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3.0 - Last modified on 2025-01-29 Revised by Jason Wen

2.0 - Last modified on 2023-09-05 Revised by Jason Wen

1.0 - Created on 2021-05-12 Authored by Jason Wen

BME Funding Policies

Background

All graduate students (research program) at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering are funded under the following policies.

Policies

  1. The Institute of Biomedical Engineering defines a “major award” as an award (or the sum of multiple awards) with monetary value that is equal to or greater than $10,000 CAD. A Tri-Agency award represents the most common type of major award. However, if a student were to receive multiple awards whereby the sum of all awards was equal to (or greater than) $10,000 CAD, then that student would also be considered the holder of a major award. Funding awarded to investigators from Tri-Agency or industry sources (e.g., NSERC CREATE), which are meant to fund internships or trainees are not counted as student awards.
  2. Departmental contribution to basic funding (also known as “U of T Fellowship – BME”) is provided only to students without any major award(s). Major award holders will have the departmental contribution replaced by award funds.
  3. All PhD students, regardless of standard or direct entry, will receive guaranteed funding for four years. Master’s students who reclassified to the PhD program by successful completion of a bypass exam after their first year will receive guaranteed funding for three additional years to total four years of support. However, the departmental contribution received at the Master’s level will not be retroactively prorated to the PhD level. In other words, reclassified students will receive one year of Master’s level funding and three years of PhD level funding.
  4. Departmental support for doctoral students in year five is not guaranteed, and will only be provided based on funding availability, which may vary from year to year.
  5. Master’s students in the research stream who intend to reclassify (bypass) to the PhD program must complete the transition before entering the fourteenth month of the graduate program. For example, a Master’s student who entered the program in the Fall term must complete the bypass exam and qualify for the PhD program before November 1 of the following year. This is a strict deadline, which means that students who spend more than fourteen months in the program must complete the Master’s program before applying to doctoral studies – no exceptions. Non-compliance to this timeline may result in the reduction or termination of departmental funding support.
  6. Funding for research-stream programs is mandated by the School of Graduate Studies, and the guaranteed minimum (basic) amount is standardized by the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. Whereas students may be paid above the basic funding amount, supervisors may not pay students below the guaranteed minimum stipend.
  7. All students must submit a student–supervisor agreement form (every year) to activate pay instalments. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure that the agreement form is submitted to the Graduate Office in a timely manner.

Contacts and additional resources

Authored by Jason Wen
Last modified 2021-05-11 22:31:29