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, UIDB/50008/2020

Scientific Area:
Wireless Technologies

Group:

Admission 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, the candidate must:

Be a master in the scientific area required for the research grant or in related areas, with a minimum grade of 14.

Not having benefited from a prior PhD grant or a PhD in industry grant directly funded by FCT, regardless of its duration;

Applications admissibility requirements
It is mandatory, under penalty of non-admissibility, that the candidate attaches the following documents to the application:

Information of the identity card / citizen card / passport;

Updated version of the Curriculum Vitae (CV);

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 candidates activity. The supervisor must be PhD holder, faculty from IST and a member of the Instituto de Telecomunicações, at IST.

Full course transcripts and academic degree certificates, indicating the final grade and, if possible, the final classification of the completed disciplines. If the certificates cannot be presented by the end of the application period, the candidate must upload a signed declaration of honour stating that the candidate will complete the master's degree by the end of application period and shall present the certificate by the date of contract signature . Failure to produce the certificates by this date eliminates the candidate.

Registration of the recognition of foreign academic degrees awarded by foreign higher education institutions, and registration of the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale, or, alternatively, the candidates declaration of honor confirming that he will obtain the recognition of the foreign degree equivalent to that of a bachelor or master by the contract signature date stated above;

Motivation 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 the case of foreign academic degrees, and to guarantee the application of the principle of equal treatment among applicants with national and foreign academic degrees, it is mandatory to submit the recognition of foreign 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.

Applicants will be admitted only if they have completed the study cycle leading to a bachelor's or master's degree by the end of the application period and have uploaded the certificates of completion of the course. Candidates will be admitted also if they upload a declaration of honor stating that they will have completed the necessary qualifications for the purposes of the competition by the end of the contract signature date stated above. The granting of the scholarship always depends on presentation of proof of holding the academic qualifications necessary for granting the scholarship.

Work Objectives:
The work plan must fall strictly within the scientific area defined in Section 3. It must be in line with the mission of Instituto de Telecomunicações, contribute to the development of its R&D strategic plan, and must be supported and supervised by one of IT members that is also affiliated with IST. The work plan document must contain, necessarily, all the elements indicated in Section 4.2 of this notice. The evaluation criteria to be applied is provided in Section 6.

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 research grant aims to finance the research activities, by the grant holder, to obtain a PhD degree from Instituto Superior Técnico, from the University of Lisbon (IST). These research activities will take place at Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), at IST. IT will be the host institution for the scholarship holders, without preventing that the work may be carried out in collaboration with more than one institution.

The research activities of the selected grant holder leading to the PhD academic degree 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 Programme in Electrical and Computer Engineering, IST;

Duration:
As a rule, the duration of the grant is annual, renewable up to a maximum of four years (48 months), and the grant cannot be awarded for a period of less than 3 consecutive months.

Monthly salary:
The payment of the scholarship will begin after returning the signed contract to FCT, which should happen within the 15 business days after its delivery.
The scholarship granted in this call will be financed by FCT using the State Budget fund and, whenever eligible, using the European Social Fund (ESF), under the PORTUGAL2020 programme, in particular, under Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE 2020), Programa Operacional Regional do Centro (Centro 2020) and Programa Operacional Regional do Alentejo (Alentejo 2020), according to the respective requirements.
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%)
  C1 (60%): Merit of the Applicant, decomposed into three sub-criteria:
  
  Sub-criterion A1 - Academic performance in the area of the work plan, with a relative weight of 60%, decomposed into:
  Sub-criterion A11 - Bachelors final mark (0-20 scale), 40% weight;
  Sub-criterion A12 - Masters final mark (0-20 scale), 60% weight;
  Sub-criterion A2 - Personal curriculum in the area of the work plan, with a relative weight of 30%.
  Sub-criterion A3 ? Motivation letter, with a relative weight of 10%.
  


• C2 (10%)
  C2 (10%): Merit of the Work Plan
  
  B1 ? Scientific quality, with a relative weight of 80%;
  B2 ? Relevance of the work plan for the strategic plan of IT (Instituto de Telecomunicações), with a relative weight of 20%.
  


• C3 (30%)
  C3 (30%): Scientific merit of the supervising team

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 10% + C3 x 30%

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. Mario Alexandre Teles de Figueiredo, Instituto Superior Técnico (President of the jury)


• Prof. Paulo Alexandre Carapinha Marques, Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa


• Prof. Rafael Ferreira da Silva Caldeirinha, Instituto Politécnico de Leiria


• Prof. Nuno Miguel Goncalves Borges de Carvalho, Universidade de Aveiro (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 create the application account in the Insitituto de Telecomunicações web system.

Required Documents:
The research grant 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) Submission of the recognition of foreign academic degrees and the conversion of the respective final grade to the Portuguese grading scale, if applicable;
d) Document proving the acceptance and registration in the Doctoral Program identified in this Notice;
e) Supervisor(s) statement declaring the commitment to supervise the PhD work, as established in Article no. 5-A of the Statute for Research Fellowships (template will be made available by FCT);
f) Document proving the candidate's acceptance by Instituto de Telecomunicações, 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);
g) Updated document proving the exclusive work regime (template will be made available by FCT).
The scholarship granting is further 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 grant holder duties 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 by October 2020 may imply the expiration of the referred grant and the termination of the process.

The whole selection process is conducted through the IT web portal. No actions outside this platform are valid.
All the selection process is conducted through the IT web portal. No actions outside this platform are valid.

Application Period:
02-02-2021 to 15-02-2021

Assistance:
Send Email

Published on:
19-01-2021