Doctoral Education

HIIT coordinates the Helsinki Doctoral Education Network in Information and Communications Technology (HICT). HICT is hosted jointly by Aalto University and University of Helsinki, the two leading universities within the ICT field in Finland. The network serves as a collaboration platform for doctoral education combining all the relevant subfields of computer science and information technology at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. It involves at present over 60 professors and almost 250 doctoral students, and the participating units produce altogether more than 40 new doctors each year.

HICT organises two open calls for doctoral student positions each year. In 2019, the calls received once again a lot of international interest. HICT Spring Call 2019 attracted 125 applications and the HICT Autumn Call 2019 151 applications.

One of the main goals of HICT is to provide courses and training that support the development and careers of the doctoral students and provide opportunities to meet other graduate students in ICT. In spring 2019, HICT students organised their very first own conference, HICT S5 – Scientific Symposium of the Students, by the Students, for the Students, which included students’ own presentations, but interesting keynote speakers were also invited. The event was a success and we hope that it will become an annual tradition! In addition, HICT organised a lecture series about science communication (CS Communication afternoons) in April-May 2019, in collaboration with the Aalto CS department. HICT provided 1 ECTS for students participating in 4 lectures. This theme continued in December 2019 with a new HICT workshop (Introduction to research presentation skills and stakeholder interaction) organised together with Kaskas Media. HICT also launched a popular HICT Autumn kickoff with pizza event for doctoral students in September 2019. HICT students and supervisors were also actively involved in many other events at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki.