For Students

After admission

Once the student has been admitted to the PhD program, she/he will be assigned an institutional e-mail address (*@estudiante.uam.es) where she will receive all official communications related to the PhD program including instructions, notifications to upload research progress reports and training activities, etc. With the institutional e-mail address the student will have access to the on-line platform Sigma, where all the necessary documents for the initial enrolment and the following tutorial courses should be uploaded by the student and validated by the academic tutor.

The on-line inscription process for the initial enrolment can be accessed from the UAM doctoral school web. The date of this initial enrolment will be deemed the admission date for purposes of the academic record of the PhD student, when calculating the permanence and deadlines for the doctoral thesis defence.

Initial enrolment

Once admitted on a Doctoral Program, each academic course all PhD students will formalise an enrolment form for the subject entitled ACADEMIC TUTELAGE. This subject will be assessed every year.

For the initial enrolment, the student will provide a research plan signed by her/his PhD supervisor and academic tutor, together with a brief CV of the PhD supervisor. This document has to be uploaded to the electronic application Sigma and validated by the academic tutor. The student will also provide a learning and good practice agreement document signed by herself, the PhD supervisor and the academic tutor.

All necessary forms and templates can be uploaded from the UAM doctoral school website.

Second and following enrolments

To monitor the progress of the PhD student, the enrolment have to be renewed every academic course with an annual assessment. Please be aware of the deadlines to apply for each course renewal that will depend on the date of your initial enrolment.

To apply for the second and following PhD enrolments the student will need to elaborate a research progress report and upload it to Sigma, where the academic tutor should validate it. The PhD supervisor will also write a research progress report that has to be signed and uploaded by the academic tutor. In addition, the student will add to the Sigma platform all research and training activities, together with the corresponding documental proofs (attendance certificates to conferences, courses or seminars, copy of publications, etc.), performed during the academic year. These activities have to be also validated by the academic tutor.

Together with the development of their scientific project, the students are expected to participate (among others) in the following training-through-research activities:

• Attendance to research seminars.
• Preparation and presentation of research seminars.
• Short stays in other research centers.
• Participation in international conferences, workshops, and schools.
• Publication of scientific papers in peer-reviewed international journals.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: After uploading documents to your Sigma PhD track platform, please notify your academic tutor to validate the corresponding documents, since they are not automatically notified of your updates.

All additional procedures about the PhD defense and committees, international PhD mention, application for extensions etc. can be found at the UAM Doctoral School website, in the menu ‘Doctoral candidates’.

Important: PhD defense committee in our Program

Please note that despite the UAM allows for PhD dissertation committees of three members (plus two alternate members), our PhD program will only authorize PhD defenses with committees of five members (and two alternates). All additional rules of UAM also apply, like not having more than two members belonging to the same institution.