where the funding comes from (UK, EU, CH?); and
who to approach here (head of departments, some central Bern office, other PHDs?).
Anyone from the UK tried to do a PHD here? If yes, then i'd be really interested to hear about your experiences like:
Hello.
Not from the UK but did my undergrad under the commonwealth system and am now doing a PhD in Switzerland.
1. Funding comes from your future department in Switzerland. PhD students here are normally hired as research assistants, though the salary greatly varies from place to place.
2. First figure out what subject you are interested in doing research in, then find out which university/technical institute has this department, then find a professor whose work interests you most and contact him/her directly to ask for opportunities. Of course if you know other PhD students you can always ask them to make an introduction for you.
Hope that helps!
There is EU funding, for PhD's at Marie Curie training sites. Go to Cordis and look up these sites, there should be a search engine listing open positions.
Thanks very much to both of you.
I've been along to some Marie Curie meetings in Basel but you must have not spent 12 months or more in the host country in the last 12 months unfortunately.
Part of the problem is that i have very specific ideas of what i want to research related to the Masters i did at Warwick last year. Have you heard of people being partly funded by institutions in other countries (eg UK)?
Hi, I just resently finished my PhD at ETH in Zurich. It is very dependant on what field you want to study in, I'm in Sciences and at ETH there are 2 funding sources, ETH itself and the Swiss National Science foundantion. At ETH you will get funded if you come. Of course like anywhere else in the world if you bring your own money it makes it easier, but there are few grants that would be able to come close to ETH funding in size (minimum is about 2500Fr/month).
To get a PhD, first step is to check the School website for open positions, since you know fairly specifically what you want to do, then check the department that it would go into. Next step would be to contact directle the professor under whom you would would, the head of department is generally not the one you need to deal with (unless of course he/she also happends to be head...).
The main thing to do is to find a person willing to take you on as a PhD, then everything is fine...
Andrew
If you have very specific ideas you have no option but to contact the profs who are most closely related to your project, and then ask them if they are willing to fund you. If they are but have no money, they need to ask SNF which will take at least another 6 months from now I think. But you can offer to write this proposal, it just depends on whether they like your idea
Hello,
I am probably more qualified to teach on Marie Curies and Erasmus archeology than give advise on how to get started with a PhD, but anyway.......
Before anything else, i would strongly recommend that you find a tutor that is willing to accept you in her lab a PhD student.... That you already find an open position waiting for you or a you have to bid for your own funding is another story, but before anything else you will need an acceptance letter and a project start biding for funds
Since you already know what you want to study, i would suggest that you go back to your MsC teachers and ask for a refereal. These people often sit networks/other projects, and it is much easier for them to make a fit or know about a lab that is looking for people. If they can make the call for you, or introduce you, the better.... It is a completelly different thing if a profesor calls her buddy or if you make a cold door call.... If you have made contacts in congresses, seminars, etc, that also helps a lot. You can of course look for an open position, but that is like a shoot in the dark..... My experience is that networking makes a big difference in scientific environements (or any other environment for that matters...).
About funding itself.... again, i have walked this road in the begining of times, but if things haven't changed that much you have a variety of programs and institutions that specifically fund students to go abroad. For example, i remember OTAN as an alternative to EU for funding. I would also look into exchange programs or international relations departments (i have somewhere on the back of my mind of U of Conventry having a strong exchange program, but this was long way back....). A few years ago, it was relativelly easy to move within the EU, and if Euronews is a credible source things have become even easier... Again, your tutor very likelly might be able to help you to get funding, so i really would put my effort into finding a place to work at this point....
Best of luck, and keep in mind that science rhymes with patience
Lucy
What field are you looking to study in?
And why Switzerland?
Have you figured out which institutes/uni's offer what you're looking for...?
if it's in atmospheric sciences i know a few people.
good luck
Nic
Hello all. Sorry i haven't replied yet. I wrote a whole essay at the time but it got lost as my session timed out. Infuriating.
Thanks to everyone for their feedback and advice. It's very much appreciated.
