Call OUH PhD Fund

February 2025

Call	Application deadline	Assessment meeting
17 February 2025	8 April 2025 11.59 p.m. (midnight)	3 June 2025 (expected)

Proposals for PhD scholarships are invited for the OUH PhD Fund, first round 2025.

In between the two annual application rounds of the OUH PhD Fund, the PhD Fund of the Region of Southern Denmark (RSD) is open for applications. Deadlines and other information are available at the website of the Region of Southern Denmark  (in Danish).

Objective

“Patient first” is the underlying principle of OUH’s ambition in creating value for our patients. To offer the best treatment, retain and attract the best qualified staff to the benefit of patients, it is OUH’s ambition to strengthen research at the hospital. As one of several initiatives to reach this objective, OUH has set aside funding for PhD scholarships.

Requirements for applicants

All disciplines of research may apply, including clinical patient related research, research of epidemiology, experimental laboratory research and health services research.  

The application must be submitted by the PhD student applying for an OUH PhD Fund stipend. The PhD student must have a clear and independent role in the proposed project. The OUH PhD Fund can be applied a maximum of three times.

Only students, who have obtained approval of a PhD protocol at the University of Southern Denmark before the application deadline, are eligible. Please note that OUH does not support PhD projects not registered at the PhD school (§15, part. 2, The act of PhD education at the universities etc., in Danish), and in the event of this situation, funding for the PhD project will be withdrawn.

The significant part of the PhD study must take place at OUH or the main supervisor must be employed at OUH, and the PhD project must have a distinct clinical perspective relevant to OUH.

It is possible for more than one applicant from the same department or with the same main supervisor to submit separate applications. However, a maximum of one stipend per department is to be expected for each application round.

OUH wants to stress the importance of change of research environment including internationalisation, and applicants should complete a research stay abroad. If a research stay has no bearing on a particular project, it should be argued why in the application. A co-supervisor from other hospitals in Denmark or abroad may be an important parameter in developing an independent research profile.

Budget

It is expected that external means constitute part of funding of a PhD stipend and the funding of the entire PhD project must be stated in the budget section of the application in efond. This applies both for PhD projects which have not yet started and are ongoing at the time of the application deadline.

Eligible costs

• Own salary (stipends) for one year including study fees. A maximum amount of DKK 650.000 for one year may be applied by each applicant from the PhD Fund.

Please note that

• the amount may not cover all expenses for one-year salary and study fees depending on the level of salary of the applicant.
• a possible grant will be paid out in thousands for budgetary purposes (not. e.g. DKK 649.357, but DKK 649.000).
• no additional appropriations for a possible grant can be expected from the OUH PhD Fund at a later stage.

Non eligible costs

It is not possible to apply for e.g. the following items from the OUH PhD Fund:

• Salary for other researchers (SCS in English and VIP in Danish)
• Employment or co-financing of non-scientific staff (NSS in English, TAP in Danish) for research projects (e.g. biomedical laboratory technician, research nurses, etc.)
• Purchase of apparatus or other material for research projects
• Other research-promoting purposes
• Overhead due to the fact that the PhD Fund is a local fund
• Open Access publication.

The OUH Research Support offers instructions on how to draw up a budget. If you request assistance, please contact ouh.forskerservice@rsyd.dk.

Assessment criteria

Applications are being assessed according to following criteria:

• Qualifications of the applicant
• Academic setting of supervision
• Scientific quality of the project
• How internationalisation is part of the project, e.g. research stay abroad.
• Strategic considerations related to the Research Strategy 2021 – 2025 of Odense University Hospital and the Department of Clinical Research of SDU, in particular:
  • Research at a high international level with the potential of altering treatment of patients
  • Research and implementation of evidence-based treatment including individualised medicine
  • Systematic review of one of the research questions of the PhD project
  • Focus on the course of the patient’s treatment course across professions, departments, hospitals and sectors
  • How patients and relatives are or may be involved in drawing up the research project, see “Considerations” below.

How to submit an application

Applications must be submitted via the application system efond. Please read and comply with the instructions given in efond and enter and upload the required information.

