28 PhD positions within the Doctoral Programme, TALENT at the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
– co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 801199.
The 28 PhD fellowships are in the following fields:
Biodiversity; biological sciences and bioinformatics; chemical sciences; computer sciences; earth and planetary systems sciences; environment, climate and sustainability; food sciences; health and genomics; mathematical sciences, statistics & economics; nano and materials sciences; natural science education; nutrition and sports; particle physics, astro physics and cosmology; plant sciences and biotechnology; quantum sciences and technology; ressource economics and global development.
All departments at the Faculty of Science participate in the TALENT programme: Department of Biology, Department of Chemistry, Department of Computer Science, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Department of Food Science, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Department of Science Education, the Natural History Museum of Denmark and the Niels Bohr Institute.
The Doctoral Programme TALENT is offering 28 PhD scholarships in the above-mentioned 16 areas, commencing 1 January 2019 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Description of SCIENCE and the 12 departments and the PhD School
Research at SCIENCE rests on two pillars: on the one hand strong basic research, and on the other application-oriented research, which contributes to growth and employment and solves societal problems, for example within climate change, sustainable energy supplies, biological production, environmental challenges, food and water safety, lifestyle diseases and IT security.
SCIENCE’s researchers have received 13 grants from the European Research Council (ERC). In the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme, SCIENCE’s researchers attracted approximately half of all the Marie Curie postdoc fellowships in Denmark. SCIENCE is also host to 15 Centers of Excellence financed by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) with section heads participating in a further three. These accomplishments show that SCIENCE’s research environments have the academic weight to attract researchers at a high international level. This again testifies to the fact that the TALENT programme constitutes an extraordinary opportunity for doing a PhD.
The PhD School at SCIENCE, in which the TALENT PhD students will be enrolled, has over 1,100 students and app. 55% of them come from outside of Denmark, originating from 75 different countries. This means that even the PhD environment is highly international and competitive.
Read more about the research, the 12 departments and the PhD School at SCIENCE and the targeted training offered through the TALENT programme.
Why apply?
TALENT is an international and interdisciplinary PhD programme, which offers young researchers the chance to become part of a cohort of exceptionally talented PhD students with the opportunity to cultivate their research talent. To this end, we offer:
- Access to international and intersectoral collaborations and networking with a range of industrial organisations: the Confederation of Danish Industry, the Confederation of Danish Enterprise, the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, Copenhagen Science City, DIKU Business Club.
- Access to excellent research environments and infrastructures with world leading research groups.
- Access to an extensive training and career mentoring programme with scientific training supplemented by tailor made courses in a range of academic and transferrable skills.
- Employment under world leading working environments as all fellowships are funded fully in line with Danish employment conditions.
The objective of the TALENT programme is to facilitate early independence of the PhD students and fast track their careers in academia or industry. For more information about what the programme offers, go to https://talent.ku.dk/.
About the programme
The TALENT programme offers 74 PhD fellowships (in total) of 36 months each, attractive employment conditions at one of the 12 departments at SCIENCE and enrolment as a PhD student at the PhD School at SCIENCE. TALENT is a unique programme by requesting, as part of the application procedure, the applicants to devise their own interdisciplinary PhD project within one of the above-mentioned 16 programme areas/panels and to indicate the department, which they find most suitable to host their project, and the names of the main supervisor and co-supervisors. In other words, TALENT is a bottom up programme, which thereby focuses on the research interests of the PhD students. If employed, an individual Career Development Plan will be made for the TALENT PhD students, outlining scientific as well as transferable courses, international research visits/secondments, mentoring and other career enhancing activities. The Career Development plan is a central element in ensuring the right training and progress throughout the PhD project.
Job description
The position is available for a 3-year period and the key tasks as a PhD student at SCIENCE are:
- To manage and carry through the research project
- Attend PhD courses
- Write scientific articles and the PhD thesis
- Teach and disseminate the research
- To stay at an external research institution for a few months, preferably abroad
- Work for the department.
Formal requirements
In order to be eligible for the TALENT Doctoral Programme, applicants:
- May not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Denmark for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to TALENT’s call deadline: 1 October 2018. Time spent on obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention, compulsory national service and/or short stays such as holidays are not taken into account.
- Must at the TALENT call deadline (1 October 2018) be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and must not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree.
- Must hold a relevant MSc degree at the time of applying. However, candidates, who do not hold an MSc degree, are also considered eligible if their credentials and CV equal those achieved on an MSc. This could be in the form of five years of full-time undergraduate and postgraduate education OR four years of full-time undergraduate education combined with relevant courses, fieldwork, scientific publications or conducted research (these aspects must be documented by uploading additional documents as part of the CV). The background is that applicants awarded a TALENT doctoral fellowship must be enrolled in the 180 ECTS/three year PhD programme at SCIENCE. To this end, the entry requirements as defined by SCIENCE’s PhD School have to be respected.
Please carefully read the detailed description of the eligibility and admissibility criteria and the additional requirements, incl. the use of mandatory templates, for applying in the TALENT Guide for Applicants and on the TALENT website.
Selection criteria
The selection process includes four steps of evaluation:
- Eligibility and admissibility checks
- Pre-selection at department level (internal review incl. online interviews)
- Expert/international review (done remotely)
- Final selection of candidates.
Applicants will be judged on professional merits, scientific and technological quality of the proposed project, feasibility of the implementation and the potential impact of the proposed project. The review process takes into consideration the whole range of experience of the candidate. While focusing on their overall potential as researchers, their creativity and level of independence will also be considered. International and intersectorial experience will be seen positively in the evaluation. The selection criteria are weighted and fall into three defined areas:
- Excellence (weight: 50%) of which the scientific and innovative quality of the proposal (weight: 25%) and the applicant (weight: 25%)
- Impact (weight: 30%)
- Implementation (weight: 20%)
For more information about the evaluation process, please refer to the TALENT Evaluation Guide.