The Institute of Biological Chemistry (ICB) launches its third call for proposals for the recruitment of 7 PhD students for the 2027 academic year.
Each project leader from the ICB, affiliated with one of the following structures – Chem4Life, CiTCoM, IBPC, LCBPT, UTCBS – may submit only one proposal. The project leader and the partner must belong to two different structures.
A project partner cannot submit their own proposal (identical or different) with the leader of the first proposal.
A member who received ICB PhD funding as a project leader in 2026 cannot apply to this call as a project leader.
Proposals must be written in English using the downloadable template [available here].
At least one of the project leaders must hold an HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches). If neither of the two partners holds an HDR at the time of submission, an authorization to supervise a thesis (ADT) must be requested from the doctoral school, following a favorable opinion from the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the InIdEx.
A single scientific proposal cannot simultaneously receive both an ICB doctoral contract and a doctoral contract awarded by the MTCI Doctoral School in 2027. This rule applies to all co-leaders and teams involved in the proposal. A scientific proposal is considered identical if it relies on similar scientific objectives involving both partners.
Additionally, to ensure a fair distribution of PhD funding, an HDR holder who receives an ICB doctoral contract in a given year cannot be awarded another doctoral funding by the MTCI Doctoral School in the same year.
The maximum number of proposals that can be submitted as a leader per structure is as follows:
Chem4Life: 2
CiTCoM: 16
IBPC: 9
LCBPT: 12
UTCBS: 3
Funding allocation will be based on proposal quality and its evaluation by both external experts and members of the SAB.
The number of fundings obtained in the first call for proposals by the leading laboratory may be used as a tiebreaker for proposals deemed of equal quality, to achieve a balanced distribution across the two calls (2025 and 2026).
For reference, the distribution of funding per leading laboratory in 2025 was as follows:
Chem4Life: 1
CiTCoM: 3
IBPC: 2
LCBPT: 2
UTCBS: 0
Call for Proposal Timeline
May 11, 2026: Call for proposal launched
July 10, 2026 (noon): Deadline for proposal submissions
July–October 2026: Evaluation of each proposal by two external reviewers
November 2026: Analysis of reports and ranking of PhD proposals by the steering committee. Results published
October 2027: PhD start