Seed money scholarship for PhD students in CBU

I was lucky to be in the bunch of the M.Sc. graduates who were applying for the first call of CBU doctoral programme in November 2010. It was initiated for all interested PhD candidates who received CBU seed money as scholarship to initiate a PhD work. The money were given for two months in order to find the supervisor and agree upon the chosen topic, besides that the money were aimed to prepare research plan for future PhD research at the faculty. In my opinion the given financial was very important due the fact that CBU programme is aimed towards cross-border cooperation and for that reason the travelling abroad and meeting with supervisors from abroad, e.g. from Russia were required. In the bunch were 8 PhD students who were selected to first call of Doctoral Programme, six from them were originally from Russia, one from Poland and one from Bangladesh. The students were coming University of Eastern Finland, University of Tampere, Saint-Petersburg State Forest Technical Academy etc. Students were representing the public health, information and communication technology, international relationship and forestry and environmental engineering programmes. As a result of the preparation work we had to prepare research and study plan, also present a Power Point presentation describing the objectives and main steps of the project development. The CBU doctoral student seminar was held in Borealis building of the University of Eastern Finland on 11^th of November 2010. The students and coordinator of CBU doctoral programme agreed to undertake their studies in the graduate schools of CBU partner universities. At the seminar I presented the preliminary topic of my research related to the possibilities of applying MOTTI software in Russian conditions. This software was originally developed in Finland and used here in everyday forestry practices, however it is important to examine whereas the model is applicable to Russian conditions. Even though I stuck with that topic for a while I had to change the subject of my topic later on, I understood that it is quite common practice. The financial side of the research is important and I think that the idea to initiate seed money for PhD candidates to prepare high quality research plan and find suitable supervisor was very good idea. Besides that the call for this scholarship was publically available and was communicated through CBU central webpage, for that reason I would advise for potential PhD candidates to monitor this web resource.