Doctoral School Competition

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Doctoral School receives about 20 full doctoral contracts (2200 euros gross salary per month for 3 years) from its different universities. These contracts are awarded through a joint competition that takes place every spring.

Calendar of the 2024 competition

• Applications must be submitted by April 9th 2025, 23h59 CEST.
• Applications will be examined by the jury during the week starting April 28th 2025. Selection will be based on academic results, suitability of the training for the thesis subject, letters of recommendation.
• The selected candidates will be invited to an audition which will take place on 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23 of May 2025.
• All contracts will be awarded by the final jury on May 27th 2025.
• The Doctoral School Board will validate the results before they are published on line.
• The selected candidates have one week to accept or refuse the contract offered to them

Application

Applications must be submitted on the Doctoral School website (application) between February 1st and April 9th, 2025.

Course of the audition

The audition lasts 20 minutes. A 12-minute presentation should outline previous research experiences (their scientific objectives, methodologies used and results obtained) and should show that the candidate understands the issues at stake in the proposed topic and how they are able to make a significant contribution to it. Typically, the candidate will spend 2 minutes introducing him/herself, 5 minutes describing his/her research experiences (mainly the M2 internship) and 5 minutes on the thesis topic and its issues.

The presentation will be followed by 8 minutes of questions.

The auditions will take place via Zoom only.

Jury

On May 27th, the jury will award all available contracts and will constitute a waiting list, the ranking of which is not disclosed. Selected candidates are asked to respond to this proposal within a week to allow for the proper management of withdrawals.