Nic: the simplest definition i can find is that i'm a modeller (doesn't mean i wanna be a model) of unique, complex and uncertain situations with potential for conflict. WHat i'm really into is preference modelling of decision situations (visually interactive, facilitated group model building; bounded rationality and heuristics; risk judgements and utility; stakeholder analysis; optimisation of value; causal mapping...) and using that to guide any further research (system dynamics, stats, simulations, market research...).
The "unique" part seems to be a problem in Switzerland: modelling that does not ignore the unique decision that the information is for. That is important to me as the PHD i would like to develop is based on keeping any research risk and costs down by starting simply.
The mathematical modelling (simulations, causality etc) could be applied to atmospheric sciences (it would certainly satisfy the 'complexity' definition) and it would be interesting to see how they focus on what they want in such complexity but ultimately it is the modelling methodologies themselves that i want to pursue.
Why Switzerland: i've moved around Europe enough over the past 15 years and i want to be based near Basel now.
Lucy: Thanks for all the advice. I've spent a week writing up a paper in Basel's Decision Sciences department which was great and they would have everything for my PHD ... except the money. I've also been making loads of contacts in academia and industry here (practically stalking them after their lectures!). I'm currently looking into things like FP7, ESRC, EPSRC, SNF for funding but am going to approach several private and non academic organisations soon.
My MSc was at Warwick which is really in Cov. Was there something specific you were referring to there? And some particular article on Euronews.net? And what is OTAN?
Muze7: Do you know if SNF fund foreigners for PHDs?
Andrew: Were you serious about, "At ETH you will get funded if you come."?! St Gallen and ETH are the best places in Switzerland for me but i'm holding out for Basel for now.
Thanks again to everyone. Any of you know of anyone at Basel Uni who migh tbe interested?
What does this first bit mean ?
dave
Many complex issues are modelled to help understand their complexity. As most of these situations are so complex you need to know where to focus. This would depend on the questions you want answered by your model/research; the information you want. A model should be designed with this in mind as it cannot model everything but in many subjects it is not as some elusive 'true and complete' understanding is sought. If information is always to help us make better decisions (except pure self actualisation?) then this focus will always be different as each decision is unique.
So a lot of what i do relates to structuring the problem, eliciting mental models of decision makers and other stakeholders, analysising complexity and such like. This guards against research/models going out of date, being generalised from unrealistic assumptions, wasting too many resources on accuracy of irrelevant factors etc
Hope this partly answers what you were asking. Let me know if not and i'll try to manage the complexity better and be more concise :-)
It is clear that in order to model anything of complexity it is necessary to start from a hypothesis , then isolate and control the parameters that you are trying to stimulate your model and test and yet maintain sufficient control of the criteria required to allow you validate your model in the first place.
What I didn't understand from your previous posting is what you mean by the unique part, and why it is a problem in Switzerland specifically ?
Are you saying that in for example, a Montecarlo-style simulation of a weather system, you would exclude all input variables you believe do not influence the output ? Or are talking about the purpose of outputs : analysing only snow results and ignoring sun and rain results ?
dave
"The "unique" part seems to be a problem in Switzerland: modelling that does not ignore the unique decision that the information is for."
Know quite a few peeps at the ETH in Zürich. Have to be pretty smart though as i heard anyway lol... some subjects in english, others in french then having to switch back to german to order your mcdonalds. Oh maybe green salad and healthy mineral water then . But they have quite a range of PHDs to choose from. Not sure about any sponsoring from the gouvernement or local gemeinde but if your doing a PHD you'll soon be rich
Thanks for the replies Dave and meister_staefa.
Dave, i know very little about weather systems and although i've done some Monte-Carlo simulations they're not really a specialism of mine either. I'd like to get more into them, however, as i really think confidence/risk/uncertainty should be included from the earliest, simplest iterations of any model. Also quite interested how prediciton markets might be used for this and similar market mechanisms for other parameter estimations.
The point i wanted to make about "unique" is that:
- because research has limited resources and accuracy is usually expensive then models should start as simply as possible;
- the more dynamic the situation, the greater the risk of the model/research going out of date and being wasted;
- this means that rather than building a huge model with all the bells and whistles, research/modelling needs to focus on the most relevant points of the complexity.
