Double Degree Program

Sirindhorn School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University and Graduate School of Health and Welfare, Niigata University of Health and Welfare have established the Double Degree Program for the purpose of cultivating doctoral students into researchers and highly specialized QOL supporters with an international perspective.

📍Period of study

The nominal duration of the doctoral studies must consist of a total of 3 academic years in both institutions. The student’s period of study must include a minimal stay at partner institution of one semester in total.

📍Number of Students for Acceptance and Dispatchment

SSPO students to join NUHW doctoral program One person

NUHW students to join SSPO doctoral program One person

📍Student status

Students shall be recognized and receive benefits as a regular full-time student of both institutions. Each institution shall appoint a major supervisor. The supervisors shall be responsible for proposing a thesis topic and shall make a connected effort to carry out their advisory role for the students. The supervisors shall be required to arrange regular exchanges of information with the students and supervisors. Students can visit and stay at the partner institution for the necessary period of time. For the purpose of any visits, students shall bear their own travel, subsistence and all other costs. The institutions shall provide or make available to the students such resources as they, in their sole discretion, deem reasonably necessary for the students to carry out the research. This will include support for skills development where appropriate. In the event accepted students no longer have student status at the home institution, they shall also forfeit student status at the partner institution.

📍Selection process

The student applying for the Program shall complete the selection process at the home institution and then be subject to the process established by the partner institution. Each institution shall independently make decision to accept the students.

📍Subjects

Subjects names, number of credits, subject type (required/elective), and semester (year) levels for the Program of NUHW are outlined in Table 1 and those of SSPO are outlined in Table 2. To complete the Program of NUHW, a student must complete at least 10 credits, including 2 credits of Special Topics, 2 credits of Seminar, and 6 credits of Doctoral Thesis and Research. To complete the Program of SSPO, a student must complete dissertation course 48 credits.

📍Doctoral Thesis Review

The student shall be required to complete the academic requirements of each institution before having the doctoral thesis review. The student shall complete the thesis requirements required by home institution before submitting his/her application for their doctoral thesis review.

In the NUHW program, the student shall be required to publish two international publications (or acceptance), one of which should be a first author publication. The first author publication is identical to the doctoral thesis. For the two international publications, one publication is a major publication that should not be identical with the publication used for graduation for Mahidol University. Second publication or sub-publication can be the same as the one used for Mahidol University graduation.

In the SSPO program, the student shall be required to complete the academic requirements defined by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Mahidol University and the student shall be required to publish at least 2 manuscripts, in which the student is the first author, or 1 manuscript and 1 patent.

In this double degree program, the doctoral thesis of NUHW and SSPO cannot be identical. Doctoral Thesis Review shall be held separately by each institution.

📍Doctoral Degree Awarded

In the event that the student satisfies all of the conditions set forth by each institution, each institution shall award the student as follows:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Prosthetics and Orthotics from the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University

And

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Health Science from Niigata University of Health and Welfare.

Both institutions together shall award one completion certificate of the double degree program at the time that both degrees are awarded. However, this completion certificate shall not be awarded in the case that the student fails to receive a degree from either institution.

The student shall be entitled to graduate at the graduation ceremony of either or both of the institutions.

📍Qualifications for Application

Applicants must fulfill following conditions

ⅰ Those who have a Master’s degree or will have a Master’s degree before enrollment date,

ii Those who have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.50 or equivalence,

iii Those who have English proficiency,

iv Those who have at least one publication in prosthetic/orthotic or related fields as a research article in a journal indexed in the international database. The authorship should be either principle investigator or corresponding author.

vi In the case of SSPO, only the candidates enrolled in the Research track shall be accepted.

Application procedures are announced annually. If you are interested, please contact your advisor or the program staff.