The WASP National Graduate School is dedicated to provide the skills needed to analyze, develop, and contribute to the interdisciplinary area of autonomous systems and software.
The curriculum provides the foundations, perspectives, and expert knowledge in the different disciplines. It will offer a wide range of courses of different types taught by leading researchers in the field to meet the ambitious goals of the program. In doing so it will benefit from existing graduate education programs at the participating universities. In addition to these existing courses a number of new initiatives will be taken both regarding new courses and new modern ways of delivering courses.
Two especially important core courses that will be developed are Autonomous systems and Software development for autonomous systems. These core courses will be designed in close cooperation with leading researchers to outline the scope of the WASP program for the students. This will create a common frame of reference for the PhD students and also help create a sense of belonging among them.
Besides the core courses and the traditional disciplinary courses the curriculum will include WASP-specific project courses to support the creation of new interdisciplinary research projects and to create a meeting point between different research areas. In these courses groups, with members from different departments, sites, and research areas, will perform application-oriented and interdisciplinary projects. It is an explicit objective to promote projects that are connected to research laboratories or demonstrators in WASP.
A fourth type of course is the multi-perspective course, which is a small course or workshop that illustrates important topics from different aspects and theoretical viewpoints. Two examples could be Planning and optimal control and System identification and machine learning. These courses are a means for researchers from related areas to jointly explore a topic to find new synergies and to show students, researchers and engineers how the areas are related and potentially can be integrated.
The courses within the school will be adapted to the needs of the participants. The target participants for the courses are industrial and university-based PhD students, postdoc and senior researchers, as well as engineers from industry. The wide range of participants requires a flexible course format that can be tailored to the individual needs, such as intensive courses with a few days of lectures and seminars, and blended learning combining online material with face-to-face meetings.
International network
The WASP National Graduate School will also actively support forming a strong international academic network by an ambitious program for research visits, partner universities, and visiting lecturers. A yearly conference with top-level invited speakers where PhD students present their work will provide further opportunities for networking and feedback.
The expected result is that the graduate school will establish a strong multi-disciplinary and international professional network between PhD-students, researchers and industries, and help creating new research collaborations, both within academia and with industry.
Open Positions
WASP is now (2015 October 30) offering up to 26 graduate positions at the five partner universities:
The application deadline varies between the positions. You may apply to as many of the positions as you like.
We look forward to your application!
Published: October 30th, 2015