Admission to the programme

Students in the MCB programme are admitted through the Department of Molecular Biology and Department of Informatics, depending on the affiliation of the group leader the student wants to work with. The application must contain a short project description, information about funding, course and grade transcripts, a supervisory committee, and a description of the training module. Students from abroad need to ascertain that their previous grades are recognized as equivalent to at least four years of study at a Norwegian University, with sufficient marks.

Financing and fellowships

MCB students are normally funded by PhD fellowships, stipends, or project salary. Available fellowships and PhD positions are regularly advertised through each of the four units, and are also posted on the MCB web site (http://www....)

Supervision

PhD students are supervised by a committee consisting of 2-3 scientists from the MCB Research School. Although the group leader normally is responsible for day-to-day supervision, the whole committee shall monitor the progress of the candidate through regular meetings. The candidate and the committee will deliver annual reports to the MCB Board.

The MCB Training Programme

In accordance with the general regulations for PhD training at the University of Bergen, the MCB PhD degree contains a training component of 30 ECTS (min.), with compulsory activities in science theory and ethics, and in scientific outreach. The MCB training programme consists of four core modules: (1) An intro-ductory course to research in molecular and computational biology, (2) A series of courses and workshops related to the disciplines of MCB, (3) A science theory, history and ethics course, and (4) A scientific communication module containing a course in science writing, an MCB PhD Forum, and an MCB Seminar series. Finally, the candidate must present a seminar on a topic given by the evaluation committee (“pre-doctoral lecture”) before being given the chance to defend her/his thesis.

PhD Thesis evaluation and defence

The PhD thesis is evaluated by a committee appointed by the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sci-ence upon recommendation from MCB. Two external evaluators - scientists with a high expertise in the field of research - work with an internal, independent committee leader and give an evaluation of the thesis’ acceptability for defence. The two external members also act as “opponents” during a public defence, where the candidate presents his/her findings and discuss them in an open debate. Both the written dissertation and the oral defence serve as basis for the award of a PhD title. The process from delivering the thesis to defence normally takes 10-12 weeks.