9. Assessment procedure
An application for an Industrial PhD can obtain either approval, conditional approval or a rejection.
If a project is conditionally approved, the applicant must meet a number of conditions before the project can commence. DASTI will send the applying company a letter detailing these conditions after processing the application. When the conditions have been met, the project may commence.
Applications without named candidates can obtain either a conditional approval or a rejection. If conditionally approved, the company must subsequently find a qualified candidate for the project, for instance through job advertisements. When the candidate has been selected, the company must submit documentation of the candidate’s qualifications to DASTI. If DASTI, possibly after consulting the Programme Committee, assesses that the candidate lives up to the Industrial PhD candidate requirements, the company can hire the candidate and the project may commence. A candidate must be found and approved no later than six months after the project has obtained a conditional approval.
If more qualified applications are received than there are means to subsidise, the Programme Committee will prioritise applications based on considerations of research, academic and industrial sector aspects. Here, the purposes of the Industrial PhD Programme and the Council’s objectives will be taken into consideration.
If a project is rejected, the applying company will receive a letter stating the grounds for rejection. A rejected Industrial PhD project cannot be initiated, regardless of whether the project has the university’s approval. However, it is possible to resubmit the application. When resubmitted, an application must detail how the grounds for the previous rejection have been addressed. All application material incl. new signatures must be resubmitted when reapplying.
The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation is the appeals body for all announced decisions, cf. the Act on Technology and Innovation (Act 419 of June 6, 2002). All rejections are elaborated and supplied with guidelines on how to appeal. Decisions on professional, academic and legal grounds may be appealed to the Council. The Council’s decisions cannot be appealed to any other instance, as its decisions may not be brought before any other administrative authority, cf. § 4 (1-5).
