The Doctoral Programme in the Built Environment (RYM-TO)

RYM-TO is a Finnish nationwide multidisciplinary doctoral programme that extensively covers the field of the built environment. It combines the former KIRSU ‘Graduate School for Real Estate, Construction and Planning’, ‘Graduate School of Housing Studies and Social Change’ as well as the ‘Graduate School of Construction IT’ and expands the original focus of these programmes. From the beginning of 2012, it will also include the ‘National Graduate School of Timber Construction and Design’ as well.

The RYM-TO Doctoral Programme is funded through the Academy of Finland and the Ministry of Education and Culture. RYM-TO includes seven universities and two research institutes that bring an unprecedented degree of expertise to the programme, with about 80 professors from diverse areas of the built environment being affiliated with the doctoral programme. At the moment round about 100 doctoral students are eligible to take part in RYM-TO activities.

RYM-TO offers three main fields of research: ‘Real Estate and Housing’, ‘Construction and Building Service Technology’ and ‘Planning and Infrastructure’. These research fields are further subdivided into groups consisting of Real Estate, Housing, Construction, Building Service Technology, Urban Planning and Civil and Environmental Engineering. The focus of these topics is on major themes such as sustainable societies, IT and digitalization, economy and design, with a degree of overlap being provided between these themes.

RYM-TO supports the development of a new generation of business aware researchers, who are capable of dealing with and resolving problems of strategic value to built environment.It does so my solemnly concentrating on doctoral level research.

The aim of the doctoral programme is to effectively support doctoral studies in built environment research by: organizing multiple courses and other guidance, supporting multidiciplinary research, strenghtening international scientific networking. To reach its objective RYM-TO uses a variety of vehicles, such as PhD scholarship, travel and research exchange grants as well as research seminars and courses.

The doctoral programme is supervised by an Executive Board consisting of professors of the participating universities. RYM-TO is managed by a head of the programme and a coordinator with the administration organised through Aalto University, School of Engineering.