Consider:
- Potential Impact: Consider hot topics with care, Make sure topic/problem are important
- Scale: Need more than one problem; results/finding
- Scope: Not too narrow or too broad, open-ended
Options for finding topics
- Read papers and attend talks in your area and others
- Flash of brilliance (unlikely but possible)
- Term project
- Redo, re-invent, refine
- Apprentice
- Three to five (or n) papers = dissertation