That is by far the most difficult, white papers are a breeze as each must have been peer reviewed to insure accuracy.

Back in the day my thesis subject was "efficient data compression for magnetic media", that eventually became thin provisioning technology that became feasible in 2000 due to faster and more affordable microprocessors that were easily obtained.

Now a standard for all data storage technology

Following that was data deduplication in combination with thin provisioning for both local and cloud storage.

This was primarily for virtualized servers running multiple OS platforms within a hypervisor server stack.

Life is much easier now. I go out boating 2 or 3 times a week weather permitting and my only concern is is it garbage day and what day of the week is it 🤣