Fourth edition

General information

Two (2) PhD scholarships will be available in the fourth edition.

Each PhD scholarship is granted for periods of 1 year, renewable up to 4 years, and can not be granted for periods smaller than 6 consecutive months.

The workprogram of PhD dissertations in the IST-EPFL comprehends work in Portugal and Switzerland. The total duration of the period outside Portugal cannot be longer than two (2) years.

Eligible applicants

The call is open to Portuguese citizens, citizens of European Union countries, citizens of countries outside European Union living in Portugal in the terms laid out by Law nº 23/2007, July 4^th, modified by Law nº 29/2012, August 9^th, citizens of countries with which Portugal has celebrated reciprocity agreements and citizens of other countries provided that the candidate undergoes a panel interview in the terms laid out by item d) of nº 1 of Article 14 of Regulations for Research Grants of the Foundation for Science and Technology.

Eligible applicants should hold a MSc degree, or recognized equivalent, in the terms laid out by the Nº 1 of Article 30º of Decree-Law nº 74/2006, March 24^th, modified by Decree-law nº 107/2008, June 25^th and Decree-law 230/2009, September 14^th. In exceptional cases, the Selection Committee may accept candidates holding a Bachelor degree or equivalent, provided their academic curriculum vitae are exceptional.

Preference will be given to holders of a MSc degree, or recognized equivalent, in Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Territorial Planning and Urbanism, Oceanography, or related areas, and have special interests in Hydrology and Hydraulics.

Required elements

1. filled in online application form (follow link at IST-EPFL joint doctoral initiative page);
2. copy of document of identification;
3. dissertation theme chosen from the list available here;
4. global curriculum vitae (please use the template availabe here);
5. academic curriculum vitae (digital copies of official certificates, including final marks);
6. list of disciplines of the academic degree(s) with their respective marks;
7. motivation letter (statement of purpose);
8. contact details (name, institution and e-mail) of two references .

In the motivation letter, the statement of objectives must be aligned with one or more of the advertised research topics.

Important note: candidates must not upload reference letters. To fulfill item 8, candidates must provide a pdf file with the required contact details. References will be contacted by the Directive Board.

Selection and ranking criteria

The evaluation of proposals is carried out in three phases, by assessing the merit of each candidate.

Phase 1 – The Selection Committee will analyze and evaluate the applications, awarding an overall rating calculated using the weighted average of the partial ratings, using a scale from 1 (minimum) to 5 (maximum), of the following criteria (weighting factors shown in brackets):

• academic curriculum vitae (0.6)
• motivation letter (0.2)
• references (0.2)

The rating assigned to the academic curriculum vitae is normalized according to the reference used by FCT for Doctoral Grants, taking into account the several types of degrees (Bachelor, Master, Integrated Master). There may be a bonus of up to 1.5 points (until the maximum of 5.0 points in this criterion) for candidates who:

• have co-authored papers in peer-reviewed journals;
• have presented papers at conferences;
• have an exceptional CV, demonstrating remarkable skills.

The top ranked candidates at this stage will be shortlisted for the second phase.

Phase 2 – Candidates will be individually interviewed by the Selection Committee (live or via video conferencing) in order to assess their knowledge, specific technical skills, motivation and communication skills in English.

Phase 3 – Selected candidates in phase 2 will be re-evaluated by the Doctoral School of EPFL which will decide on the candidates to be admitted. The Directive Board allocates the PhD research plan and respective supervisors to candidates. The Coordinator of the IST PhD programme in Civil Engineering finally decides on the acceptance of candidates and respective grant allocation.

Please note that the general curriculum vitae may be discussed during the interview, as means to obtain a more complete profile of the candidate.

In this call, a maximum of two (2) candidates will be admitted. The number of selected candidates may be less than the number of grants available, depending on their overall merit.

Notification of candidates

The results of the selection process will be communicated via email to all candidates, and the list of approved applicants will be available at http://groups.ist.utl.pt/fct-phd/envhidro/. In the case of an unfavorable award decision (i.e. for applicants not selected to receive grants), the applicant has a period of 10 days after disclosure, to be heard by the Selection Committee, by request of a preliminary hearing, pursuant to the Portuguese Código do Procedimento Administrativo. The final decision may be appealed to the Directive Board of the doctoral program, within 15 days after the respective notification.

Application form

Please consult here the list of themes.

Please submit your APPLICATION here. Applications may be submitted between December 13^th 2016 and January 31^th 2017 17:00 GMT.