Any SFBD member who has defended his/her PhD Thesis between the 1st January 2024 and the 31st December 2025 can apply. The deadline to apply is 31st December 2025. The results will be disclosed in Summer 2026. The application, in French or in English, must include the following information in a single PDF file:
Your CV (max 2 pages)
A detailed application letter including: a thesis summary putting into perspective the most outstanding results, highlighting the techniques and collaborations implemented, the originality of the study, the contribution to the advancement of the specific research field and more generally to the field of Developmental Biology (4 pages maximum, including illustrations)
A letter of support from the thesis supervisor or from a member of the thesis committee, specifying the intellectual and experimental contributions of the candidate.
The complete thesis file and the articles posted on bioRxiv, submitted or published since the defense and related to the thesis subject.
A pre-selection of 2 to 4 theses is carried out by the SFBD Board based on the contents of the application.
The pre-selection is based on the general scope of published and unpublished results for the Developmental Biology field, the quality of the application letter and the intellectual contribution of the candidate to the results obtained.
A sub-committee of three members of the Board, different each year, then designates the winner and honorable mentions after a thorough reading of their entire thesis. At this step, selection criteria are: the scope and quality of the results, the writing quality of the entire thesis manuscript and the relevance of the discussion.
At least one paper related to the thesis work must be published or submitted to bioRxiv. On the other hand, there is no need for the paper to be published in a so-called ‘major’ journal.
