In a commentary, SMU Professor of Computer Science Robert Deng who is the inaugural recipient of SMU's Zhongni Distinguished Educator Award in 2025, has written a thoughtful piece in Times Higher Education on guiding doctoral students through research challenges. He opined that the PhD path is often paved with ambiguity and rejection. Prof Deng believes that supervisors need to take a more bespoke, multidisciplinary approach to bring out the best of their doctoral candidates, and outlined a a supervisory framework built on four principles: aligning research with innate strengths, designing collaborative ecosystems rather than isolated projects, encouraging bold, first-of-its-kind enquiry, and embracing multidisciplinary thinking when progress stalls. He added that these principles can transform the research struggle into intellectual maturation.