PhD Supervisory Committee

The committee must comprise at least 3 persons :

• The thesis director (as well as the co-director in the event of multiple directors, or the co-supervisor in the event of a jointly supervised thesis)
• 2 scientific personalities who must fulfil the following criteria :

1.  They are not part of the doctoral student's host team and have no conflict of interest with the thesis director(s) or with the student (collaboration on the project, family ties or any other conflict that each person can evaluate for him or herself).
2. One of them must be attached to the ED NSCo (must appear in the organisation chart of a team affiliated to the ED NSCo) and the other must be external to the ED NSCo (does not appear in the organisation chart of a team affiliated to the ED).
3. One of them is a non-specialist in the research area of the thesis.
4. At least one of the two members must be accredited research director.
5. CSID members may sit on the thesis jury without being able to participate as referees. In addition, for doctoral students registered at Lyon1, they will be counted as internal members of the jury even if they belong to another institution.

The new decree of the doctorate published in August 2022 introduces a new rule for the composition of the CSID : one of the members must be a non-specialist.

The ED has discussed the notion of non-specialist, and whether it would be useful or relevant to specify it.

Some elements of the discussion.
- Being a non-specialist can be understood in very different ways on a continuum from -not working on the subject but belonging to the disciplinary field, in a more or less sense, to -being from a different discipline. It seems very difficult to give a definition or to formulate more precise limits to the perimeter of this notion.
- This new rule can be interpreted as a tool to make the CSID more independent of the thesis direction by distancing one of the CSID members from the narrow circle of research conducted. This seems to be the philosophy of the modifications made by the decree to the rules of the CSID, with a very explicit role for the CSID outside the scientific sphere stricto sensu in the evaluation of the conditions of supervision of the thesis and the vigilance towards situations of violence, harassment and discrimination.
-The non-specialist member can be either the external member or the internal member of CSID. It is possible that the designation of an internal member (ED member) is easier than recruiting a non-specialist member from outside. In this case, the specialty/subfield of neuroscience of this internal member will have to be clearly distinguished from that of the thesis work.
-Thus, the ED's proposal on this question is that it is the responsibility of the thesis director, in consultation with the doctoral student, to make a proposal for the non-specialist member in the spirit of the decree, and to briefly explain the positioning of this member as a non-specialist in relation to the thesis project (the CSID composition proposal form is modified in this sense).

Calendar

• The committee members must be selected with 6 months of the student’s initial registration. The school secretary must be informed of the composition of this committee using the Fiche de Composition du CSID. The doctoral school office must be informed of the members of your PhD supervisory committee in the first 6 months from your initial registration date.
• This committee MUST meet and give their approval for the continuation of your studies before every annual registration. The meeting must be conducted no later than 31 October.

Committee report

During each meeting of this committee, it is vital that you have the opportunity to have a private interview with the committee member from outside the school. This is the occasion for you to give your point of view regarding the progress of your thesis.

It is this committee member who will then be responsible for drawing up the report about you and your thesis. The format of this report must follow the guidelines available for download below Document modèle.