Majakka – systematic development of doctoral education

The Land and Water Technology Foundation (Maa- ja vesitekniikan tuki ry) donated 2 million euros for Aalto University’s Water & Development Group. The donation enhances doctoral education and research in water resources management, particularly in the field of sustainable development related to water, which plays a significant role in the research conducted at Aalto University.

The donation is used to develop an operating model which will help develop doctoral education to become increasingly systematic, better supervised and more persistent and to generate new innovations. A further aim is to create increasingly extensive doctoral programmes and to also provide other investors with a model for broad-based cooperation with Aalto University.

The model involves forming cells out of post doc researchers, doctoral candidates and students working on their master’s theses to examine supervision, group formation and financing as a whole. Researchers and students will work on the same research topic, the activities will be enhanced with co-learning and overlapping work will be avoided with a clear distribution of duties.

Get to know us: Maija Taka, Laura Verbrugge, Amy Fallon, Venla Niva, Pekka Kinnunen, Matias Heino, Lauri Ahopelto, Marko Kallio + Olli Varis, Matti Kummu & Marko Keskinen.  Elizabeth Akins worked as a service designer in 2020-2021.

Recent news:

Majakka was awarded with with Aalto Pioneering Excellence Award! ‘High-quality doctoral education is one of the tenets of the research activities of universities. The Majakka project has developed a strategy to make doctoral education more systematic, while making the guidance and supervision of doctoral dissertation projects more sustainable. The activities of the Majakka project team have brought innovation to doctoral education for example, by encouraging experts and international partners to collaborate with researchers at Aalto University. Majakka is also pioneering the development of a thriving and successful academic community’, says Professor Risto Rajala on behalf of the Award committee. Read the full news here.

Previous news:

• Majakka collaborating with Aalto Doctoral education services and Learning services to develop training and content for doctoral supervisors and advisors in all Aalto. More information coming early next year!
• Making Waves: Joining forces for better doctoral education in water research. A recent publication on the priority actions to develop doctoral education in water research together with with supervisors and supervisees, research group, university, and industry.
• Co-designing cultures of care in doctoral education. A master thesis by the service designer Betsy Akins who was also involved in planning and piloting the upscaling of Majakka practices to all Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group.
• Majakka received Aalto Excellence Recognition Award in 2018 due to its developed innovations with potential to spread outside the academia.