Hosts recruiting KI-CSC scholarship funded post-doc, visiting researcher and visiting doctoral student
As KI host you can provide an opportunity for a postdoc, visiting researcher or visiting doctoral student to spend a period of time at KI, by announcing a project with which the Chinese applicant can apply for a CSC scholarship.
The KI-CSC programme
The KI-CSC programme is based on an agreement, for the period 2020-2025, between Karolinska Institutet (KI) and Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC), a funding institution under the Ministry of Education of China. CSC awards scholarships to Chinese scholars going abroad for doctoral studies or visiting research.
Responsibility as a KI host
As a potential KI host, you should:
- Provide a research project description.
- Interact with the potential CSC scholarship applicants that contact you, assess their possibility and scientific competence, and select the most suitable candidate.
- Issue a letter of invitation to the most suitable candidate.
- Provide the selected candidate with required documents for the CSC scholarship application.
Hosting a visiting scholar
The financial support from CSC for visiting researchers is SEK 15,000/month, and the permitted time to spend at KI is 3-12 months.
Visiting scholars need to apply for a visiting researcher residence permit with a hosting agreement prepared by the host/hosts HR unit.
Information about application of residence permit for visiting researcher
Hosting a post-doc
The financial support from CSC for post-doc fellows is SEK 15,000/month, and the permitted time to spend at KI is 6-24 months. If you host a post-doc, you must top up the CSC scholarship to the minimum level required by KI, either with a complementary scholarship or by part-time employment. Please contact the HR at your department if you need support in calculating the top-up.
Income level and supplementary funding for doctoral students
CSC only accepts post-doc scholarship applications approved by the employer of the applicant. Please make sure the applicant is employed in China on the date of application submission to CSC, and have received her or his doctoral degree within 3 years.
Post-docs should apply for visiting researcher residence permit with a hosting agreement prepared by the host/hosts HR unit.
Information about application of resident permit for visiting researcher
Hosting a visiting doctoral student
The financial support from CSC for visiting doctoral students is SEK 15,000/month, and the permitted time to spend at KI is 6-12 months. According to the Swedish regulation for visitor’s permit for doctoral exchange, the permit cannot be extended. Top-up of the CSC scholarship for a visiting PhD student is not compulsory.
Visiting doctoral student need to apply for a residence permit for visitors.
Information about application of resident permit for visitors
Restrictions of recruitment
You are allowed to recruit only every two years. If you will receive a CSC funded scholar, decided by CSC in June 2022, you cannot recruit in this recruitment round.
As KI host, you may:
- advertise up to two research projects (doctoral student project, a visiting doctoral student project, postdoc project or a visiting researcher project),
- recruit a maximum of two candidates in one recruitment round,
- one doctoral student (either a doctoral student 4 years or one visiting doctoral student)
and/or - one visiting scholar (postdoc or visiting researcher)
- one doctoral student (either a doctoral student 4 years or one visiting doctoral student)
October 18 2022 is the deadline of recruitment for year 2023-2024.
Supervisors who have submitted a research project description, including approval by their head of department, before the deadline October 18, 2022 will be included in the subsequent recruitment process.
Timeframe and process recruiting for 2023-2024
The call has been cancelled
KI has decided to cancell the call for 2023-2024 recruitment of the KI-CSC programme. KI is negotiating with CSC the current KI-CSC agreement, as the content of the contract between CSC and its awardees has been questioned.
Further queries can be addressed to: Nailin Li csc-kiprogramme@ki.se and Monika Berge.
1. Define your project for advertising, deadline October 18, 2022
As a potential host, you begin advertising your research project by submitting the project description and defining the qualifications of the person you are recruiting. Please register and submit the research project description by using the form Registration research project description for recruiting CSC scholars. After the deadline October 18 2022, it will not be possible to make changes.
The research project description should be 1-2 pages and includes a project title, a description of the research, qualifications of person to be recruited, a description of the research group, as well as key words to facilitate the project searching. The information will be compiled into a list and published on the page Chinese CSC scholarship applicants for searching.
