In this week's IRIF Newsletter, the lab council report is available. Two important deadlines are approaching : AAP Emergence 2024 and International Researcher invitations UPCité.
In the news you will see the new rules for PhD defenses.
The focus of this week is on graphene.
New call for tenders are available and the international Researcher invitation are launch.

Enjoy reading and have a nice weekend!

• Lab council: the lab council was held on the 6th of February, 2024. As usual you can find the minutes and the accompanying documents here. The agenda was as follows:
  1. Replacement of the heads of the pôles ASD and PPS and of three thematic research groups : Analyse et Conception de Systèmes, Preuves et Programmes, and Modèlisation et Vérification;
  2. Réplacement for IRIF financial officer;
  3. Presentation and support for CNRS candidates (with the presence of the heads of the thematic research groups).
  4. Discussion on the immigration law.

• New position: IRIF is looking for its next Financial Management Manager. Please disseminate this vacancy's information around you.

• Important Deadlines: two deadlines are approaching. Emergence 2024 (February 23rd) and International Researcher Invitations (March 13th). It is very important that there are many applications issued from IRIF since the number of projects awarded by the university is proportional to the number of applications. See below for the application details.

• IRIF Letter: following a decision by the direction council, the IRIF letter is no longer publicly available and can be accessed only by IRIF members. Persons that are not members of IRIF can request to be added to the receivers of the letter mailing list by writing to direction@irif.fr.

• Thesis milestones: The online defense procedure is divided into 3 steps:
  1. Jury composition : The doctoral candidate is asked to verify the pre-registered information online, to enter all the information concerning the jury and two summaries of their thesis (one in French and one in English). Once the doctoral candidate validates all the steps, an email is sent to the thesis supervisor, who must first verify correctness of the information, validate, and send back the jury composition to Amina Hariti with signatures on both pages.
     Attention: The first step must be validated before receiving the reports, otherwise, there is a risk of having to postpone the defense date.
  2. Reviews: The reviews are forwarded by email to the doctoral candidate and their thesis supervisors after validation by the doctoral school direction. Then, the reviews must be deposited on the defense website.
  3. Defense authorization: The doctoral candidate must enter all the information regarding the procedure relative to their oral defense (time, room, building address, etc.). The doctoral candidate must also submit their pre-defense manuscript to the library service - please pay attention to the instructions from the library service to avoid repeated submissions of the manuscript. At the same time, the thesis supervisor will receive an email asking to provide the Compilatio certificate, stating that there is no plagiarism in the thesis.
     New rule: starting from this year 2024, ethics training (« formation d’éthique à la recherche ») is mandatory in order to be authorized to defend one's thesis. Every doctoral candidate must provide the doctoral school with a certificate of participation in this training, without which the defense procedure cannot start.

• Reminder of the main rules concerning the supervision of PhD students:

The thesis supervisors (maximum two) bear the responsibility for the scientific direction of the doctoral project. This responsibility can be fulfilled with a co-supervisor who must hold an HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) and/or a co-supervisor holding an ADT (Autorisation à Diriger une Thèse). The co-supervisors aim primarily to provide dual scientific expertise for the thesis, especially to combine two distinct fields or research skills.

Co-supervisors may also be solicited to participate in supervising the thesis, even without an HDR or an ADT. In this specific case, the respective responsibilities and missions of such co-supervisors must be determined with the doctoral student and specified in the training agreement. A retired professor can continue supervising an ongoing thesis but cannot take on new doctoral students under their supervision. However, they may participate in co-supervising a thesis directed by another person having an HDR or ADT.

The doctoral school council sets the maximum number of doctoral students supervised by a single supervisor as follows:

• A total supervision rate of 300%.,
• Maximum of six doctoral students per HDR,
• A maximum of 2 doctoral students enrolled in the first year in the same academic year per HDR.
  Any change of co-supervisors during a PhD thesis must be immediately reported to the doctoral school administration.

• [REMINDER] Emergence 2024: Emergence intends to support the launch of a new research theme and/or the conduct of a pilot study to test new research hypothesis(es). You have until February 23, 2024, 11am to submit your project. All information needed can be found here.

• International Researcher invitation: UPCité has launched the 2025 International Researcher invitation campaign. The candidature camaign is open until 15th of March, 2024 and you can apply through this Limesurvey link. All the information needed can be found in this Vademecum

• CNRS ERC Webinar: The Pôle Europe du Service Partenariat et Valorisation de la délégation of the CNRS Ile-de-France Villejuif Delegation is organising a webinar on ERC grants on 29/02/2024 at 2.30 p.m. Registrations are now open on this link. You can do so until the day before the registration time. A connection link will then be sent to registrants. The ERC calls are:
  • ERC Starting: applications open from July to October 2024
  • ERC Consolidator: applications open from September to December 2024
  • ERC Advanced: applications open from 29 may to 29 august 2024
  • ERC Synergy: applications open from June to November 2024
  • ERC Proof of Concept (PoC): next application deadlines 14 march 2024 and 17 september 2024
    This webinar will present the content and expectations of the various ERCs, provide advice on how to prepare for these calls and conclude with a question and answer session.

• Thesis projects related to defence: The government has recently launched a number of defence-related calls for thesis projects, focusing on areas such as information engineering, robotics, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. If you have an idea for a topic, you can contact the AID manager for the area of interest. More information here.

• [REMINDER] For Women in Science - L'Oréal-UNESCO 2024: The call for applications for the 2024 edition of the L'Oréal-UNESCO France Young Talents for Women in Science programme will open. The L'Oréal Foundation will be awarding 35 grants in France, at least 5 of which will be dedicated to researchers carrying out their research work in the French Overseas Territories, of €15,000 each to doctoral students and €20,000 each to post-doctoral students. The deadline for applications is Monday 26 February 2024. Here's the digital application platform.

• Faculty positions are open at IRIF : two MCF and one full professor, see this page.

Partner newsletter : Newsletters are sent sporadically to IRIF members. They are listed below.

• Newsletter CNRS Hebdo of 2, February 2024
• Diip's Newsletter of 2, February 2024
• Newsletter du LaBRI #28 du 05 février 2024
• La lettre de l'INSMI of February 2024