The Doctoral School of Environmental Sciences at the ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Science was founded in 2005. The first PhD students were enrolled in the autumn semester of academic year 2006/07. It is the youngest among the six doctoral schools at the Faculty. Up to now, the heads of the School were Profs. Ádám Kiss (2005-2012), András Galácz (2012-14), Imre M. Jánosi (2014-2020) and Tamás Turányi (2020- ). At present, the School has more than 150 accredited staff members (core members, lecturers and supervisors) and the number of active PhD students is more than 50. Based on these figures, the ELTE Doctoral School of Environmental Sciences is among the first three largest doctoral schools in Hungary (besides Szent István University and University of Szeged) from the total of 6 operating schools in the field of environmental sciences.

The Doctoral School works in close collaboration with the ELTE Centre for Environmental Sciences, which is responsible for the BSc and MSc education at the ELTE Faculty of Science. The administration is managed by the Head of the School, together with the heads of the four Doctoral Programs. The main decision-making body is the Council of Doctoral School.

Emphasis is placed on applying a discipline to complex, multidisciplinary research projects such as changes and influences on water quality, risk analysis and mitigation in different human and natural environments, research on renewable energy, etc. Our students can benefit from the close contacts with several research institutes and environmental authorities, since most of our listed lecturers and potential supervisors have positions at external institutes. Our PhD training programs are of great interest among international applicants resulting in 13-15 foreign students per semester.

The four Programs are strongly research oriented: apart from attending specialized courses, the students are expected to start their research work well before the end of the first year. There are courses and research work in the first two years. This period is concluded with a “complex exam”, where both the academic knowledge and the research progress are assessed. There is only research work in the next two years. At the end of each year the students report about their annual research progress at an internal “conference”, where the language of the presentations is English. During the PhD studies, all students are required to publish at least two papers in peer-reviewed internationally renowned journals of their field, with one of them as a first author. The four-year studies is terminated with the submission and defense of a Thesis.

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