Once your committee is approved, you are expected to hold your first meeting soon after.

• At least 4 members must be present at the meeting or attend via video/call-in. Students must meet individually with any members that are not present at the meeting.
• You must provide your committee with a pre-meeting progress update at least 5 days before the meeting
• During the meeting, the committee will complete part of the committee meeting report and each member will sign, whether they are present or not for the meeting.
• After the meeting, you will complete the student response to the committee’s recommendations section of the committee meeting report.
• The committee meeting report, which includes the student's progress update and the student's response to the committee's recommendations, should be submitted to the student, all members of the Advisory Committee and to [email protected] within 10 business days from the date of the meeting. The meeting will be recorded only if a report is received.

Goals of your first Advisory Committee Meeting – The primary goal of your first meeting is to introduce yourself and describe your plan (rationale, significance, hypothesis, and aims) for your project so that the committee members can actively give you input. If you have preliminary data, it should be presented but should not be the primary focus of the meeting. You are looking for high-level advice from your committee on the planning of the project.

DO be sure to explain all aspects of your project and ask the committee for their advice on it.

DON’T start off the meeting by presenting data without first providing a sound rationale for the project and experiments.

Students are expected to hold an advisory committee meeting every 6 months, and MS students must hold a minimum of 2 meetings to be eligible to defend their thesis.

• At least 4 members must be present at the meeting or attend via video/call-in. Students must meet individually with any members that are not present at the meeting.
• You must provide your committee with a pre-meeting progress update at least 5 days before the meeting
• During the meeting, the committee will complete part of the committee meeting report and each member will sign, whether they are present or not for the meeting.
• After the meeting you will complete the student response to the committee’s recommendations section of the committee meeting report.
• The committee meeting report, which includes the student's progress update and the student's response to the committee's recommendations, should be submitted to the student, all members of the Advisory Committee and to [email protected] within 10 business days from the date of the meeting. The meeting will be recorded only if a report is received.

All GSBS PhD students must petition for Ph.D. candidacy by the end of their 2nd year of enrollment. Before submitting the petition, the student must be in good academic standing and have completed the following requirements:

• Three tutorials

• Core Course or Program-specific Area Courses

• Ethical Dimensions of the Biomedical Sciences

• Two online ethics modules, namely 1) Responsible Authorship and Publication and 2) Data Acquisition and Management (instructions for completing the modules will be emailed during the spring semester to all students who completed the Ethics course from the previous fall term)

• A course that satisfies the GSBS scientific writing requirement

• Program-specific pre-candidacy course requirements

The purpose of the candidacy examination is to test the student's breadth and depth of knowledge in the biomedical sciences

The examination is meant to be an evaluation of the student’s ability to construct an hypothesis, to design the means by which to test it, and to critically analyze obtained results

Because students complete The Ethical Dimensions of the Biomedical Sciences at the start of their graduate training, students are also required to complete two on-line modules – Data Acquisition and Management and Responsible Authorship and Publication – prior to submitting their petition for candidacy, as a “just-in-time” supplemental review of key ethical issues.

Instructions for completing these modules are sent to students via email after completion of the ethics course. Once complete, please email the two completion reports showing the final score you made for each module to Bunny Perez in the GSBS Office of Academic Affairs.

Students may take either Scientific Writing or any Program-specific scientific writing course.

Currently, the Program-specific courses approved to meet the requirement are:

• GS03 1111 Scientific Writing for Grant Proposals
• GS04 1811 G&E Scientific Writing
• GS07 1092 Topics in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases

Students must satisfy this requirement prior to petitioning for PhD candidacy.

Please visit our Candidacy Exam page for information on the timing and requirements to petition for candidacy.

Please visit our Candidacy Exam page for information on the following topics

• On-Topic Exam and Proposal Guidelines
• Examining Committee
• Exam Results/MS Bypass
• Helpful Information
• Guidelines for Faculty Service on Exam Committees

Each student must complete all program requirements before they hold their defense. Please note that if you have designated a secondary program/area of research concentration, these requirements must also be complete.

Please visit each Programs' requirements page for more details:

Biochemistry & Cell Biology

Cancer Biology

Genetics & Epigenetics

Immunology

Medical Physics

Microbiology & Infectious Diseases

Neuroscience

Quantitative Sciences

Therapeutics & Pharmacology

First-author Publication GSBS Minimum Standard for PhD students

A requirement of the PhD degree is for the student to demonstrate the development of an original and significant body of dissertation research.  The quality, scope and depth of the research necessary to complete a PhD dissertation is determined primarily by the student's Advisory Committee which must approve the dissertation prior to graduation.  As a minimum standard, the GSBS requires all PhD students to produce at least one first-author peer-reviewed research publication based on their dissertation work.  As this is intended only as a minimum standard, the Advisory Committee may require a student to complete more research, including additional first-author publications, as part of the body of work necessary to complete the PhD degree. 

PhD students who entered GSBS in the Fall semester of 2014 or after:

Must submit one first-author research paper for peer-review prior to defending their dissertation and the paper must be accepted for publication before graduation.

Papers with multiple "first authors" 

A student who is designated as a co-first-author on a submitted or published paper is considered as the first author for the purposes of meeting the above minimum standards.

Review articles

Articles that review the scientific literature, conferences, or the recent findings of others, but do not include original presentations of research carried out by the student, do not meet the above minimum standard even if the article is peer reviewed. 

