PhD at the Department of Biomedical Sciences

As a PhD student, you are a student and yet you are employed on a salary. To enrol you can apply for vacant posts, or you and your supervisor can submit your own research project proposal and apply for some or all of your funding from other departments and foundations.

The PhD programme is a three-year full-time course concluding with a scientific thesis. Successful completion is rewarded by a PhD. The programme is attached to a university or another place of higher education and to apply you need to have completed your master's degree. For medical students at the Faculty of Health Sciences there is a pregraduate research year scheme enabling you to take a year out from your medical studies to undertake a limited research project. This year may count as half a year of the PhD programme.

The programme consists of an independent research project. You also attend relevant course modules, you teach, you write articles, and communicate your findings in other ways; you attend conferences, and you will often be attached to several active research groups, some of which should ideally be international.

Based on your original research you write a PhD thesis to be assessed by a committee. You defend your thesis at a public viva examination.