prize. "It put a spring in people's step," she says.

Russian Alisa Chukanova has just arrived at Southampton University to start her PhD and is feeling hopeful about a future in UK academia: "I just came yesterday. My first impression is very good. If I like it, I would like to stay."

Six months in and some of our postgrads are finding the going tough. As experts gather for today's conference on 'Postgraduate Education', The Times Higher catches up with the students it is tracking over three years to see how they're coping

Jane Suter is unusually focused for a doctoral student. She has a very clear idea of her direction of research -which may take only two years -and a distinction in her MSc means that she is well funded.