1 Executive summary

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The main strength of the program: This Ph.D. program is situated at two universities (Geneva and Lausanne) both with an excellent reputation for neuroscience research. Many of the involved groups and PIs are well-known and are working at the forefront of modern neuroscience research. The neuroscientific research at both universities (Geneva and Lausanne) are working in different areas comprising cognitive neuroscience in humans, clinical neurosciences, brain imaging, animal research, computational neurosciences, and modern approaches for neurorehabilitation (e.g., brain-computer interface techniques). Thus, this Ph.D. program offers a wide but nevertheless excellent portfolio of neuroscience approaches. In addition, the labs are excellently equipped, the Ph.D. students well and satisfactorily paid, and supervised. Although different faculties and universities are involved in this program, the organization is excellent. All in all, this is indubitable an excellent Ph.D. neuroscience program which is hard to find internationally.
The main weaknesses of the program: The main weaknesses of the program are seen in two aspects which strongly depend on each other: (1) several of the current and former Ph.D. students do and did not realize that they had the opportunity to participate in this excellent program. They rather believe that they would participate in a more or less standard and/or ordinary Ph.D. program. In the opinion of the reviewers, this mainly depends on the fact that (and this is the 2nd identified weakness of this program) this program has not been advertised appropriately in the scientific world.
Main recommendations : The reviewers recommend that this Ph.D. program should be advertised more efficiently. By advertising this program more intensively this will attract more candidates which will increase competition for the open Ph.D. positions. This will at the end increase the intellectual and motivational quality of the candidates and thus the entire program. An interesting side effect of the improved attractiveness will also enhance the “esprit de corps” of the enrolled students, which will also have a positive impact on the student’s motivation. Besides this major recommendation we suggest some more or less minor improvements (e.g., including a mentoring program, fixed semester dates, mandatory courses in scientific writing, ethics, and programming).