Kaj Hänninen is the SAVE-IT student representative, participating in the SAVE-IT board meetings. If you, as a student, want to bring up any specific questions about the school, please contact him.

PhD supervision and annual status report

A SAVE-IT industrial PhD student must be registered as a PhD student at a department of a university. As such, each PhD student is assigned a supervisor and should receive supervision on a regular basis as specified by the rules of Högskoleförordningen (see e.g., employment as PhD student, acceptance to research education, research education) and the local rules of the specific university. For example, PhD students registered at MRTC should consider the following web pages and documents: Graduate education at IDE at MdH, Postgraduate students at Mälardalen University and Postgraduate studies handbook. A four page document describing how to organize the regular meetings of the supervisor and the PhD student is Expectations of PhD students and supervisors. For more funnier reading you can consider Piled Higher and Deeper, a comic describing life (or the lack thereof) of PhD students.

At least once per year the PhD student and the supervisor should together update and approve the ISP (individuella studieplan) of the PhD student. The ISP can be seen as a tool to document the status of the PhD studies and a help to plan the continued studies. It should be noted that the ISP also is a juridical document defining the obligations of the PhD student and the supervisor.

At the end of each year the PhD students and supervisors should summarize the work done and the current status of the student to the SAVE-IT coordinator (this is information required by the KK-foundation). This information is most easily collected from the already updated ISPs.

The supervisor group

Except the mandatory main academic supervisor each SAVE-IT PhD student should be assigned an (or several) assistant academic supervisor (bihandledare) and an industrial supervisor (usually from the participating company). These supervisors together forms the supervisor group for the PhD student. The supervisor group should meet the PhD student on a regular basis (at least two times per year). The dates of the supervisor group meetings should be specified in the beginning of each year and be reported to the SAVE-IT coordinator.

Each PhD student is also assigned an industrial mentor. The mentor should support the student in practical issues at the company, and market the research project in the local organization. The mentor can, but does not need to be, the same person as the industrial supervisor. The uppgiftsbeskrivning industriell handledare och mentor document describes the roles of the industrial supervisor and the mentor.

Budget and travels

The SAVE-IT students get a travel funding up to 50kkr / full time study year. The travel funding should be requisted at the end of each year using the form for requisition of mobility support. For more details of the requisition process, please see the form.

The academic supervisor(s) are in most cases in control of the budget for the SAVE-IT student. This means that the PhD students should to discuss things like costs for new computers, conference participation, conference travels, etc. with their supervisors.

SAVE-IT also offer PhD students additional funding for longer international research travels. PhD students interested in doing such a travel should discuss their travel plans with their supervisor(s), making sure that the trip fits their graduate studies. After that they should make a travel funding inquiry to the SAVE-IT coordinator, including a travel plan and a travel budget. The funding has then to be approved by the SAVE-IT board. See möjliga värdar för internationella vistelser for examples of suitable hosts for such international research visits.