PHD Program in Information Technologies and their Application in Management, Architecture and Geophysics

The general goal of a doctoral studies is to provide students with the skills to lead and perform scientific research and is awarded to students to those who:

1. Have demonstrated a systematic understanding of a field of study and mastery of the skills and methods of research associated with that field.
2. Have demonstrated the ability to conceive, design, implement and adapt a substantial research process with scholarly integrity.
3. Have made a contribution through original research that extends the frontier of knowledge by developing a substantial body of work, some of which merits national or international refereed publication.
4. Are capable of critical analysis, evaluation and synthesis of new and complex ideas.
5. Can communicate with their peers, the larger scholarly community and with society in general about their areas of expertise.
6. Can be expected to be able to promote, within academic and professional contexts, technological, social or cultural advancement in a knowledge based society.

By achieving these general goals, doctoral students acquire the personal skills expected from a doctor are the following:

1. The ability to deal with contexts in which there is little specific information.The ability to identify the key questions which need to be addressed in order to solve a complex problem.
2. The ability to design, create, develop and undertake new and innovative projects in their relevant area of expertise.
3. The ability to work both in a team and independently in an international or multidisciplinary context.
4. The ability to integrate knowledge, deal with complexity and make judgements with limited information.
5. The ability to critique and support or oppose an intellectual proposal.

Examples of thesis defended in the framework of the program can be found in  http://blogs.salleurl.edu/phd/

The specific aim of this PhD program is to train researchers with the skills and competences needed to carry out sound research in the fields covered by this program corresponding to the research groups involved, which are the following:

The basic premises of the program are:

• Transversality and multi-disciplinarity. To interlink the diversity of knowledge fields embraced by La Salle research groups.
• Internationalization. To carry out research in conjunction with the large network of international research centers with which our researchers collaborate.

Doctoral students will keep a log called (Document d’Activitats del Doctorat) where they will record their participation in conferences, seminars and workshops, as well as the publications they produce (papers, articles, technical reports). The DAD will facilitate the follow-up of the training and research activity.

Training activities considered include the following items:

1. Courses. The program includes courses on the following topics: Writing scientific papers, Presentations, Entrepreneurship, Outreach, Research quality, Career development.
2. Mobility, including stages in other research center, attendance to conferences.
3. Writing journal, articles, conference papers and technical reports, filling patents.
4. Outreach activities to communicate the outputs of research

Training activities must be validated by the thesis supervisor and the tutor. The tutor will give this information to the Academic Committee in order to supervise and validate the activities report.

Preferably, the outcomes of the research should be published in journals with high impact factor and should be presented in international conferences in order to publicly discuss the research work.