Information for supervisors

After recruiting a doctoral student, the first step is to invite them to fill out the application form for a doctorate at ETH Zurich and submit it to the Doctoral Administration Office.

The Doctoral Administration Office will check whether the formal admission criteria have been fulfilled. Then, they issue the confirmation of provisional admission to the doctoral student, with cc to the supervisor and the D-INFK doctoral administration.
Only then may further administrative steps be taken towards employment. Therefore, the supervisor must forward the confirmation of admission to their administrative assistants, who will then start the ETHis workflow.

The start of the employment must correspond to the date of enrolment. The employment generelly lasts from enrolment to at least the end of the months in which the doctoral exam will take place.

D-INFK does not impose extended doctoral studies. That means the doctoral students only have to fufil the requirements of the regular doctoral studies.  

Doctoral students are supervised by at least two people - the supervisor and a second advisor.

In agreement with the doctoral student, the supervisor nominates the second advisor. The appointment should be made as early as possible, at the latest by the time the doctorate plan is submitted. The second advisor must be an ETH professor, a titular professor, a “Privatdozierende/r”, or a senior scientist or an external expert of equivalent rank.

Further information please see here.

Doctoral students must compile a doctoral plan and present it an aptitude colloquium. The doctoral plan must provide:

• information on the research objectives,
• discussion of related work,
• work packages and
• corresponding publication plan
• the participation in teaching,
• tentative study plan for the mandatory 12 credits,
• other duties,
• and a timeline.

Detailed information regarding the structure and content of the doctoral plan can be found here.

Doctoral students will be admitted definitively if they pass the aptitude colloquium, and then subsequent employment contracts can be issued.

If the deadline for the aptitude colloquium is missed, it will be graded as failed. Failing the colloquium twice will result in the dematriclation of the doctoral student. Additional information can be found here.

The supervisor conducts an annual status conversation with their doctoral students. This consists of two separate parts:

1. Progress report
   In preparation for the first of the interviews (scientific process), doctoral students write a progress report describing research results and further steps, as well as significant deviations from the doctoral plan. It is recommended that the second supervisor takes part in this part of progress report.
2. Annual status conversation
   The supervisor must conduct an individual status conversation with each doctoral student at least once a year based on the progress report. Further persons whose input is relevant to the points a-c may be in included in the discussion. The discussion is logged in writing.
   
   The status conversation addresses the following in particular:
   a) Discussion and assessment of research progress
   b) Determination of next steps
   c) The progress of doctoral studies
   d) The working situation in the research group
   e) Personal development possbilities and the corresponding measures if required

The progress report and the report on the status conversation must be submitted to the second advisor for information purposes.

The supervisor and the doctoral student are both obliged to store progress report and the respective status conversation reports until the time of dematriculation.

Exam committee

The supervisor must propose between 1 - 3 co-examiners for the exam committee. Please send your proposal to the D-INFK doctoral administration at least ten days before the DK. The DK must approve all examination committees based on the recommendation of the doctoral committee.

The set of co-examiners must include:

• one external co-examiner; this can be an active professor at a university other than ETH or a person of the same scientific domain equivalent to a professor, e.g., a research director or research scientist with an accomplished track record of publications. Not included are persons from applied universities or private industry. They may, however, be appointed as additional members.
  
• at least one independent examiner who has experience of graduating their doctoral students

The second advisor can be a co-examiner; however, it is not mandatory.

The proposal must include the following information:

• a declaration of any dependencies between the co-examiners and the supervisor, including research collaborations ≤ 5 years or former supervisor/student and employee/employer relationships for each external co-examiner,
  
• a full curriculum vitae of the external co-examiner/s including a list of publications for the last five years
  

The set of co-examiners must provide good coverage of the scientific domain of the thesis.

Doctoral exam

The examination consits of a presentation of the thesis by the doctoral student lasting 30 minutes, followed by a discussion session during which the examiners ask questions. The doctoral exam lasts at least 90 minutes.

It is expected that the supervisor and the co-examiners should be present during the examination either physically or remotely via videoconferencing. Each examiner will be allocated time during the examination to ask questions. These questions may be about specific details of the thesis or general questions about the research area.

The examination is open to all academic employees and official guests of D-INFK as well as any external collaborators.

The examination committee will meet after the examination to decide the outcome. If the committee decides that the doctoral student has not passed the examination, it may be retaken within six months.