INDUSTRIAL PHD STUDIES

WHO IS ELIGIBLE?

Departments in a COWI Group company.

REQUIREMENT FOR COOOPERATION WITH COWI AND FUNDING FROM PUBLIC ORGANISATIONS

The PhD student must be employed with a COWI Group company, and a cooperation agreement must be prepared on the research activities. 

The donation is granted to the department in the COWI Group company.

To be eligible for donations, the applicant is required to obtain support from the relevant national support scheme for industrial PhDs, e.g., Innovation Fund Denmark (DK), Formas (SE), the Research Council of Norway (NO), or a similar authority (including, e.g., the EU).

In countries where COWI is active and where there is no system for industrial PhDs, the structure of a specific project (and the accompanying application) must be based on the principles for an industrial PhD that are stated on the Innovation Fund Denmark (DK) website.

PREPARATION OF APPLICATION

Deadline for submission of detailed application is 1 April and 1 October at 12:00 (CET). Forwarding of documents is not accepted.

Applications must be sent to COWIfonden by email, cowifonden@cowifonden.com, as one Adobe (PDF) document with the following content in the presented order: 

• Filled-in application form in editable format
• Detailed application
• Copy of application submitted to Innovation Fund Denmark (DK), Formas (SE), the Research Council of Norway (NO), or a similar authority.

The detailed application must state the following information:

• Name of the industrial PhD candidate, supervisors and their background
• The purpose of the PhD
• Expected results and relevance for society at large
• The news value and target group of the PhD study
• The amount applied for
• Time schedule and milestones
• Concurrent application to other foundations/donors where relevant
• Signed statement of support from VP at COWI
• Copy of application submitted to Innovation Fund Denmark (DK), Formas (SE), the Re-search Council of Norway (NO), or a similar authority.

You can only apply for funds for an industrial PhD study once, i.e. your application must cover both funding for salary costs and any experimental research. The application must contain all relevant costs related to the completion of the study. In other words, it is no possible to apply for further funding for experimental research, travel or other items later on.

Applicants are usually notified of COWIfonden’s decision in, respectively, mid-June and mid-December.

LANGUAGE

The application form and the application must be prepared in English.

ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK

COWIfonden grants donations to cover salary expenses for industrial PhD studies amounting to DKK 500,000, i.e. DKK 166,667 per year over a three-year period. In addition, it is possible to apply for funds to carry out experimental research, amounting to a maximum of DKK 200,000.

RESULTS

Project results are required to be published/made available to the public. For instance, that may include dissemination through publication in international magazines, participation in international conferences, release of open source software and the like.