Competition Presentation

Starting in February/March, a call for projects is launched for HDR supervisors affiliated with the BioSPC Doctoral School. They may submit their project in French or English via an online platform managed by the doctoral school coordinators. Information about the call is disseminated by email and published on the doctoral school’s website.

Each HDR may submit only one project as part of this competition. A project submitted to this call may also be submitted to other funding opportunities (such as those from the Île-de-France Region, associations, foundations, etc.), but it is strictly prohibited to submit it to other doctoral school competitions.

In addition to the thesis project, HDRs must sign a declaration confirming their compliance with the BioSPC doctoral school’s supervision rules. New group leaders holding ATIP-Avenir, G5 Pasteur, ERC, or ANR “Jeunes Chercheurs” grants must also submit a request for ADT (Authorization to Supervise a Thesis) prior to the competition. They must obtain their HDR in a timely manner if they wish to supervise additional PhD students.

By mid/late April, the doctoral school coordinators will verify that all applicants are affiliated with BioSPC and meet the supervision criteria (i.e. supervising at least one current PhD student, or two if the second is expected to defend during the current calendar year). The validated projects are then published online at the end of April.

Applications are possible as soon as the projects are published online and until the end of May/beginning of June. At this stage, the student candidate will have to contact the team proposing the project he/she is interested in, and assemble an application form to be submitted on the ED website (Apply for a doctoral contract).

A pre-selection day is organized to select the candidates who will be auditioned during the oral sessions of the competition.

The department directors, the heads of the masters programs, the representatives of the doctoral students, as well as the coordinators of the ED participate in this pre-selection day.

During this day, an academic score is attributed to each candidate by studying his/her academic record. The scores are calculated from an evaluation grid available on the doctoral school website. This ‘academic grid‘ is validated by the Board of Directors of the department and validated by the ED Council. As this step is carried out before the end of the academic year, the grade of the second semester of M2 is not taken into account. The thematic mobility point awarded to students changing subject between their M2 and their thesis is not awarded at this stage, but will be added on the day of the competition.

Audition days take place according to the competition calendar, typically in late June / early July. There is one competition per department. Two types of juries are involved in these sessions: academic juries and audition juries.

The Academic Jury

Academic juries are composed of 2 or 3 faculty members or researchers affiliated with the doctoral school. Their role is to recalculate the academic score of each candidate by incorporating the second semester grade of the Master 2 and the thematic mobility grade. All other academic grades (outside of the M2) are also double-checked.

This final academic score accounts for 40% of the candidate’s overall score.

The Audition Jury

Auditions are conducted without the audition jury having access to the candidates’ academic scores. Each audition lasts 20 minutes:

• 10 minutes for the candidate to present their project,

• followed by 10 minutes of discussion with the jury.

Audition juries change each year and are not permanent. No one presenting a candidate for the competition is allowed to serve on an audition jury. This also applies if the candidate is presented by someone from the same research team.

If a jury member is affiliated with the same research institute as a candidate, they must not speak during the audition and must not provide an opinion. Student representatives are responsible for ensuring the fairness of the auditions and the equal treatment of all candidates.

The ranking resulting from the audition jury deliberations contributes 60% to the candidate’s final score.

Deliberations

At the end of the day, the audition jury holds a deliberation session to establish the candidate rankings. The audition scores are finalized at the end of this meeting. The final score (40% academic score + 60% audition score) is then calculated using a dedicated scoring table designed for the competition.

In the event of a tie between candidates, the following criteria will be used to determine ranking, in order:

1. Higher audition score,

2. Higher Master 2 score,

3. Higher Master 1 score,

4. And so on.

At the end of the audition day, a competition report is prepared by each department. It includes:

• candidates admitted to the main list (in alphabetical order),
• candidates placed on the waiting list (in order of ranking),
• and, where applicable, non-ranked candidates.

This report is sent by email to all candidates who were auditioned by the department in question.

Any contracts declined by candidates on the main list are offered to candidates on the waiting list, in order of their ranking.

NB: A candidate who has been ranked in the competition (either on the main list but declined the doctoral contract, or on the waiting list) does not need to undergo a new audition if they wish to enroll with alternative funding, provided that:

• the thesis topic remains the same as the one presented during the competition, and
• the supervisor also remains unchanged.