Graduate School will have 30 doctoral PhD students, which are supervised by their supervisors at their respective universities. Its graduate student will register as a doctoral student in the local university and is responsible for taking the theoretical and specialized courses and otherwise meet the requirements of the local faculty. In addition to this local organization, Biomaterial Graduate School student will have an additional 8 facilitating studies informed of a Supervisory Board. This Supervisory Board contains 2-3 senior scientists, that is usually the thesis supervisors, but preferably also one member from some outside research group.

Each biomaterial graduate student will fill in the Curriculum Vitae form, which are registered in the office of the school by the secretariat of the school. They will file the research grant to the local university according to the local rules, this will also be filed as part of the student register data in the headquarters of the Biomaterial Graduate School. In addition, the Biomaterial Graduate School will receive once a year a Progress Report from the student herself and in addition a Supervisory Board Memo, which is the result of a meeting between the Graduate School student and the supervisory board. Biomaterial Graduate School student can also take part in the education, courses and practical seminars organized by the Graduate School and will receive newsletters from the headquarters of the Graduate School, which contain info on national and international meetings relevant for the members of this Graduate School. This is particularly important because of the cross-scientific nature of the Biomaterial Graduate School.

In addition to Graduate School students, the supervisors and supervisory boards, the Biomaterial Graduate School has BGS Members, which denotes to the group leaders of those groups, who have graduate school students in the Biomaterial Graduate School.

The practical matters of the Graduate School are run by the Graduate School Board, where head of the Graduate School is the chairman and coordinator of the Graduate School is the secretary. In addition, the Graduate School has one representative from Helsinki, Turku, Tampere, Kuopio and Oulu. Day-to-day activities are run by the Office of the Biomaterial Graduate School, which consists of the head of the Graduate School, the Graduate School coordinator and the Graduate School secretary.

The Biomaterial Graduate School maintains homepage at here at www.helsinki.fi/science/bgs. This homepage also includes a discussion forum (in preparation) to facilitate communication between Graduate School students and their respective research groups.

Biomaterial Graduate School has representation from the university cities Helsinki, Turku, Tampere, Kuopio and Oulu. In addition, graduate school has close cooperation and interface with a Group of Excellence "Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials". The national Group of Excellence is run from Tampere by the Academy Professor Pertti Törmälä. Biomaterial Graduate School has also close ties to the newly founded society called The Finnish Society for Biomaterials, which will, according to preliminary plans, have the chairman from Turku. The initiative Biomaterial Graduate School was taken by the newly founded Biomaterial Cluster, which has representatives from various universities, technological universities, biomaterial centers, knowing-how centers and various research groups. The activities of Biomaterial Custer have been advocated by TEKES (The National Center for Advancement of Technology in Finland). As a result of this, the Biomaterial Graduate School has close ties and several letters of recommendation from the Finnish biomaterial and biotechnological companies. The core activities of the Biomaterial Graduate School are focused on biomaterial research and biomedical research (including medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine, cell biology, biochemistry etc), but other fields like law, economics etc are also represented. As a result of the structure, critical mass has been collected and, in addition, BGS can also depend on wide international networks, which includes several training units abroad.

Four-year doctoral fellowship position funded by the Ministry of Education were given to the following applicants:

Länsman Satu, Oulu

Beklen Arzu, Helsinki (Teija Mäkinen, Turku, lisätietoja Y. Konttinen)

Korhonen Rami, Kuopio

Ma Jian, Helsinki

Niiranen Henna, Tampere

Roseholm Jessica, Turku

Sarkanen Jertta-Riina, Tampere

Sierpowska Joanna, Kuopio

Waris Eero, Helsinki

Yli-Urpo Helena, Turku

Ministry of Education requires that all groups/units with members paid by the Ministry of Education can support 2-3 other doctoral students from their other sources of funding. Therefore, also the following applicants have been registered to the school and can participate in the courses given by the school and can eventually be selected as acting members of it:

Arstila Hanna, Turku

Hakulinen Mikko, Kuopio

Heino Harri, Tampere

Holmbom Johanna, Turku

Hämäläinen Kaisu, Helsinki

Kitti Uula, Helsinki

Koistinen Arto, Kuopio

Laasanen Mikko, Kuopio

Liimatainen Anu, Tampere

Ma Guofeng, Helsinki

Mandelin Jami, Helsinki

Moritz Niko, Turku

Mäntylä Päivi, Helsinki

Niemelä Sanna, Tampere

Paatola Tiiu, Tampere

Puumanen Katja, Oulu

Ronkainen Teija, Oulu

Selenius Mikko, Kuopio

Tiainen Johanna, Oulu

Veiranto Minna, Tampere

Välimäki Ville-Valtteri, Turku

Zhao Desheng, Helsinki

Ääritalo Virpi, Turku

The Board will in its next meeting discuss those applicant which were not selected in the first round.