Personal Supervision
You have been allocated a lead supervisor and one or more co-supervisors, who may be located at a GW4 institution other than your own. Regulations concerning frequency of supervisory meetings, etc. will be determined by the institution of your lead supervisor, and it will be your responsibility to arrange meetings with your supervisors throughout the year, including those off-site, by mutual consent. However, it is expected that you meet with your supervisory team as a whole at least once per term.
You may find that you can conduct research and/or spend time at one of the other GW4 institutions. When based at a different institution, please ensure you follow their local regulations and procedures.
Progress Monitoring
You will be registered for a higher degree at the home university of your lead supervisor and will be subject to their local procedures for performance monitoring, progression between years and thesis examination. Your home school will be responsible for your annual progress monitoring. However, the DTP also require oversight of your progress and by accepting this studentship you are agreeing to the sharing of documentation regarding your progress with your Institutional Academic Lead, our Director and, if necessary, the Management Board.
Your Academic Lead will aim to meet with you once per term to review your progress and discuss any issues you might be having with, for example, your research, training, or cross-site working. They will also aim to meet your supervisory team once per year.
In addition to your formal progress monitoring process, you will be expected to complete either the online Researcher Development Framework (RDF) planner or the DTP’s Training Needs Analysis Form at regular intervals, exporting and providing the set format reports when requested. This will also help you when creating or updating your CV. For details on how to access this see the section on the RDF Online Planner.
We are required to monitor your accomplishments so we can report back to the funder the success of the DTP. From your second year, this will be via a tool called Researchfish, details of which will be sent to you by the MRC when appropriate.
The DTP also send out surveys at the end of training events and at the end of each academic year to gain your feedback on quality of training, any issues you are encountering, and ways in which we can improve your student experience. On an annual basis, we will also ask for your feedback on important topics, such as collaboration and impact, to include in our annual report to the MRC. Among other things, they are looking to gauge our effectiveness and the value we add to the PhD process as a Doctoral Training partnership, so your participation in these surveys is welcome and expected as it helps us to provide invaluable feedback to the MRC.
Record of Publications
We expect you to keep us up-to-date with all of your successes on our ‘Record of Publications’ survey at https://cardiff.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/gw4-biomed-mrc-dtp-record-of-achievements. Please complete this survey each time you:
- Publish a paper.
- Present at a conference.
- Participate in a competition.
- Take part in a public engagement activity.
- Engage in any other success that you would like to tell us about!
This information will enable the DTP to provide information to the MRC about the successes of our cohorts as well as the opportunities that you are engaged in.
Open Access Publishing
The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have stated that all peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers resulting from research funded in whole or in part by research councils should be made Open Access. To facilitate this arrangement, all research council students are eligible for funding through their home institution. You should, therefore, apply to the relevant individual within your institution to access this funding when publishing Open Access materials.
Visiting Status
So that you can access online resources, booking systems, workshops and facilities at each institution across the GW4, the DTP admin team arrange visiting student status at each of your non-home institutions.
To maintain this access, you will be required to re-register with each university at the start of each academic year. Details of how to do this will be sent to you directly by the relevant institution. Please ensure that you re-register each year to ensure that DTP training courses can run smoothly.
To be able to access the internet at each of the sites, please ensure you activate Eduroam by following your local institutional guidelines in advance of your visit. You can find more information on accessing and activating Eduroam here: https://www.eduroam.org/about/connect-yourself/.
Travel
DTP students are awarded a £300 annual travel allowance as part of their funding from the MRC. This allowance can be used to facilitate travel to and from university as well as visits to the institution/s of your co-supervisors.
The DTP will reimburse reasonable travel costs incurred for training events organised by the programme. Please note that travel within the city of your home institution will not be reimbursed as it is expected that this expense should be covered through your travel allowance.
You may claim reimbursement for travel expenses using the claim form available from the DTP. These forms should be signed and returned to the DTP via email with any scanned receipts within three months of the training event taking place. Payment should be made via BACS into your nominated bank account within one month of your claim.
To assist the DTP with its green impact, we request students either walk or use public transport to any DTP event or training venue where possible. Travel by car is not permitted unless agreed in advance with the DTP due to special circumstances. Please note that taxis should only be used in exceptional circumstances and should be used in groups.
Young Person’s Railcard
To facilitate cross-institutional travel the DTP will fund the purchase of a young person’s railcard for three years of your PhD. Students older than 24 can still apply if they have institutional evidence of their status as a mature student. Please ensure to make use of your railcard for all DTP-related travel. You can find out more by visiting the rail card website: https://www.16-25railcard.co.uk/.