At the beginning of the Doctoral Program each student is assigned a tutor who supervises the course of his/her studies. The tutor is appointed by the PhD panel. During the whole period of the PhD program, the tutor supervises and supports the preparation and training of the student, and takes care to verify the good quality of his/her research activities. The tutor will manage to schedule periodical meetings with the student, in order to assess the progress in the research program.

In general, the first year of the programme is mainly devoted to a review of the available literature related to the research project the PhD students proposed in their enrolment procedure, preliminary research on its experimental feasibility, together with the acquisition of basic technical and scientific knowledge on standard methodologies.

In the second year, specific experiments have to be designed and realized by the students under the supervision of their tutor, so to end up with a set of comprehensive and self-consistent experimental datasets.

The third year is mainly devoted to the analysis, elaboration and discussion of the gathered experimental results, as well as to the writing of the final thesis.

At the end of each year, a general assembly of the PhD program is organized. All of the students are asked to give the PhD panel an oral presentation, summarizing their latest experimental activities and results. An overall evaluation is performed by the tutors and the members of the PhD panel. Upon approval of the presented work, the students are allowed to enter the following year of their PhD program. For students in their 3rd year, such an approval implies the admission to the PhD final exam.