PhD

The EMTRAIN Joint PhD Framework

1. The PhD programme will roughly follow the Bologna process. National considerations have to be taken into account.

2. The programme will usually include 3.5 - 4 years of training.

3. The student will spend a minimum of 3 months in industry and remaining time working on a research project in academic environment. This will promote mobility between industry and academia.

4. The student is recommended to attend courses, visit other laboratories and attend international meetings and workshops in accordance with the university requirements. One such event will be the annual EMTRAIN PhD Workshop. This will promote mobility across countries. EMTRAIN supports the use of the Bologna process where courses or other learning activities corresponding to 30 ECTS credit points is suggested for PhD training.

5. The student will have two supervisors; the main supervisor will be active in academia and the co-supervisor in industry.

6. Courses: We suggest that the EMTRAIN PhD student takes a minimum of 3 EMTRAIN specified core courses, one of which should be on Drug Development/ Drug Development Sciences. The remaining 2 courses can be selected from a list of 10-15 courses recommended by EMTRAIN. It is also recommended that at least one one-week course is taken abroad. The academic institutions participating in this program will announce PhD courses that fit into the EMTRAIN program.

7. Workshops: EMTRAIN will arrange annual workshops for EMTRAIN PhD students to participate in.

8. It is desirable that students without a medical background will be provided with contact to patients.

9. EMTRAIN will develop an Alumni Network where PhD students may interact and network.

10. Suggested recruitment procedure: Industry identifies area of interest; contacts one or more internationally well established European research groups within that field and ask for a more specified research plan. After agreement on research project, academic and/or industry partner make an international call for PhD student. Final selection of student includes interview.

    Our goal is to start a pilot EMTRAIN PhD in 2011. First and second year PhD students already enrolled in private–public partnership PhD programs might be accepted into the official EMTRAIN PhD program (preferably from existing PPP PhD programmes run by our EMTRAIN EFPIA partners and from PhD programmes which are part of the existing IMI JU scientific programmes).

List of core courses for EMTRAIN PhDs

The following recommendations will be put forward regarding list of core courses. Our emphasis has been on Drug Development as we find this to be of utmost importance for the creation of industry-aware scientist. This is complemented with suggested courses within topics transferable skills and more industry-specific topics.

1. Drug Development
2. Transferable skills
   • Presentation techniques
   • Communicating science in different context
   • Project/research management
3. Industry-Academia interaction
   • Marketing and drug information
   • IP
   • QoL & Health Economics