You need to upload an approval from the head of your department in the registration. Ask the head of your department to use the template text below, and send it to you in a mail. Make the mail into a pdf for uploading.
Template text
Department’s support letter for recruitment in the 2023-2024 KI-CSC scholarship programme
I hereby approve the recruitment of a CSC scholarship recipient (choose the relevant category for your recruitment: visiting doctoral student, postdoc and/or visiting researcher) by (name of host).
(For recruitment of postdocs add the following sentence) Necessary funds will be provided to by the hosting group leader to match the minimum stipend level for postdocs set by Karolinska Institutet.
(Email signature of Head of Department)
2. Select your candidate, November 2022 through February 2023
During the period from November 2022 to February 2023, Chinese candidates will be able to search for the research project they are interested in. They will contact you according to their research interests.
As a potential host, you should:
- Conduct interviews with interested applicants (in person or online) for evaluation and judgement of applicant’s scientific competence and language skills.
- Contact references for the applicant to further evaluate the applicant’s scientific competence and language skills.
- Work on a detailed plan for the postdoctoral training or the research. (2-4 pages)
3. Invite your candidate – before mid- March 2023
If mutual agreement is reached between you and a potential candidate, you should send the following documents to your selected CSC applicant:
- Detailed research plan for the research training (2-4 pages), dated and signed by the host.
- CV with your signature which should include a description of your current research projects and a list of your publications in the past five years. There are no templates for CVs, but CSC might have instruction for the CV and study/research plan. Please ask the applicants for the instructions.
- Letter of invitation using the KI template (no additional sentence about the English as working language is needed). The letter should be co-signed by the head of department. Send a copy of your letter of invitation to the KI-CSC programme (csc-kiprogramme@ki.se ) for KI’s endorsement to CSC. Only applicants with invitation letters included in the official KI endorsement list will be considered.
Template invitation letters
4. Procedure for applying for CSC scholarships, March - April 2023
For your information, the following is the application procedure for the Chinese applicants.
- The applicant should submit his/her online application for CSC scholarships at the CSC website under the category of CSC-KI collaborative project (国家留学基金委与卡罗林斯卡医学院合作项目).
- Upon completion of the online application, the applicant submits a hard copy of the application, including all required documents, to the home university/institution for institutional endorsement/recommendation to CSC.
- After the institutional endorsement procedures, the home university/institution will mail the hard copy applications to CSC. Notably, CSC must receive the complete application (both online and hard copy application) by mid-April 2023. Hence, it is highly recommended that all applicants complete the online application early and proceed to institutional endorsement as early as possible.
For endorsement of applicants by KI, an official list of the applicants is made from the copies of the invitation letters sent to csc-kiprogramme@ki.se . The list of endorsed applicants is then sent to CSC. Only applicants that have been endorsed by KI will be considered by CSC.
5. Selection of candidates, April - May 2023
CSC organizes independent evaluations of all submitted applications during April to May 2023. CSC will inform the applicant’s home university/institution, as well as KI, of the outcome of the applications in May 2023.
The KI International Relations Office, Monika Berge-Thelander, will inform the KI supervisors on the outcome of the CSC scholarship applications upon receiving the notifications from CSC.
If your candidate has been selected, you should proceed in planning visiting researcher’s period at KI together with the CSC scholarship awardee.
Q&A
Can the hosts add positions to the recruitment during the year?
No. It is not possible to add more positions to your recruitment of CSC during the year. The number of available positions for recruitment is required to be stated in the consent letter from the head of the department.
Can hosts get a top-up scholarship from KI?
Top-up scholarship may only be set up by using non-state funds, e.g., Cancerfonden or Hjärt-Lungfonden, which have approved the use of said funds for the disbursement of scholarships. If you plan to use governmental funds, for instance from VR, you will need to pay in form of a partial salary.
What should I do as a host if the scholarship awardees cannot return to China as planned?
According to the administrative procedure at China Scholarship Council, all CSC scholarship awardees must have an approval of delay from the KI supervisors or hosts if there is any delay of their returns. They must inform China Scholarship Council about the delay and apply for it. Supervisors or hosts should provide the CSC scholarship awardees the approval of delay.