Prerequisites
In order to register as a PhD student at Institut Néel, you need to hold a Master’s degree, or a diploma of equivalent level, during which you have accomplished a training period and written a Master’s thesis.
Secondly, you need to find a PhD project suggested by a PhD supervisor from the Institute. You can find the available PhD projects on the Institute website, here.
Finally, you need to find a PhD grant to fund it. In Néel, most PhD subjects already come with their funding, you can discuss about it directly with the supervisor associated to the project you seek to pursue. In case you need to find a grant yourself, many options exist and are explained here. In any case, the usual way to proceed is to find an available PhD project, ask the associated supervisor if the project is already funded, or what are the best options to fund it.
The Doctoral School : « pedagogic enrollment »
Once you have graduated from your Master’s and have been accepted by a supervisor in Néel to work on a PhD project, you need to enrol to two institutions : a doctoral school and a university.
All the 13 doctoral schools in Grenoble are gathered under the Collège Doctoral institution. You need to decide which doctoral school to enrol to with your supervisor, and complete the enrollment process specific to this doctoral school. This will result in the creation of your Adum account : this is where you will manage all your administrative doctoral procedures.
The University : « administrative enrollment »
Once you have enrolled to a doctoral school, the school validates it, and you will be contacted by the University to complete this second enrollment procedure.
The first thing to do is to pay the CVEC – « Contribution de Vie Etudiante et de Campus ». This is your financial participation to the life in your academic environment, it is meant to create and strengthen different services and activities related to health, social initiatives, sports, culture, …
The next step is to gather all the required papers and send them to the University contact associated to your dotoral school (you can find these contacts here). This procedure is the same for all doctoral schools, and the required pieces are summed up here.
You will them need to pay the enrollment fees to the University, which amount to 380€. Before paying them, check here if you can be exempted from it.
Re-enrollment
If you need to register for your 2nd or 3rd (or more) year of PhD, you will basically go through this same procedure, with some extra steps.
The first thing to do is again the « pedagogical enrollment » to your doctoral school. But for most doctoral schools, before re-enrolling, you need to organize an « individualized follow-up committee » (CSI – Comité de Suivi Individualisé). You first need to find at least two people, with at least one holding an HDR (« habilitation à diriger des recherches »). They must come from outside of your team. Your PhD (co-)advisor(s) can’t be among them, but they will be invited to attend the meeting and give their opinion. The goal of this meeting is to assess the progress of your PhD project, the trainings you have already followed, and your scientific production.
You will then need to complete a « PhD follow-up report » on your Adum website, and have your supervisor complete it as well.
After these two steps, you can proceed to the usual enrollment to the doctoral school, and the re-enrollment to the University.