Prospective PhD Students

PostGraduate Research

Frequently Asked Questions

Travel Funding

  • Booking travel: please book all travel through Elaine Smith in the Departmental office. Keep receipts of any expenses that cannot be booked in advance to claim them back on your return.
  • Funds for travelling eg to conferences or workshops.
    • Students funded by organisations are charged around 1,250 pounds per year Research Support Fees. This is written into their offer letter. Similarly DTA (EPSRC doctoral training account) students are allocated a similar amount (around 1,000 pounds per year) from the EPSRC. Please check with the finance team about School funded scholarships. Research Support Fees can be used to pay for conferences, summer schools, specialist software etc and should be used rather than applying to the Departmental funds. Supervisors of students with Research Support fees should receive updated information about these accounts monthly. The process of accessing this money is as follows. Students with Research Support Fees charged or provided should approach their supervisor who will have details of funds available. The finance team can provide this information if necessary. If there is sufficient money, the purchase is appropriate to their PhD and the supervisor is happy to sign off the expenditure then the purchase procedure is followed. If there are any questions please contact Elaine Smith or Angela Winker. Travel should be arranged through Elaine.
    • Otherwise PhD students can apply via Departmental funds. You should estimate the costs, provide details of the conference and any paper you are presenting. Send this to your supervisor. If they support your request they will forward to the Head of Group. If they support this they will forward to Prof. Frank Wolter. Try look for other ways to support travel prior to this.
    • You should also look for other funds to support your visit, i.e. helping with conference organisation may reduce the costs.

DTA/Department/School/University Studentships

Students funded by the EPSRC/Department/School/University should be aware of the length of their funding. If there are any queries about this please contact the School Finance officer Angela Winker (eeecsfin@liverpool.ac.uk) . Additionally Debbie Henderson (dhenders@liverpool.ac.uk) deals with EPSRC funding.

Development Workshops

Subject Related Modules

Discuss this first with your supervisors. It may be useful to attend some of the modules provided within the Department or in other Departments. See final year undergraduate modules and MSc modules

Demonstrating

PhD students often act as demonstrators or tutors in examples classes or laboratory sessions. This is paid. Demonstrators should attend Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Demonstrator Workshops. Please contact Michele Zito for more details.

Health, Safety and Security

The out of hours book located on the Building Manager's desk in the Ashton building. If you're in the building out of normal working hours please remember that it's important to put your name, location and time in and out in the book. In the event of an accident or emergency Security will need to know who's around. There should also be a similar book in the Holt building for those based there, but if you cannot locate that then please use the one in the Ashton. Any questions please contact the CS Health and Safety team (csc-safety@liverpool.ac.uk) or consult the School Health and Safety Web Pages.