Doctoral Programme in Bioscience Engineering

The aim of doctoral training is to bring doctoral researchers to an advanced level of creative and independent thinking and acting. As such, the doctoral programme prepares for a career in frontier research and education or for high-level roles in professional sectors where deep rigorous analysis is required. To realize this purpose, doctoral training focuses on personal development in four complementary domains:

• Professional expertise: knowledge of the discipline, analytic and synthetic mind set, creativity, out of the box attitude;
• Research management: project management and financing, respecting professional and ethical standards;
• Personal effectiveness: self-management, time management, motivation, problem solving, career planning;
• Impact and influence: collaboration, communication, networking, leadership.

Doctoral training takes first and foremost place in the research group or laboratory via informal and formal meetings with the supervisor and peer researchers. This research-based training is complemented by more structured training activities organized by the departments, the research centres and the doctoral school. PhD researchers are expected to complete the PhD within 4 years.
The doctoral training consists of three components:

• Development of essential research skills by carrying out an individual research project resulting in high-quality scientific output.
• Thematic training comprising advanced courses, invited lectures, journal clubs and doctoral seminars focused on a specific scientific topic;
• Training and development of personal skills that are relevant for the successful completion of the PhD and which prepare the PhD researcher for a wide range of career possibilities.

Requirements

• The applicant should either hold a master's degree that is relevant with respect to the PhD degree that is envisaged (or an equivalent degree of higher education) and have distinguished himself/herself, either during his/her academic training or in his/her professional life, as is evident from high-quality scientific publications;
• Or have passed the pre-doctoral examination.
• Students should submit a satisfactory score on an internationally recognized test of English language proficiency: TOEFL (minimum score 575 paper-based, 233 computer-based, 90 internet-based), IELTS (minimum score 7). No other proficiency tests will be accepted.