CALL FOR PHD RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIP IREF: B-0138-21

Research Position:

Note: This is a free translation of the original announcement written in Portuguese, provided only for convenience of non-Portuguese speakers. Only the Portuguese version has official value.
Title:
Call for PhD Research Scholarship
Funding Reference Number:
UIDB/50008/2020
Summary:
The Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) opens a call for a research grant, hereinafter referred to as a PhD Research Grant, in the field of Electrical Engineering, complying with the provisions of the FCT Regulation for Research Studentships and Fellowships (RBI) and the Research Fellowship Holder Statute (EBI).
The scholarships will be financed by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) ) under the Collaboration Protocol for Financing the Multiannual Plan for Research Grants for Doctoral Students, signed between FCT and the Research & Development (R&D) Unit Instituto de Telecomunicações, project UIDB/50008/2020.
Scientific Area:
Group:
Admission Requirements:
4.1 Applicants’ admissibility requirements
The following citizens may apply to this call:
• National citizens or citizens from other member-states of the European Union;
• Third-party states citizens;
• Stateless individuals;
• Citizens holding a political refugee status.
To apply for the PhD scholarship, you must:
• Be a bachelor or master in the scientific area required for the research grant or in related areas, with a minimum grade of 14. In the case of holders of a bachelor’s degree, it is necessary to present a statement attesting the capacity to carry out this cycle of studies by the scientific council of the organic unit in which they intend to be admitted;
• Not have benefited from a PhD or a PhD in industry studentship directly funded by FCT, regardless of its duration.
• Not holding a PhD degree.
4.2 Application’s admissibility requirements
It is mandatory, under penalty of non-admissibility, to attach the following documents to the application:
• Information of your identity card / citizen card / passport;
• An updated version of your Curriculum Vitae (CV);
• The work plan to be developed, with the following mandatory elements: title; abstract; key words; state-of-the-art; research problems, questions and objectives; work plan; detailed schedule and execution indicators; framework and relevance to the research activities plan of the Instituto de Telecomunicações; references (maximum of seven pages);
• An opinion and statement of agreement from the supervisor and eventual co-supervisor (s) appointed to monitor the candidate’s activity. The supervisor must be PhD holder and a member of the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Coimbra site;
• Academic degree certificates, indicating the final grade and, if possible, the final classification of the disciplines completed, or, in alternative, declaration of honor from the candidate on how he / she completed the bachelor’s or master’s degree by the end of the application period.
• Registration of the recognition of foreign academic degrees awarded by foreign higher education institutions, and the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale, or, alternatively, the candidate’s declaration of honor on how he obtained the recognition of the foreign degree equivalent to that of a bachelor or master by the end of the application period;
• Motivational letter;
• Present/prepare and submit the application and all related documents, including motivational letter, in Portuguese or in English.
Regarding the admissibility requirements mentioned above, the following should be noted:

• In case of foreign academic degrees, and to guarantee the application of the principle of equal treatment to applicants with national and foreign academic degrees, it is mandatory to submit the recognition of such degrees and the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale.
The recognition of foreign academic degrees and diplomas, and the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale, can be issued by any Portuguese public higher education institution, or in case of automatic recognition by the Directorate General for Higher Education (Direção Geral do Ensino Superior, DGES). Regarding this matter, it is suggested to visit the DGES portal through the following address: http://www.dges.gov.pt.
• Only applicants who have completed the study cycle leading to a bachelor’s or master’s degree by the end of the application period will be admitted. If they do not yet have the certificate of completion of the course, a declaration of honor from the candidates will be accepted, stating they have completed the necessary qualifications for the purposes of the competition by the end of the application period. The granting of the scholarship always depends on the presentation of proof of ownership of the academic qualifications necessary for the concession of the scholarship.

Work Objectives:
The work plan should contribute to the mission of the Instituto de Telecomunicações, to the development of the strategic plan of this R&D unit, and should be guided by one of its doctoral members from the Coimbra site. The research branch (Radio Communications, Optical Communications, Networks and Multimedia and Basic Sciences and Support Technologies), in which the project is inserted, must be explicitly identified, and the way in which the project and its objectives will line-up for its development must be explained. The plan must contain, necessarily, the elements indicated in point 4.2 of this notice. The evaluation criteria provided for in point 6 of this notice will apply.
Applicable legislation:
The present call is governed by this Notice of the Call, the FCT Regulation of Research Fellowships, approved by the Regulation no. 950/2019, published in the Series II of the DR, of 16th December, by the Research Fellowship Holder Statute, approved by the Law no. 40/2004, of 18th of August, in its current version, and by other applicable national and European legislation.
Place of work:
The PhD Scholarships are aimed at applicants enrolled or that comply with the requirements to enroll in the Doctoral Program contained in point 2 of this Notice and who wish to develop research activities towards the achievement of the doctoral degree in the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Coimbra site.
Duration:
The PhD research scholarship aims to finance the research activities, by the scholarship holder, leading to the acquisition of a PhD degree in Portuguese universities.
The research activities leading to the acquisition of a PhD academic degree will take place at the Instituto de Telecomunicações, in the Coimbra site, which will be the host institution for the scholarship holders, without prejudice to the work that can be carried out in collaboration between more than one institution.
The research activities that make it possible to obtain the PhD academic degree of the selected scholarship holders must be framed in the activities plan and strategy of the Instituto de Telecomunicações, and must be developed within the scope of the following Doctoral Program:
• Doctoral Program in Electrical and Computer Engineering, in FCTUC, University de Coimbra.
As a rule, the duration of the scholarship is annual, renewable up to a maximum of four years (48 months), and the scholarship cannot be awarded for a period of less than 3 consecutive months.
Monthly salary:
Scholarship holders receive a monthly maintenance allowance in accordance with the table in Annex I of the RBI.
The scholarship may include additional allowances, according to RBI’s Article no. 18 and the values indicated in its Annex II.
All scholarship holders have a personal accident insurance related to their research activities, which FCT will support.
All scholarship holders who do not benefit from any social protection regime have the right to social security through the voluntary social insurance regime, under the terms of the Contributory Scheme of the Social Security System. FCT will ensure the charges resulting from contributions under the terms and with the limits provided in Article no. 10 of the EBI.
Selection criteria:

