Information for Supervisors

Prior to recruitment each year we run a project call whereby potential supervisors are invited to submit a project proposal.

Staff will be asked to submit an application form requesting information including:

• Supervisor(s) information
• Project Description
• Grant Information
• Project Timeline
• Alignment with MRC DTP Themes
• Information on collaborative nature of project 

Projects that are collaborative in nature, either cross institution or with Industry are strongly encouraged and these elements are scored positively during the internal review process. 

iCase proposals are particulary welcomed. The requirements of industrial partners in iCase projects are summarised below:

ICase non-academic partner responsibilities

Our vision is to train the next generation of research leaders expert in informatics-based approaches and biomedical technologies who are thus able to unravel disease mechanisms and devise new therapies.  Projects must be designed to equip the student with quantitative skills (e.g. statistics, computation, bioinformatics) in the context of their work which may involve one or more data sources.

All project proposals will be reviewed by two members of the Precision Medicine Academic Steering Committee and the final list of projects for advertisement decided by the DTP leadership group.

Timeline
Early July - call for project proposals issued
Early/Mid September - deadline for staff to submit project proposals
Early October - shortlisting of projects by Steering Committee
Early/Mid October - staff informed if their project proposal has been sucessful or not
November - sucessfull proposals are advertised
November-Jan - advert runs
February - shortlisted interviews

Applications to the programme are submitted via the University of Edinburgh's Degree Finder.

Further information on the guidance given to applicants is available here.  We encourage all applicants to speak with the project supervisor prior to making an application.

• Once the application deadline has passed, supervisors will be sent all applications received for their project. Please note that in this recruitment round entry, we are trialling anonymised applications.
• You will be asked to review all anonymised applications and, for any applicants you are interested in talking to, and then request access to the full application to then make contact with the students to further, informally, assess their suitability and submit up to 2 (with a maximum of one international) candidate(s) for interview.
• Interviews will be carried out by members of the Precision Medicine Academic Steering Committee and you are therefore strongly encouraged to interview applicants yourself prior to nominating them for interview.
• Should your applicant be successful at interview, we will confirm that you are happy for an offer to be made and then make the offer.

Timeline
Late October to early January  - projects advertised on FindaPhD and website etc.

Early December - Online Supervisor Q&A Sessions

Early January - Deadline for student applications.

Early January - applications sent to supervisors so they can interview candidates and submit the name of upto 2 candidate (with a maximum of one international) candidate for interview by DTP panels.

Early/Mid February - DTP interview panels and ranking applicants.

Late February - confirmation of offers.

• Supervisors are responsible for monitoring Precision Medicine DTP student progress and reporting annually.  You should ensure you are aware of the programme milestones as outlined for students and will submit reports each year as required.
• The DTP PG Administrative Officer will monitor the specific milestones for this programme.  Additional information is available in Information for Students: Programme Requirements
• The Postgraduate Research Annual Review is supported by MVLS Graduate School, you will receive email prompts from the system when action is required, please ensure that you complete your sections in a timely fashion.  Additional guidance for supervisors on completion of is available here. 
• Supervisors should be honest with their feedback to students and raise any concerns with the Programme Director as soon as possible.

Your Precision Medicine student will have a Thesis Committee consisting of:

• an appointed Chair from the Precision Medicine Academic Steering Group
• an external member
• all named supervisors
• day to day supervisors if relevant 

Important points to note:

• The appointed Chair does not necessarily need to be tuned into the area, as that is the role of the external member. Part of the remit of the Precision Medicine DTP is to train interdisciplinary future leaders who will be able to converse at many different levels, hence their reports and talks should always be amenable to most academics.
• The external member should be an expert on the project area and are identified and recruited by the supervisors. They must be a member of staff at the lead institution.
• The external member cannot be a named supervisor on the project or indeed likely to be a possible supervisor later in the project, but should be relatively expert in the field or area. They should also not be related to any of the supervisors OR part of any of the supervisors teams.
• The Chair and external member act as both a monitor of progression and also of pastoral support, there should be at least one of these roles that is filled by a person of the same gender as the student and preferably a diverse committee is most useful.
• The Chair and external members should be appointed promptly at the start of the first year and prior to the submission for the Project Proposal course (usually about 10 weeks into the course), as together they will provide a mark and feedback for the assignment.
• The Committee should have an interim 1st year thesis committee meeting by the end of January and meet annually as part of the annual review. A meeting following submission of the project proposal submission and feedback is not necessary but can performed if a useful way of everyone meeting. 

Following the meeting the Thesis Committee Report Form should be completed by the Thesis Committee Chair, in collaboration with the other members of the Thesis Committee. Once it has been signed off by all members of the committee, the completed form should be uploaded to the students Annual Review.