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Self-assessment

Indicative Guide for Your Doctoral Path

This guide is meant to help you orient yourself before applying to the PhD programme and throughout your doctoral studies. Face-to-face discussions will be more meaningful, but until then you can get a sense of my academic profile by reading my habilitation thesis, written precisely for this purpose.

Are you pursuing a PhD only to advance more quickly in your career?

Then this is not the right place for you. My mentorship is dedicated to building a research career, and taking one of the at most eight places available in total — for all active PhD students — purely for personal gain is unfair to those pursuing this goal in the long term.

Are you passionate about nature and thinking of doing a PhD?

That's a good starting point, but it's not enough. Passion for nature and research can complement each other, but one can never substitute for the other. Research involves multiple stages, and fieldwork is, at best, just one part — usually related to data collection. If you view a doctoral thesis primarily as an outdoor activity, it's time to reconsider your intentions. There are many ways to turn your passion for nature into a successful career without necessarily pursuing a PhD.

Do you have a strong sense of observation and think scientifically?

If you often identify the "missing link" and approach problems with meticulous care, if you see failure as a challenge and understand the principles governing the living world — then here are the steps to take.

Steps to take

1
Think long-term. The Doctoral School is just the beginning of a research career — look ahead to your next step, the postdoc.
2
Choose your supervisor wisely. Study their academic profile. Don't expect your research topic to be handed to you — design your own project aligned with the supervisor's expertise. If you have never written a project before, download the IRP template.
3
Build relevant experience. Ideally, you will have completed a research-focused master's programme and gained experience in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. This experience becomes credible only when materialized in scientific publications.
4
Check project alignment. If your topic matches my academic profile, contact me immediately. We will likely refine your project together. You can also find the full academic tutorial here.
5
Meet the language requirement. Both your thesis and publications will be in English, so you need at least a B2 level (with certificate).
6
Prepare for the admission process. Entry to the Doctoral School of Exact Sciences and Natural Sciences is through a competitive examination: a general knowledge test + presentation of your Individual Research Project (IRP). Knowledge test topics: (i) native crayfish species in Romania and Europe, (ii) invasive crayfish species in Romania and Europe, (iii) main threats to native crayfish globally. Good starting point: crayfish.ro.
This year's competition themes
(i)Crayfish evolution in the context of spatial ecology (scholarship position)
(ii)Biodiversity informatics and data-driven conservation
(iii)Eco-behavioural processes and adaptations in crayfish

Once your doctoral studies begin, your work will focus on the agreed IRP, the hypotheses to be tested, and the production of scientific papers. I am open to remote supervision (within the regulations of the Doctoral School), but you will need an exceptionally strong project to convince me that you can achieve your objectives. All theses I supervise will be written in English and published in full on both the ProQuest Digital Collection and the dedicated page of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research. I recommend the cumulative (paper-based) format — essentially a compilation of the articles we publish together.

If your topic matches my profile, contact me immediately.