PhD EF students ending their first or second academic year shall present in the event called "Fall Ph.D. Forum".

Faculty members from all fields are warmly encouraged to attend this. These presentations are key for admitting students to the following year. To provide the Ph.D. students with as much feedback as possible, we encourage PhD faculty to provide feedback.

Guidelines to the First Year PhD students:
In addition to your coursework, you are required to 
* Find an advisor. By the end of the Spring term (June 30), you are required to find a faculty member whose research interests match your own and elect him as your advisor (communicate his/her name to the PhD Coordinator and PhD Program Manager). 
* Find a research idea. Develop a research idea and start working on it. You will be asked to present a research question and preliminary analysis in a daylong event called (first year) Ph.D. Forum, which will take place in early October. 
 
At this early stage, we do not expect to see a paper but rather a feasible, interesting, and original research idea and a plan (with a clear schedule). 
* If the project is empirical, we would ask for something very similar to a pre-analysis plan (to be defined).
* If the project is theoretical, we expect to see at least a proposal / basic version of the model, with a sharp discussion of (i) how it differs from what already exists in the literature, (ii) which are the fundamental assumptions on which it rests, and how critical they are, (iii) how the student plans to 
expand the model/relax the most critical assumptions, and (iv) whether the student expects to be able to solve the model in closed form or only numerically.
 
Exam grades and performance at the forum are key for the decisions to admit students to the second year. 
 
Guidelines to the Second Year PhD students:
* (second year) Ph.D. Forum: By early October, you will be required to present your research project. This research project could be a development of the project presented the previous year in October or a brand new project with a clear plan on how to develop it. We expect to see either an almost complete first draft of the first paper or a research idea, a research plan (with a clear schedule), and some preliminary results for the second paper.
* If the second project is empirical, we would ask for some preliminary results that warrant further investigation of the issue.
* If the second project is theoretical, we expect to see (in addition to the requirements of the first-year forum) a preliminary result or conjecture to be proven. 
* Confirm your advisor and field. By the end of the second year, you should have elected a faculty member as your main advisor and a research field. 
 
The presentations at the second-year forum are key for the decisions to admit students to the third year. 
 
Students are expected to send their presentation to their advisor at least one week before the forum and to do a mock presentation (with the supervisors and possibly other Ph.D. students) at least three days before the forum. Of course, it is the responsibility of supervisors to give feedback about the substance of the project and the presentation.
 

Each presentation will last 20 minutes, no discussant will be assigned.