Exceptions to the GSBS Minimum Standard Publication Requirement

In cases where a student has clearly completed an original and significant body of research but unusual delays in the peer review process, or other causes, have prevented the publication of a first-author paper, the student may petition to the Advisory Committee for an exception to the minimum standard.  If the student's Advisory Committee agrees that an exception is warranted, it may recommend this to the GSBS Academic Standards Committee (ASC) for approval.  The Advisory Committee Chair should submit the recommendation in writing  to the GSBS with a rationale for why an exception should be made.  Considerations in making such exceptions will include unusual delays in peer-review, co-authored publications, the originality/quality of the unpublished work, and the best interests of the student.

All students must submit their Petition for Defense at least two weeks before their defense date.

Please visit our Graduation Page for a list of documents required for a complete petition.

Guidelines for the PhD Dissertation Defense

The purpose of the dissertation defense is to provide a consistent and complete evaluation of the dissertation and the student's understanding of the research, as well as the student's ability to report information to the scientific community in a well-organized and interesting form.
An announcement of the defense will be distributed by electronic mail to all GSBS students and faculty.
Guidelines for the defense are:

• The student will deliver a 45- to 60-minute public presentation, including a detailed description of the background, rationale, materials and methods, results, and conclusions appropriate to the research. Following the presentation, the student will respond to questions from the audience.
• Immediately thereafter, and at a location announced at the end of the seminar, the Advisory Committee will examine the student on the dissertation. Any member of the GSBS Faculty who attends the public presentation may participate in the examination to the extent described below. Others wishing to attend must be approved by the Advisory Committee.
• The student's Advisor will serve as moderator of the examination. The student will be expected to respond to questions from those attending on any aspect of the written dissertation or the material presented at the public presentation.
  After the examination, the student will meet privately with the Advisory Committee to discuss the results. Finally, the Advisory Committee will determine what recommendation to make to the Dean and the Academic Standards Committee. The Committee may conclude that the student has passed, or it may require additional research, modifications to the dissertation, and/or another defense. The results of this meeting will be communicated through the GSBS Office of Academic Affairs to the Dean and the Academic Standards Committee for their information and approval.

Within one week of the dissertation defense, any member of the GSBS Faculty who has read the student's dissertation and has attended the defense may write directly to the Dean to provide an evaluation of the student's performance. In reaching a final decision on whether to award the PhD or require further work and/or another defense, the Dean will take into consideration the recommendation of the Advisory Committee and other comments received from GSBS Faculty.

In particular cases, the Dean may solicit additional evaluations of the dissertation from experts in the field either within or outside the GSBS Faculty. Should a concern be raised by a GSBS faculty member about a student’s performance, the decision of the Dean will be communicated to the student and the Advisory Committee within one month of the dissertation defense.

First-author Publication GSBS Minimum Standard for PhD students

A requirement of the PhD degree is for the student to demonstrate the development of an original and significant body of dissertation research.  The quality, scope and depth of the research necessary to complete a PhD dissertation is determined primarily by the student's Advisory Committee which must approve the dissertation prior to graduation.  As a minimum standard, the GSBS requires all PhD students to produce at least one first-author peer-reviewed research publication based on their dissertation work.  As this is intended only as a minimum standard, the Advisory Committee may require a student to complete more research, including additional first-author publications, as part of the body of work necessary to complete the PhD degree. 

PhD students who entered GSBS in the Fall semester of 2014 or after:

Must submit one first-author research paper for peer-review prior to defending their dissertation and the paper must be accepted for publication before graduation.

Papers with multiple "first authors" 

A student who is designated as a co-first-author on a submitted or published paper is considered as the first author for the purposes of meeting the above minimum standards.

Review articles

Articles that review the scientific literature, conferences, or the recent findings of others, but do not include original presentations of research carried out by the student, do not meet the above minimum standard even if the article is peer reviewed. 

Exceptions to the GSBS Minimum Standard Publication Requirement (updated September 1, 2022)

In cases where a student has clearly completed an original and significant body of research and has submitted it for publication, but unusual delays in the peer review process have prevented the publication of a first-author paper prior to graduation, or where the student has an urgent need to graduate prior to publication for other causes,  the student may request that their Advisory Committee support an exception to the minimum publication requirement.  If the Advisory Committee agrees that an exception is warranted, then the Committee Chair should submit the recommendation in writing to the GSBS Office of Academic Affairs (copied to all advisory committee members) with a rationale for why an exception should be made. The request will be reviewed by the Academic Standards Committee who will make a recommendation to the dean.  Criteria for reviewing exceptions will include the length of delay during peer-review, other published work by the student, the originality/quality of the submitted paper, likelihood that the paper will be published, evidence for clear and urgent need of the student to graduate before publication, and whether the exception is in the student’s best interest.   

Please note that the ASC will only consider exception requests caused by the length of the review process if the following conditions have been met.

1. All advisory committee members agree that the exception is warranted and have been copied on the email request from the advisor.

2. The manuscript was submitted for peer review >60 days prior to the ASC meeting date (ASC meets on the second Wednesday of each month).

3. Evidence is provided of a clear and urgent need for the student to graduate prior to acceptance of the manuscript for publication.

4. A plan is provided for completing any needed experiments/revisions of the paper after the student’s graduation that will maintain their position as a first-author.

 Exception requests made for other causes, may be submitted to the ASC for consideration prior to meeting all the above conditions. 

Approval of the Dissertation

All members of the Advisory Committee are expected to sign the student’s dissertation to demonstrate their approval of the document. If any member refuses to sign the dissertation, the Academic Standards Committee will consider the matter and provide a recommendation to the Dean. In deciding whether to approve the dissertation, the Dean will take into consideration the recommendations of the Advisory Committee and the Academic Standards Committee. In particular cases, the Dean may solicit additional evaluations of the dissertation from experts in the field either within or outside the GSBS Faculty.

Expected time of achievement:Within 7 years of admission