About UNIPhD

The Doctoral Programme “UNIPhD – Eight century legacy of multidisciplinary research and training for the next-generation talents”, co-funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) COFUND, is designed by the University of Padua to be a game-changer in Doctoral Education.

UNIPhD welcomes the most promising Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) coming to the University of Padua from all over the world to pursue a brand new International, Intersectoral, Interdisciplinary and Innovative “training through research” experience.

A paradigm change will be explored by UNIPhD in 25 Doctoral Courses, covering all scientific domains with the final goal to foster what will be a “transformative wave” in the regional and national Academic sector, providing guidelines for the next-generation training towards frontier research.

Research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought.
Albert Szent-Györgyi

UNIPhD seeks to train a highly-skilled and versatile future generation of researchers to become successful, responsible and innovative leaders in their fields. UNIPhD aims at enhancing the researchers’ capacity to respond to urgent challenges emerging around us, while boosting their employability in academia and non-academia worldwide.

The University of Padua (Unipd) is driven to achieve excellence. Since its foundation in 1222, Unipd has delivered outstanding educational outcomes, capitalising on its tradition of discovery, collaboration, international cooperation, and its commitment to scientific excellence.

With its historical background, it was founded in 1222 A.D., and with over 60,000 students, the University of Padua has a strong connection to the city of Padua, a vibrant and welcoming student hub.

Both national and international rankings place the University of Padua at the top of all Italian universities.

In the Censis 2021/2022 ranking Padua is among top mega state universities (institutes with over 40,000 students), with an overall score of 88.7.
Read the article here.

The 2022 edition of the Best Global Universities Rankings, published by the American newspaper US News & World Report, cites the University of Padua in 119th place among all universities, and reconfirms it in 2nd place among all Italian universities.
Read the article here.

Unipd is dedicated to follow the European roadmap on doctoral education and to pave the way to a new, ambitious approach to doctoral education, in line with the European Charter for Researchers, the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, and the EU Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training. The MSCA-COFUND – Doctoral Programme scheme will help Unipd to ensure the highest standards of doctoral training and to identify, implement, share, and promote the best practices throughout all its Doctoral Courses.

How the project works

For the successful implementation of the project, a robust management framework is envisaged for UNIPhD and it is designed to have a clear allocation of tasks and responsibilities while allowing effective lines for communications and decisions.

Among UNIPhD’s managing bodies, the Technical Committee (TC) runs all project activities, adopting the decisions made by the Executive Board.

During the selection process, the TC it is in charge of assessing applicants’ eligibility and will respond to redress requests.

The Technical Committee throughout the duration of the programme will act as main contact with UNIPhD students.

Our external Virtual Mobility and Exchange Expert (VEEM), Professor Miriam Hauck, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics in the Department of Languages at the Open University (London), has been appointed to provide support in tackling any potential mobility needs of our UNIPhD ESRs.