Topic outline

  • Eligibility

    • The midterm review is for all Department of Applied Physics PhD students enrolled with an MSc degree after January 1st 2013. It is compulsory for full-time students, and encouraged for part-time students (the deadlines are scaled accordingly in the latter case).
    • All PhD students will be initially hired on a two-year contract.
    • The review coordinator is automatically notified once the student is enrolled, setting the subsequent deadlines. Note that the official starting time of PhD is the start of the first contract after obtaining the Master's degree, not the date of enrolment.
    • The midterm review must be undertaken no later than 18 months after starting the PhD. Note that this is similar to the deadline to get the Aalto bonus for completing your credits, so you may want to do the midterm a little earlier.


    Preparation

    • It is the doctoral student's responsibility to complete the compulsory attendance part of the midterm.
    • It is the main supervisor’s responsibility to begin preparations 3 months before the midterm presentation. Failure to organise the midterm without justification will result in an automatic fail.
    • The coordinator of the review process should notify the candidate and supervisor via email in order to organise the midterm.
    • The coordinator will independently contact both the supervisor/instructor and PhD student to provide a confidential overview of progress. This will include a brief summary of the PhD status (real start dates, credit status, publications).
    • The main supervisor contacts an independent professor or senior researcher as a referee and agrees the selection with the coordinator (no formal restrictions other than that they should be from another group). Consider choosing an expert in the PhD student's topic, so that the examination actually has real benefit.
    • The date for the presentation is agreed with all parties (candidate, supervisor, instructor, referee and coordinator) - Doodle or equivalent is usually a sensible option for getting a date.
    • The candidate and/or supervisor is responsible for booking a suitable room.
    • All PhD students are encouraged to seek out presentation skills training (intranet for Aalto users) and to practice their presentations in advance of the midterm.

    Midterm refusal

    • If the main supervisor decides that the PhD student is not suitable for midterm examination, the coordinator should be notified as early as possible.
    • The coordinator will then organize individual meetings with the supervisor/instructor and the PhD student in order to understand the grounds for refusal. 
    • If there is no evidence of professional negligence or midconduct, the midterm is failed and no report or exam will be considered. A separate discussion meeting will be organized between the coordinator, supervisor/instructor and PhD student, also including a representative of Human Resources and the department leadership, and an external professor.