SOFOSKO

Do you want to experience what it is like to be a researcher in medicine or pharmacy? If so, apply for the Summer Research School (SOFOSKO) and spend six weeks of the summer testing the everyday life of a researcher.

Apply for SOFOSKO 2024

Apply by 1 March 2024.

If admitted, you will attend a two-week research-oriented lecture course during the first summer. This course starts after the end of the regular term and ends before Midsummer. After that, you will work on your project for four weeks. The project period is organised to suit you and your supervisor.

In the second summer, you work full-time on the project for six weeks. Medical students can select to work another six weeks on the same project during a third summer.

You cannot choose different supervisors or projects for the separate summers.

SOFOSKO ends in the autumn after the second or third summer. The projects are then presented in written form and in evening seminars with opposition once a week for about two months.

What is SOFOSKO?

The course aims to increase interest in preclinical research among students in the medical, biomedical and pharmacy programmes. It offers the opportunity to spend two or three summers trying out research in one of the many research groups at the disciplinary domain.

Background

For many years, the international importance of Swedish medical research was much greater than could be expected, given the country’s modest population. In this golden age of medicine, even the most prominent clinical researchers usually had preclinical research training.

In recent years, interest in preclinical research, especially among medical students, has steadily declined. Doctoral positions have increasingly been filled by students with undergraduate training other than that offered by preclinical departments. It is a situation that, in the long term, threatens to alienate the preclinical departments from the clinic. To ensure a productive interaction between preclinic and clinic in terms of research and teaching, it is essential to reverse the trend and increase the proportion of postgraduate students with undergraduate education in the various programmes of the disciplinary domain.

The Disciplinary Domain of Medicine and Pharmacy at Uppsala University is working to increase interest in preclinical research among students in the medical, biomedical and pharmacy programmes at Uppsala University.

Apply for SOFOSKO

To be eligible to apply, you must be enrolled in the Pharmacy, Biomedicine or Medicine Programme at Uppsala University.

Selection criteria

Since SOFOSKO is a two- or three-year programme, you should not be too far along in your studies. At the same time, subject knowledge and experience from laboratory activities during regular education is a significant merit. In practice, this means that most accepted pharmacy students have completed 4–6 terms, biomedical students 2–4 terms, and medical students 2–5 terms.

Your application should include a written letter of motivation, which will be carefully examined. It is advantageous if you can convince or document a genuine research interest.

During the selection process, results from the regular programme are checked to avoid admitting students with study problems.

Project selection

You can find available projects in the project list. The list is updated for each year’s call.

You cannot select different supervisors or projects for different summers.

See the project list

When applying, you should rank five projects from the current project list. The projects are distributed so that the highest possible number of projects are prioritised as much as possible. Medical and biomedical students are mainly assigned to the Faculty of Medicine’s projects and pharmacy students to the Faculty of Pharmacy’s projects, but there are also projects where the study background is not as significant.

There is also the possibility to propose your own project instead of choosing from the list. This requires that you already have contact with a supervisor and that you have agreed on a suitable project. The project should be oriented towards basic science and conducted at one of the departments of the medical or pharmaceutical faculties at Uppsala University. You then fill in a project summary in the application form.

Proposing an individual project does provide a certain advantage as you will not compete with others for the same project, but it does not guarantee acceptance.

Apply for SOFOSKO by 1 March 2024

First summer

The initial lecture course usually starts immediately after the end of the regular term.

In 2023, the course starts on 3 June and ends on 18 June, followed by four weeks of laboratory work.

How you schedule the four weeks of laboratory work during the summer largely depends on your supervisor and the laboratory’s activities. Therefore, you should contact your supervisor as soon as possible after you receive your acceptance letter so you can agree on a plan well in advance.

Introductory course

The initial weeks of the course include some basic information about doctoral education, laboratory work, publishing, research ethics, etc. In addition, different research groups will present their activities to provide an overview of the research at the various departments. After all, it is not guaranteed that the particular subject area you have been assigned is the one you want to continue with during your doctoral studies. One of the days during the introductory course is devoted to a theme where research in a particular area is presented.

