Annual Report 2022: Doctoral Education
Our doctoral education network is hosted jointly by Aalto University and University of Helsinki. The key objective of the doctoral education network is to serve as a collaboration and networking platform for doctoral students and supervisors combining all the relevant subfields of computer science and information technology at the partner universities and departments. The network has grown during the past years and currently involves over 80 professors and almost 300 doctoral students, and the participating units produce altogether more than 40 new doctors each year.
We host two annual open calls for new doctoral students. In 2022, the international calls received once again a lot of interest. Application numbers have been consistent: the Spring call 2022 attracted 672 applications and the Autumn call 2022 received 227 applications.
One of the main goals is to provide courses and training that support the development and careers of our doctoral students. Another important aspect in these activities is to meet other graduate students in ICT at the partner universities. Unfortunately, the coronavirus situation has hampered the organization of events in 2022, meaning that larger activities have been on a break. We were able to host workshops about science communication and presentation skills, but we hope to be able to host larger events for doctoral students every year. For all of our activities, the working language is English.
In addition to the courses and workshops provided, HIIT continued to provide support for PhD students in the final writing stage of their doctoral studies. In this “final crunch” support, the funding covered up to three months salary and was to be used for the sole purpose of writing up their thesis on a full-time basis. For the year 2022, HIIT awarded 7 students “final crunch suport” to write up their thesis.
