With the signing of the Cooperation agreement in October 2012 by EIT ICT Labs CEO Willem Jonker and representatives from the core partners Aalto University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and UPMC, activities have been scaling up. An additional seven higher educational institutes signed the agreement and so also Université Rennes 1, Institute Mines-Télécom, UCL, ELTE, University of Trento, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi are partners.
The primary goals of the EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School are to develop an innovation and entrepreneurial mindset among Doctoral students and to set up the appropriate environment where young doctors may grow business projects founded on their thesis research. EIT ICT Labs achieve these goals not by changing or perturbing the scientific quality of the Doctoral degree but by empowering Doctoral students in research with more innovation potential.
The EIT ICT Labs Doctoral School on ICT Innovation set up is a general framework that combines the regular Doctoral studies with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) education. This I&E education will provide the students with the required knowledge and skills to become the commercially aware research leaders who understand current and future challenges as well as the opportunities these present to industry.
