Credits

Before completing a doctoral degree, students enrolled in the LN Doctoral School must obtain a total of 18 credits, respecting these points:

1. Min. 2 credits - max. 4 credits for seminars or journal clubs in neuroscience* (12 seminars = 1 credit), validated by sending the seminars sheet (available at the bottom of this page) to the LNDS Coordinator (Unil and UniFrib. students) or to Claire Maislisch (Unige students -  Claire Maislisch, CMU, 1 rue Michel Servet, 1211 Geneva).
2. Max. 1 credit for presenting an abstract at a major neuroscience conference (only SFN, FENS, OHBM or CNS)*.
3. Max. 3 credits for workshops and summer or winter courses, validated by the school committee.
4. Max. 2 credits for complementary skills, such as "Science Communication", "Scientific writing", "Presentation skills", etc.
5. Max. 4 credits from MSc courses.
6. Min. 6 credits from LN doctoral courses, including the courses from the EPFL-EDNE program.

We recommend students to obtain at least 9 credits during the first 3 semesters. The PhD can be obtained in a minimun of 3 years, maximun of 5. In the event that a PhD fellowship has ended without a successful thesis defense, the student has a maximum of one year to defend his/her thesis.

One ECTS should correspond to 25-30 academic hours (45 min) of work for the student. In general, half of this work comes from attending lectures and the other half from the student's personal work (review of literature + studying + final exam or essay).

For example, a course given in 1 period per week during one semester would earn 1 ECTS (45-60 min periods x 14 weeks = 10.5 - 14 hours of lectures). On the other hand, a one week-long workshop would earn 3 ECTS.

To receive full credit for a course, students must fulfill the specific requirements announced by the instructor(s) at the beginning of the semester.

Relevant MSc courses in Neuroscience are available in Geneva and Lausanne, and represent a good opportunity for PhD students to improve their background in specific subjects.

(*) When you attend a conference other than SFN, FENS, OHBM or CNS, you can't validate 1 credit for it, but you can still include some seminars of the conference in your "seminars sheet" (12 seminars will count as 1 credit when the page is full):

• 1 seminar for a half-day conference
• 2 seminars for a one-day conference
• 3 seminars for a conference longer than one day

We don't allow filling up the seminars sheet with more than 3 seminars from one single conference, the reason being that you are expected to attend seminars in neuroscience all throughout the year, in a regular basis. 

To validate credits for a course external to the LN Doctoral School or for a workshop, please send the description and detailed program to the LN coordinator, together with a certificate of attendance.