Industrial Doctoral School for Research and Innovation, IDS
2008 Umeå University, started an Industrial Graduate School for Research and Innovation, IDS.The second round started fall 2010. Today IDS are running 20 research projects with 26 industrial partners and the first PhD students are somewhere in beetween half-way and dissertation. First dissertation is scheduled to June 2011.
IDS works on a directive from the vice-chancellor at Umeå University, Prof. Lena Gustafsson and is managed by Prof. Petter Gustafsson, Umeå Plant Science Center, UPSC and Benkt Wiklund, Coordinator, External Relation. Our long-term plans are to start a new round of IDS with 12 new projects/doctoral candidates every other year.
IDS accepts project from all scientific fields and each project are chosen in a competitive process, as are the doctoral candidates. Each project has to be generated and driven in collaboration between the supervisor and an external, non-academic partner. The partner might be a company as well as a non-profit, governmental or other organisation. The only partners excluded are those who have research funding as their main objective.
Projects within IDS are financed by the university and the partner. The partners contribute with 50 % of the salary for the doctoral candidate. Participating in IDS means that PhD students will be part of a group from different disciplines and given a course package with generic skills, 15 ECTS, over 2 year. The course package is set up to be a preparation for the students to work outside of academia within their field of expertise, either as an employee or in a spin-off company. Another goal is to improve external partners understanding of research and doctoral studies.
Being one of the participants in European University Association, EUA, project DOC-CAREER II and presented at several conferences and work-shops, IDS has obtained quite a large attention outside of Sweden. It has drawn a lot of attention due to efficient collaboration between the university and the external partner, the course package and the competitive recruitment of both project and doctoral candidates.
