17 PhD students completed their degree in 2017
Published:
Last year, a record 17 PhD students under Simula supervision completed their PhD. In total, 115 PhD students have completed their thesis at Simula since 2001.
The numbers of PhD students that graduate have natural variations from year to year due to enrolment patterns, however 17 PhD students in a year is a record for Simula. 2016 saw 4 PhD students complete their thesis, while in both 2015 and 201410 students completed their thesis. Marianne Aasen, Director of the Simula School of Research and Innovation, states:
-- Simula is commited to provide a PhD programme at a high international level, and we are very pleased with the development in the last few years. We will continue our efforts to expand and develop the programme in the coming years, and recently we have been granted 9 new PhD positions by the Ministry of Education andResearch. Two of those positions will be specifically devoted to cryptography at Simula@UiB, which is a direct response to the gap in national expertise recently uncovered.
Organisation of PhD degrees at Simula
Simula organises its PhD programme in collaboration with degree awarding institutions, as Simula does not have the rightto grant doctorate degrees. All PhDstudents employed at Simula are also enrolled in a PhD programmeat a University, either within Norway or abroad.PhD students employed by Simula usually have a Simula researcher astheirmain supervisor, with co-supervisors at the degree awarding institution. Simula provides candidates with the opportunity forspecialisation within the five research areas of communication systems, software engineering, scientific computing, machine learning and cryptography.
In addition to the general PhD programme within the Simula School of Research and Innovation, Simula has a collaborative PhD programme called SUURPh (Simula-UiO-UCSD-Research-PhD Training)involving Simula, the University of Oslo (UiO), and the University of California San Diego (UCSD). This close collaboration involves research periods at each of the insitiutions, and enables the exchange ofresearch and knowledge. Simula also has general collaborationswith some major academic institutions such as TU Berlin, UiO, OsloMET,and UCSD.
Kyrre Lekve, Deputy Director of Simula Research Laboratory, states:
--This development is very encouraging.The total number of employees at Simula is a little under 150 people, so the high number of PhD students compared to the big institutions indicates that we are doing well.
In 2017, 137 PhD students graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo, and 72 students graduated from the same faculty at the University of Bergen.