- It is this focus which is unique: each model will have different bounds, depending on what exactly the decision makers in this situation want to know. This i think can be based on sensitivity analysis of preference modelling (and ultimately give a 'value of information') and as such each model should be unique based on the uniqueness of stakeholders' values. This is very much getting into trying to not give into the complexities of sociopolitical decision situations but to try and facilitate the management of them.
I'm not saying that models cannot be generalised as with classical OR optimsation of processes, for example, but i'm wary of the confidence which information users often have in model recommendations without understanding the assumptions it is built on. I think this even crosses over into accounting information (creative accounting?), for example, and natural sciences.
The reason i think this focus on the "uniqueness" of research makes my goal harder in Switzerland is that it is traditionally scientific methodology being applied in an interpretivist paradigm. I've seen some signs of more holistic, interdisciplinary (dare i say 'postmodern'?) work going on here but less acceptable than i was used to on my Masters in England.
Complete speculation: you're not supposed to comment in Switzerland unless you're an expert who knows the answers. I'm suggesting that we can't get close to giving 'answers' yet because any information will ultimately be used in a changing, sociopolitical situation which we are not close to having mechanistic understanding of yet.
Hope i haven't expressed my points even less clearly now Thanks for listening anyway and giving me an excuse to cathartise and structure some gibberish What d'you reckon?
Would be interested to hear what you use Monte Carlo simulations for - risk management? statistical forecasting? project management?
Hi Again - yes I am very serious that at ETH PhD positions are paid - you are an employee of ETH and paid accordingly. I know many PhD students at ETH (and was one until a few months ago...) and everyone is paid to do their work - you have to live and Zurich isn ́t cheap.
In sciences it is generally either SNF or ETH grants, in Engineering and medicine there are very often industry partners paying for things. SNF don ́t fund students directly that I know of, I was paid by an SNF grant which my supervisor had for the project...Foreigners who have studied in CH can get post-doc SNF grants to work outside CH though, but not so much help at this point to you - maybe in 3 years!
I think I understand vaguely what it is you want to do, but it is not so clear for what application you want to use your modelling for (maybe you don ́t know yet - but normally it works from application to methodology. That said, a few months ago there was an ad out for PhD students a the ETH Risk lab ( http://www.risklab.ch/ ) which seems to do high level computational work related to banking and insurance. Check that out...
Otherwise most departments here do work with Matlab churning out tonnes of computational simulations of infinite variety, but generally they are done by people with backgrounds in the field, not in computation (so atmospheric scientists modelling atmospheric processes, hydrologists modelling river flow etc.).
Hope that helps!
Andrew
You need to find a project with a supervisor that you like. If you are the best person for that project, then SNF (which funds the supervisor) will fund foreigners too.
So it is up to you to convince a prof somewhere you have got what it takes plus you need to find a project you'd like to do. You can write one yourself if the prof supports it, but it will be in their name, and will take months before you know it will get funded or not.
HI Mestizo
I am trying to find a mentorship for a PhD in Zurich in Neuro. It is easier in some ways than the states because you have a direct line to the mentor, however, I've found money is an issue.
If there's any way you can get funding on your own, I would recommend that.
It's been a catch-22 though, on my end, because I can't apply for funding without some kind of matriculation or statement of support.
Good luck, please let us know how it goes.
Leyla
Forgot, the following link lists PhD positions, like job openings
http://www.telejob.ethz.ch/telejob/offers.xml
The universities also post PhD position on monster.ch, sometimes
Best
Leyla
That sounds even more unclear than before for me .
Are you trying to say that given the dynamism of "sociopolitical decision situation" and the "uniqueness of stakeholders' values" you need to develop each time a new "decision model" ?
Opsie... i meant NATO :
http://www.nato.int/science/nato_fun...activities.htm
About Coventry, i have somewhere on the back of my mind that they were pretty good in exchange programs, and have a nice program for EU Students.... could have been on Euronews.net... For whatever reason the name stick into my mind...
I could not agree more with Muse7.... If you are in such good terms with that Basel group, why not convince them to do a joint project? If it is * only * a question of money, then looking for funding seems the next logical step....