Apply for PhD Defense

To defend your PhD dissertation, take the following steps:

1. Registering for the doctoral exam

For the submission of your PhD dissertation the faculty uses a new online submission platform:

If your promoters have changed or you want to obtain a different doctoral title, please hand in the forms before the deadline. Forms can be found on Changes in PhD — Faculty of Bioscience Engineering — Ghent University (ugent.be)

Choose the chairperson in plato via dropdown menu or check on
https://www.ugent.be/bw/nl/faculteit/raden/voorzitters-doctoraatsjury
Enlist the jury members of your exam committee. Check the faculty regulations concerning the composition of the examination board.
Add the expertises of the examination committee.
Fill out publication criterion window and upload publications.
A PhD candidate can only be admitted to the doctoral examination if following internal condition is fulfilled: either 1) being first or second author of an accepted publication in a journal referenced in the Web of Science (A1 publication: research article or review), 2) being inventor, holder or applicant of a patent application or of a granted patent. This research article, review or patent should be linked to the doctoral research. The article needs at least to be in the stage of acceptance; if not yet published, proof of acceptance has to be provided.
Fix date of the internal defense before the faculty board, so the manuscript and evaluation forms can be sent to all jury members after the faculty board.

Sign the application digitally
All promoters need to digitally sign the application before the deadline (1 week before the meeting of the doctoral commission)
Make sure you respect the deadlines for submitting this information (see table below) in order for the student administration to timely prepare the agenda for the faculty board meeting. Too late submissions will be handled a month later.
Upload your CV and write down a short Dutch summary

At the latest 1 day before the Faculty Doctoral Commission meets (see deadlines below), you have to upload a pdf of your doctoral dissertation + your cv in Plato
For the PhD manuscript of the internal defense, please include line numbers on each page. This will facilitate jury members to more easily refer to specific sentences when having comments or questions.
After the faculty board : ask if the chair + members of the examination committee need a hard copy of your PhD (not necessary to hand in a copy of your PhD at the Faculty Student Administration anymore)

Counting from the day of the Faculty Board meeting, your PhD examination committee will have at least 30 calendar days to evaluate your dissertation.

Jury members will upload evaluation forms through the Plato platform.

One week before the internal defense, the online Plato Platform will send you the reports of the jury members.

Prepare your internal defense based on the review reports
The internal defense (3 hours) is dedicated to assessing the originality of your research, to evaluate your knowledge, to clarify technical aspects and to come to a general appreciation of your PhD research and you as a PhD candidate.
The internal exam results in 3 possible outcomes:

Admission to public defense (no changes or minor changes requested) within 60 days after internal defense
Admission to public defense, provided that specific changes are performed in the manuscript. You should be able to perform those changes within a reasonable amount of time: at least 1 month, maximally 3 months. The examination committee needs to re-assess the modified manuscript and give final green light for admission to the public defense.
No admission to the public defense. Resubmission of a new version of the PhD needs to wait for at least a year. This decision is in principle only taken if the candidate was given a Decision 2 (major revision) in a previous examination committee meeting.

The Faculty Student Administration keeps you updated about what to do after the Internal defense,