The Cifre doctorate

The Cifre (Conventions Industrielles de Formation par la Recherche) system allows French companies, local authorities or associations to entrust a doctoral candidate with an assignment in the framework of a research collaboration with an academic research laboratory affiliated to a doctoral school. 

Published on 16/06/2020 - Updated on 5/05/2022

The Cifre doctorate

If you want to obtain a doctorate that will allow you to evolve naturally in two environments with distinct requirements and to build a bridge between the academic and business worlds, the Cifre system is for you. You will be supervised by two supervisors: a thesis director, researcher or lecturer from a research unit at Sorbonne University and a scientific manager or a contact within the company. You will have a fixed-term employment contract of 3 years or even an open-ended contract (CDI).

The assignment that the company will entrust to the doctoral candidate will constitute the doctoral research project. This project will have been defined jointly by the company and the research unit and will have been validated by the doctoral school. It will fall within the framework of a collaboration agreement signed between the university and the company, an agreement which will mainly frame the sharing of intellectual property and the use of the results. 

The ANRT (National Agency for Research and Technology), which manages the CIFRE scheme on behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, provides applicants with offers from companies and proposals for laboratory partnerships to help doctoral candidates to set up their CIFRE project.

It is also the ANRT that examines the applications.