Schedule

The introductory course is mandatory and keeps you busy from 9-15, sometimes slightly more and sometimes slightly less. The current schedule will be sent out in May.

Expect the research training to be a full-time job. Working hours are determined by the work required in the project and may often involve long days and irregular hours. Do not expect to have time for any other work during the traineeship.

Scholarship

You will receive a scholarship of SEK 10,000 for the summer. The grant will be paid in two instalments. The first half during weeks 25–26, and the rest after the start of the project.

Second summer

During the second summer, you spend six weeks full-time on the project. Contact your supervisor well in advance so you can arrange suitable work periods. Like last summer, you will receive a scholarship of SEK 10 000.

If admitted for two summers, SOFOSKO ends for you in the autumn after this summer. Then you are expected to present your work in a thesis and present it at a seminar.

Mandatory seminars

At each seminar, four SOFOSKO students will present their projects. Everyone can participate in the discussion, but student is appointed as reviewer and must specifically examine the work presented. Information about the presentation seminars is sent to those concerned at the beginning of the autumn term. In order to obtain the 22.5 credits that SOFOSKO provides, you must participate in all these seminars.

Tell us if you want to continue or not

To help us plan for the second summer’s SOFOSKO activities, we want you to notify us that you are continuing your project. The easiest way to do this is by sending an e-mail to Erik Sandinby 1 April.

If, for any reason, you do not want to or cannot continue your SOFOSKO project, we also want to know as soon as possible. Please write a short comment about the reason.

Third summer (for medical students)

As a student in the Medical Programme, you can choose to extend SOFOSKO to three summers. In this case, the course corresponds to the otherwise mandatory independent work in the Medical Programme.

The third summer involves an additional six weeks of work on the same project as in the first two summers. You and your supervisor agree on the time period.

Unfortunately, no scholarship can be offered to students in the third summer.

After the third summer, SOFOSKO ends with a written and an oral presentation, partly to subject-related researchers and teachers at the host department and partly in a seminar series with reviewers together with the other SOFOSKO students.

Present your project

SOFOSKO concludes with written and oral presentations of the different projects.

Written presentation

Your written presentation should be structured as an article in a scientific journal. Include the following sections:

an introduction describing the background of the studies in question with references to the relevant literature and presenting the specific question;
a methodology section organised so that the experiments could be repeated by someone else;
the results, described in both text and figures and tables;
a discussion where the interpretation of the results is discussed, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the methods, how the results relate to previously published data and what conclusions can be drawn; and
a reference list.

You must involve your supervisor and edit your report according to their comments. Your supervisor should give explicit approval before you submit the final version by uploading it to a dedicated file area. Remember that the 10 or 16 summer weeks should be dedicated to laboratory work and that you write your report outside this period. The deadline for submission is one week before the presentation seminar.

Oral presentation

You give your oral presentation in the form of a seminar together with other SOFOSKO students. As there are many presenters, the presentations have to be divided into several sessions.

Participation in the SOFOSKO programme includes attending these seminars, one evening a week, 2–3 hours from 17:00, for about six weeks during October and November. The oral presentation is 15 minutes, followed by about 10 minutes of discussion.

Reviewers are assigned to stimulate the discussion. That means that, besides presenting your project, you will be a reviewer of another presentation. A detailed schedule for the presentations will be sent out at the beginning of the autumn term.

Additional tasks for medical students in the three-year SOFOSKO programme

In addition to the above, to pass SOFOSKO 30 credits, you must give a seminar in front of researchers and teachers at your host department. At some point during the SOFOSKO period, you also need to attend a public defence and write a report according to instructions distributed during the course.

If you complete an approved SOFOSKO thesis of 30 credits, you do not have to do the otherwise mandatory independent work on the Medical Programme. As the projects are considered equivalent, you should not apply for credit transfer or submit your SOFOSKO work elsewhere than to the SOFOSKO course management.