PhD training

Early in their first academic year, all new SICSA-supported PhD students, and their supervisors, will attend a one day induction event. Here they will take part in orientation sessions on SICSA and Scottish computing research, organising the PhD, student/supervisor interaction and first year PhD objectives. They will also make brief presentations on their research proposals.

After SICSA's first year, we will explore aligning the induction event with the annual Graduate Symposium (see below) to enable each new cohort to meet with their established PhD peers and to take part in induction. We see this event as the starting point for a SICSA PhD cohort identity that transcends institutional allegiances.

For on-course students - whether they hold prize studentships or not - it is intended that SICSA will promote and offer six kinds of cohort activity for the PhDs; four types of course, and two types of research intensive activity.

1. Generic research skill-development short courses. Such courses will usually be short 1-2 day courses. Examples of such courses might be a course in workplace ethnography and a course in academic poster production. Students will take such courses in each year of study. The number of courses taken will depend on individual development plans for each student but we would expect each SICSA-funded student to take no fewer than 5 such courses during their PhD.
2. Generic business skill-development long courses.  Hi-tech entrepreneurship courses will usually be semester-long, and are inspired by Stanford’s Technology Ventures Programme. Each class features at least one member of the Scottish or Silicon Valley business community, along with lecturers from SICSA, Stanford University or the London Business School. For example, one course teaches some of the generic and transferable skills required to become an entrepreneur in informatics and raises the student's awareness of the legal, business, managerial, creative, analytical and interpersonal skills relevant to setting up and running an innovative ICT application company. Students can choose which year of study to tackle these courses, but it would normally be in the first year. We anticipate that students would follow two courses in this area.
3. Advanced, discipline-specific short courses.  Will focus on a specialized area and which will educate students in the most recent development in that area. Such courses will normally be delivered through ‘summer schools’ – residential courses lasting one or two weeks. An example of such a course might be a course in biometric algorithms. These courses will be developed by SICSA staff and by distinguished visitors. In view of their specialisation, any one course will typically appeal to a subset of the prize studentship cohort, but will be free to all Scottish ICS postgraduates, thereby adding value for the whole postgraduate community. We anticipate that students would attend two summer schools in their area over the course of their studies.
4. Advanced, discipline-specific long courses.  Will focus on a specialized area and which will educate students in essential research knowledge. Such courses will normally be delivered through existing course delivery mechanisms at the participating institutions. An example of such a course might be a semester-long course in advanced AI planning technologies, at Strathclyde. Again, any such course is likely to be of interest to a subset of the prize student cohort, but by making such courses more widely available across Scotland, we expect to improve the research training across the board, and to increase the level of interaction between PhD students at different institutions.
5. The annual National Graduate Symposium will be a conference designed to draw together ICS postgraduates from across Scotland, to share ideas and experiences, and help create links between students across institutions. It will feature a mixture of rapid fire talks, poster sessions, and keynotes from distinguished visiting fellows. We expect the prize student cohort to play a key role in organising the Symposium.
6. Biannual research challenge workshops will be short, 1 week intensive meetings, where the prize cohort will be brought together to attack a problem presented by a researcher from the commercial sector, or from academia. The sandbox-style activity will be designed to inspire the students, to encourage collaborative working within the cohort, and to engage entrepreneurs and industry with the individual students working within SICSA.

All SICSA prize students will be expected to follow skill-development courses (1,2) in addition to other graduate skills courses identified by their institution. They will be expected to attend the National Graduate Symposium (5), and will normally attend the research challenge workshops (6). Students will be encouraged to attend discipline-specific courses (3,4), but the number attended, naturally depends on their background, the topic of their research and the courses and summer schools available. Prize students will be encouraged to play an active role in summer school organisation, becoming involved in discussion sessions, for instance.