  • C1 (60%)
    • Criterion A – Merit of the Applicant, with a relative weight of 60%
    o Sub-criterion A1 – Academic career, with a relative weight of 60% decomposed into:
    o Sub-criterion A11 – Bachelor’s final mark (0-20 scale), 40% weight;
    o Sub-criterion A12 – Masters’ final mark (0-20 scale), 60% weight;
    o Sub-criterion A2 – Personal curriculum, with a relative weight of 40%.
  • C2 (30%)
    • Criterion B – Merit of the Work Plan, with a relative weight of 30%;
    o B1 – Justified relevance of the object of study, with a relative weight of 30%.
    o B2 – Scientific quality, with a relative weight of 40%
    o B3 – Feasibility of the work plan, with a relative weight of 20%..
    o B4 – Relevance of the work plan for the strategic plan of IT (Instituto de Telecomunicações), with a relative weight of 10%.
  • C3 (10%)
    • Criterion C – Merit of the supervising team, with a relative weight of 10%.
    The scientific merit of the hosting team, the adequacy to supervise the PhD candidate, the experience of orientation and practices to stimulate the scientific growth of students in the scientific area in question will be valued

Candidates may be interviewed for clarification of any aspect related to the above criteria
Each criteria, and the final classification F will be evaluated in a scale (0-20). The candidates will be ordered according to:
F = C1 x 60% + C2 x 30% + C3 x 10%
In case of a tie, the tied candidates will be ordered according to C1, then C2…
The Jury has the right to not admit any of the candidates that applied for this position whenever they consider that no candidate meets the minimum requirements for the position.

Jury:

  • Prof. Maria do Carmo Raposo de Medeiros, Universidade de Coimbra (President of the jury)
  • Prof. Sérgio Manuel Ângelo da Cruz, Universidade de Coimbra
  • Prof. Fernando Manuel Santos Perdigao, Universidade de Coimbra
  • Prof. Marina Mendes Sargento Domingues Perdigao, Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra (Substitute)
Communication of the results:
The results of the evaluation are communicated via e-mail to the e-mail address used by the applicant to send the application / indicated in the application.

The evaluation panel will analyze applications considering the evaluation criteria disclosed in the Notice of the Call, taking into account all the appreciation elements.
All panel members, including the coordinator, make a commitment to respect a set of responsibilities essential to the evaluation process, such as the duties of impartiality, the declaration of any potential conflict of interest (COI) and confidentiality. At all times during the evaluation process, confidentiality is fully protected and ensured in order to guarantee the independence of all opinions produced.
Panel members, including the coordinator, cannot be supervisors or co-supervisors of candidates with applications submitted to the competition.
For each application, a final evaluation form will be produced by the panel, in which the arguments that led to the ratings attributed to each of the evaluation criteria and sub-criteria will be presented in a clear, coherent and consistent manner.
Minutes from the evaluation panel meetings will be provided and signed off by all its members.
The minutes and their attachments must include the following information:
• Name and affiliation of all members of the evaluation panel;
• Identification of all excluded applications and their reasons;
• Methodology adopted by the panel for cases considered private;
• Final Evaluation Sheets for each candidate;
• Temporary list of classification and ranking of candidates, in descending order of the final classification, of all applications evaluated by the panel;
• COI statements from all panel members;
• Possible delegations of votes and powers due to justified absence

Required Documents:
The research scholarship contracts are signed directly with FCT.
The following documents are mandatory, upon granting of the scholarship, for hiring purposes:
a) Copy of the documents of personal identification, tax number and, if applicable, social security ;
b) Copy of the academic degree certificates;
c) Work plan;
d) Submission of the recognition of foreign academic degrees and the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale, if applicable;
e) Document proving the acceptance and registration in the Doctoral Program identified in this Notice;
f) Supervisor(s) statement declaring to coordinate the work plan, as established in Article no. 5-A of the Statute for Research Fellowships (template will be made available by FCT);
g) Document proving the candidate’s acceptance by the institution where the research activities will take place, guaranteeing the necessary conditions for its successful development, as well as the fulfillment of the duties provided for in article 13 of the Research Fellowship Holder Statute (template will be made available by FCT);
h) Updated document proving the exclusivity dedication regime (template will be made available by FCT).
The scholarship granting is still dependent on:
• The fulfilment of all the requirements listed in this Notice of the Call;
• The results of scientific evaluation;
• The absence of unjustified non-compliance of the fellowship holder during previous directly or indirectly FCT funded fellowships;
• The FCT’s available budget.

Failure to deliver any of the necessary documents to complete the hiring process implies, within 6 months from the date of communication of the decision to grant the conditional grant, the expiration of the referred grant and the termination of the process.

IMPORTANTE NOTICE: Academic degrees obtained abroad require registration by a Portuguese institution under the terms of Decree-Law no. 66/2018, of 16 August and Ordinance No. 33/2019, of 25 January. The presentation of the certificate is mandatory for signing the contract. More information can be obtained at: https://www.dges.gov.pt/pt/pagina/reconhecimento?plid=374.
All the selection process is conducted through the IT web portal. No actions outside this platform are valid.

Application Period:
15-07-2021 to 15-09-2021
Assistance:
Send Email
Published on:
27-05-2021
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