The aim of the DIMSAI education and training program is to provide a structured and monitorable educational path, characterized by suitable flexibility to be adapted to the different cultural needs of the specific research domains of DIMSAI PhD students.
The education and training program is structured as follows (since the 35th cycle and up to 39th included):
1) The training activities are quantified in credits.
2) In order to pass the third year of the PhD course, the PhD student must have acquired at least 27 credits during his three-year Doctorate.
3) The PhD student defines his educational path in agreement with his Tutor. The training activities must be consistent with the research topics of the DIMSAI doctoral course.
4) The DIMSAI Academic Board verifies the student's educational path and the achievement of the requirements indicated in point 2 by the procedures reported in point 6.
5) Credits can be acquired by participating in the following activities:
a. Educational activities with final examination: all courses/seminars that foresee a final test to verify the proficiency of the PhD student fall under this definition; possible examples are bachelor/mastes courses (as long as they were not undertaken by the PhD student in his previous career), doctoral courses/seminars, language courses including the verification of at least C1-level proficiency. For these activities, 1 credit is awarded for every 10 hours of frontal lectures of the course;
b. Educational activities without final examination: this category includes all courses/seminars that do not foresee a final test to verify the proficiency of the PhD student; possible examples are attendance in conferences, summer schools, workshops, seminars that do not include verification of proficiency or attendance of bachelor/master courses without sustaining the final examination at the end of the course; online courses are excluded. For the credits recognized for these activities:
- Conference, summer schools, workshops, seminars: 0.1 credit for each half-day of the event +0.2 credit if the event is in Europe, but outside of Emilia-Romagna or +0.4 credit if the event is outside Europe
- Bachelor/master courses: 1 credit for every 30 hours of frontal lectures of the course
c. Research stay abroad: the PhD student is awarded 6 credits for each month of research spent abroad, up to a maximum of 18 credits.
6) Procedures of verification of the education and training program:
a. At the end of the first year of the Doctorate, the PhD student must submit to the DIMSAI Academic Board a report (Template I year ) of the research activities performed and a program for his three-year educational path, agreed and countersigned by his tutor, which must contain: i) the educational and training activities and the research stays abroad already carried out (points 5a, 5b and 5c), together with the documents certifying the participation in such activities and the corresponding credits; ii) a plan of the educational and training activities to carry out in the following two years; the procedures for submitting these documents are detailed in point 6e;
b. At the end of the second year of the doctorate, the PhD student must submit to the DIMSAI Academic Board an updated report (Template II year )of the research activities performed and of the program for his three-years educational path, agreed and countersigned by his tutor, which must contain: i) the educational and training activities and the research stays abroad carried out during the second year of the doctorate (points 5a, 5b and 5c), together with the documents certifying the participation in such activities and the corresponding credits; ii) a plan of the educational and training activities to carry out in the third year of the doctorate; the procedures for submitting these documents are detailed in point 6e;
c. At the end of the third year of the doctorate, the PhD student must submit to the DIMSAI Academic Board a report (Template III year ) of the research activities performed and of his three-years educational path, countersigned by his tutor. The report on the scientific activities must summarize the activities performed during the first two years and highlight the activities of the third year; the report on the educational path must contain: i) the educational and training activities and the research stays abroad carried out during the third year of the doctorate (points 5a, 5b and 5c), together with the documents certifying the participation in such activities and the corresponding credits; the procedures for submitting these documents are detailed in the point 6e;
d. The documents certifying the participation in the educational and training activities can be: i) certificates of attendance in the case of conferences, workshops, summer schools, seminars; ii) signatures of attendance in the case of bachelor/master/doctoral courses without final examination; iii) declaration of having successfully sustained the final examination in the case of bachelor/master/doctoral courses with final examination, signed by the professor responsible for the specific course;
e. To facilitate the submission of the documents indicated in points 6a, 6b e 6c, each PhD student will be provided with a OneDrive personal folder; institutional credentials have to be used to access these folders, located in the shared section of your institutional OneDrive space, and upload procedures will be indicated by the PhD board.
7) The DIMSAI Academic Board can indicate some educational activities as compulsory; these compulsory activities can be extended to all DIMSAI PhD students or only to a part of them (e.g., to a specific Cycle or to a specific curriculum or sub-curriculum). Compulsory seminars are included in the calculation of the credits to be acquired within the three-year doctorate term.
8) The PhD students are required to complete a study, training and research stay abroad of at least 3 months (a stay divided into separate periods, usually lasting no less than a month, is acceptable); the obligation can be extraordinarily waived for reasons of force majeure, such as illness, maternity/paternity and, for the case of Industrial Doctorates, lack of authorization by the employer due to unexpected changes of the working conditions in force at the time of the competition.
9) PhD students are required to publish, within their three-year doctoral course, at least 2 significant articles, preferably in international journals and/or conference proceedings.