Building your career

INRAE provides support to its contractual doctoral students as they finish up their PhDs and take the next step in their careers.

Thesis advisor

At INRAE, anyone serving as a thesis advisor has extensive mentoring expertise and will properly support you during your doctoral studies. They will make a significant time investment in your training. They will schedule regular, structured meetings to maximise scientific exchange, foster your gradual development into an independent researcher, and encourage you to adopt innovative approaches.

Your progress will also be monitored by your thesis committee, which will meet annually to evaluate the continued feasibility and impact of your PhD work, assess your progress, make recommendations, and give feedback on your dissertation.

Networking

INRAE is particularly attentive to the support needed by contractual doctoral students. During your time at INRAE, you should participate in scientific and/or group events to help you find your place within your research unit, centre, and/or division. Such interactions will serve as a foundation for your professional future.

Training 

In addition to the training that you will receive in your doctoral programme, you can also benefit from broader training opportunities at INRAE. For example, doctoral students can participate in the following: specialised courses that teach scientists new approaches or technical skills; summer programmes focused on specific themes run by various research teams; and in-person or remote training courses in a one-on-one or group setting.

Some forms of training are exclusively for doctoral students: 

• INRAE EDEN courses for PhD students and their advisors seek to build skills through research-based training 
• PAPIRUS: an online course taught by scientific and technical informaticians that helps students learn to effectively collect, monitor, manage, and exploit bibliographic information, which facilitates the process of writing up, publishing, and communicating research results
• Need for collective expertise: a training programme run by INRAE’s Directorate of Expertise, Foresight, and Advanced Studies (DEPE) that highlights the need for approaches based on expertise and foresight given the importance of informing public policies and debates
• Agreenium’s International Research Programme (EIR-A) and its PhD modules, which seek to raise awareness of major societal issues and boost the employability of doctoral students via international experiences; in 2020, 76 people earned EIR-A certification—39 were recipients of INRAE mobility funding

If you have any specific training needs, you should talk to your advisor, the research unit director, and/or training specialists at your research centre.

Career counselling

Anyone working at INRAE can take advantage of the institute’s career counselling services, which are available in both French and English. INRAE career counsellors provide confidential and customised support tailored to your specific situation and needs, including career diagnostics, professional assessments, skills assessments, coaching, and project development. Each research centre offers walk-in and scheduled appointments with career counsellors year round, and you can take advantage of these services as soon as you arrive at INRAE.