Appendices

Please upload the following mandatory appendices in PDF format: 

• Approval of PhD protocol from the PhD School at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU)
• Approval from both Head of Department and Head of Research at OUH stating that the project can be carried out at OUH
• Short CV including publication list of a maximum of 2 pages in total for the applicant (PhD student) (including PubMed No for each publication or a reprint of the published work if not indexed in PubMed and papers submitted for publication)
• Diploma from the applicant’s (PhD student) Master’s degree programme. If you have not yet finished your Master’s degree programme, please upload your most recent transcript of records
• Short CV including publication list of a maximum of 2 pages in total for main supervisor and co-supervisors (2 pages in total for each supervisor). CV should include number of former and current PhD students.
• Confirmation of research stay abroad from the foreign research institution or collaborator.

The following appendices may be uploaded:

• A statement from your supervisor.
• Figures to support your project description.
• Authorisations, e.g. The National Committee on Health Research Ethics (Videnskabsetisk Komité), Danish Medicines Agency (Lægemiddelstyrelsen) or other.

Please avoid abbreviations in the application apart from the most commonly used.

Budget information

In the budget section in efond (step 3), please state which year a possible grant from the OUH PhD Fund is applied for:

• Year 1 = 2025
• Year 2 = 2026
• Year 3 = 2027
• Year 4 = 2028
• Year 5 = 2029

If a possible grant is to be divided between two years, please indicate number of months and amount for each year, e.g.:

• Year 1: 6 months, DKK 325,000
• Year 2: 6 months, DKK 325,000

In addition, in the budget section in efond (step 3), please enter the full budget of the entire PhD project including already obtained or expected funding and any other budget headings.

A confirmation by email will be sent from “efond” if the application is submitted correctly (please check your spam filter if you do not receive an email).

Language

The application must be in English. Please note that the layman’s summary must be in Danish.

The wording of the application must be comprehensible to laymen and not only specialists within the proposed professional field.

Administrative rejection

Please note that an application may be rejected on an administrative basis if it does not comply with the above requirements.

Consequently, please make sure that the required information is entered in efond and that required appendices are attached.

Assessment procedure

Submitted applications will be reviewed and prioritised by the PhD Stipend Committee at Odense University Hospital prior to the assessment meeting.

The PhD Stipend Committee will invite the applicants who have received the highest review score for an interview.

Please note that invitations will be sent with short notice, approximately one week before the assessment meeting where the interviews will take place. See the expected date for the meeting at the top of this call.

If you are invited for an interview, you will be asked to present your project to the committee (5 minutes) followed by questions from the committee (5 minutes). The presentation will be in English while questions may be in Danish. Physical presence at the committee meeting is preferred. However, you may give an online presentation if you have urgent activities elsewhere (please contact ouh.forskning@rsyd.dk).

Please note that only applicants with the highest score in the assessment of applications prior to the meeting will be invited for an interview, and that stipends will be awarded among applicants invited for an interview. Consequently, if you do not receive an invitation for interview approximately one week before the assessment meeting, you will most likely not receive a stipend at this particular application round.

We aim to give all applicants feedback no later than 3 weeks after the assessment meeting, including applicants who are not invited for an interview.

Considerations

It is important that you apply for or have already received external funding in addition to applying for funding from OUH. In the budget section in efond, you must give information about how your PhD project is funded and if you are applying for funding from other sources.

Patients are members of the assessment committee and will be reviewing the applications with other members of the committee. The primary focus of the patients is on the layman’s description and description of patient involvement, why these parts must be understandable to a non-specialist.

It is important to describe considerations about patient and relative involvement in the application. The involvement can take place throughout the entire research process – from the planning of the project to dissemination of the results that are generated. The main purpose of health research is obtaining results that will be beneficial for patients.

Involving patients and relatives in the research process can help to ensure that the research focuses on those topics and issues that are most important from a patient perspective. Involvement by patients and relatives should be enhanced where it contributes the most value for the individual project and thus the value of the project to patients and society as a whole.

Examples of how and when patients and relatives can be involved:

• Clarification of research questions, outcome goals
• Reading the application – especially Danish sections (layman’s description, descriptions to Ethical Committee of Science)
• Dissemination of research results

Please find more inspiration at VIBIS (in Danish), the OUH Center for Forskning sammen med Patienter og Pårørende (ForSa-P; in Danish) or NIHS in the UK.

Questions and contact information

Please forward questions to ouh.forskning@rsyd.dk.