School of Electronic Information and Communications

Defense Procedure for PhD students

2012-11-06

 Defense Qualification Check

1、Required course credits: refer to the specific program of the applicant.

2、Research module contains:

（1）Thesis proposal

The student is required to pass her/his thesis proposal defense. The thesis proposal examination committee should consist of more than three faculty members with associate professorship or above. After the student passes the proposal defense, the following documents are required to submit to the Department:

3 grading sheets by three proposal examiners; Literature survey (30+ references ); Thesis proposal report; Midterm progress review form for the applicant.

The thesis proposal is usually scheduled at 1 - 1.5 year after the student is enrolled in her/his Ph.D. program. The student should pass her/his thesis proposal defense at least 1 year before her/his final thesis defense.

（2）Midterm progress review: submit to the Department around 1 year after the thesis proposal.

（3）Attend international academic exchange activities or important domestic academic conference and submit the study report.

（4）Publication requirements: refer to “The publication requirements of the PhD students for graduation in the Department of Electronics and Information Engineering” (each student follows the requirements released when she/he is enrolled in her/his program).

（5）Thesis

After the student finishes her/his thesis, she/he is required to submit her/his thesis (4 copies, excluding any personal information of the student and the advisor) to the graduate student affair office of the Department for the blind review by the thesis examiners from other universities/institutes.

The secretary for the graduate affairs in the Department will check whether the applicant has meet the credit requirements (including required courses credits and research credits) in the HUB system. The time-checking points of the thesis proposal and the midterm progress review will be strictly examined to meet the timing requirements. If the credits meet the requirements and at least 3 blind reviews return with the passing comments, then the applicant can receive her/his dedicated defense portfolio package and apply for the final thesis defense.

二、Defense Application Procedure

1、The advisor is required to approve the student’s thesis, approve her/his defense application form and assign the defense secretary in the HUB system. (The detailed procedure can refer to the Ph.D. defense flowchart, which is available in HUB.)

2、The defense secretary must bring the following documents:

transcript; Thesis blind review reports by the thesis examiners from other universities/institutes ( 3 copies); Copies of the applicant’s publications and the certificate of the publications retrieved in the databases issued by the HUST library; “HUST PhD thesis finalization form”signed by the advisor;. “HUST PhD thesis approval form”signed by the advisor;

for the approval by the associate dean for thesis affairs in the Department. After the approval of all the above documents, the applicant can then apply for the final thesis defense.

Thesis Defense

Before the thesis oral defense, the applicant should submit the electronic version of the thesis to the graduate student affair office of the Department for the plagiarism check. The thesis defense committee should consist of 5 to 7 professor level experts, who should usually have the supervision experiences of PhD students, and generally are members of the academic committee in their affiliated universities or institutes, and there should be at least 1 expert from other universities or institutes. The student’s advisor can join the thesis defense committee, but can not serve as the chairman of the defense committee. If the advisor is one of the defense committee members, then there should be no less than 7 members in the defense committee.  A defense secretary is appointed in the defense committee, who must hold an intermediate or above professional/technical rank, to participate in the whole defense process and document the defense memo. In addition, the secretary should address all the procedure issues (including delivering the thesis to the examiners and reclaiming the thesis review reports, etc.) in the defense process. The applicant should NOT get involved with the above procedure issues. Only if more than two-thirds of the members in the defense committee agree, the committee can make the recommendation to confer a doctorate to the applicant. Other regulations can be referred in details to “Graduate student’s manual by Huazhong University of Science and Technology”. After the defense, the secretary is required to file the defense grade in HUB. After the defense, the applicant should submit the degree application documents and submit the paper revision response (including the revision response to the review comments by the thesis examiners and the defense committee).<