Application procedure and admission criteria:

Every year, before the PhD student recruitment, the members of the Coordination Committee should validate the research projects for the new edition. The procedure of recruitment is composed of the following steps: information diffusion, application, selection by evaluation and ranking, skype-based interview, and admission.

Information Diffusion:

The information for PhD student recruitment will be diffused to general public using the following tracks:

1. Publication of a “Call for PhD Candidate” on the websites of SMDTex and AUTEX. This Call for PhD Candidate is written for each specific research project and will include the following information: title of the project, description, funding arrangement, mobility periods, and presentation on co-supervisors.
2. Presentation of the same information to the master students of all the
3. Transmission of the information to the textile and non textile universities associated with the partners of SMDTex and publication on their websites.
4. Transmission of the information to industrial companies via the industrial associated partners.
   

The tracks 1), 2) and 3) will permit to recruit candidates from universities (initial training). The track 4) will be used for recruiting industrial candidates (Life Long Learning requirements). It will permit experienced professionals to acquire new tools for sustainable development. Each associated partner can propose an industrial candidate and a specific research project via its academic partner. Both the candidate and the project should be validated by the Coordination Committee according to the same evaluation procedure.

Each candidate should submit the following standard documents for PhD candidate application for each specific research project::

1. A standard CV (personal data, professional experience, training and education experience) and a motivation letter showing his/her past experience in research and explaining why he/she is interested in this project.
2. Two recommendation letters provided by professors or associate professors of his/her original university.
3. One photocopy of passport or identification card.
4. One certified photocopy of university diploma (for Bachelor and Master Degrees) in English.
5. One certified photocopy of academic scores in English.
6. Certified photocopies of English level certificates (Bulat, TOFEL, …).
7. One photocopy of his/her Master thesis or an extended summary of his/her Master research project (10 pages).
8. One page’s research plan, showing the understanding of the candidate on the research project and initial ideas for its realization. The related theory, methods, tools and references should be explained in a concise scientific language.
   

Submission Form here: http://so6.fr/SMDTEX
Submission Form will be closed on February the 5th of 2016

The evaluation

For all the students who have submitted the application document before the deadline, a normalised evaluation will be carried out by the faculty members of the Coordination Committee. They will evaluate all the received complete documents using the predefined standard criteria for selection of PhD candidates. For each criterion, each evaluator will give a score from 0 (very bad) to 5 (very good). The final score of each candidate is the average for all the criteria and all the evaluators.
These criteria include:
1) Relevancy of degree and speciality. PhD students of SMDTex should be holders of master degrees in one of the following areas: textile engineering, management engineering, industrial engineering and design, information technology and chemical engineering. This criterion will be evaluated from the university diploma of each candidate.
2) Relevancy of research level. It will be evaluated from his/her Master thesis and motivation letter for the following aspects: relevancy of the research topic at master level, capacity of research, level of creativity, and level of communication.
3) Scientific level. It will be evaluated from his/her academic scores for the five most important subjects related to the PhD study.
4) Professional career. It will be evaluated from his/her CV and motivation letter for the aspects of working duration, quality of realised work, and interests for the proposed PhD study. Past experience on scientific research will be highly appreciated.
5) Level of English. It will be evaluated from the results of his/her English level certificates such as BULAT, IELTS and TOEFL, and the academic scores of English. At least 575 points for a paper-based TOEFL or 6.5 points for an IELTS are necessary for being selected.

Skype-based interview

For each research project, three selected candidates will be invited to discuss with three different evaluators via Skype or another similar tool in order to obtain more information beyond the application document. The evaluation scores can be adjusted by this interview.

The selection

By taking into account the averaged evaluation scores, the evaluators or supervisors will jointly select the final PhD candidate from these three students through a discussion. The student having the highest score is not necessarily selected due to the following reasons:

• 5 students of Category A and 1 student of Category B (See Fellowship for more details) will be recruited for Edition 2015.
• The gender balance will be generally maintained for each edition.

The Coordination Committee will submit the main list of selected PhD candidates (6 persons) and the reserve list (6 persons or more) to the concerned authority of the European Commission (EACEA), which validates the proposed candidates. Next, the Committee will prepare the official documents for admission (acceptance letter, visa procedure, …). The number of recruited PhD students can be changed according to the real financial situation of EACEA.