The six Milestones come after the MILESTONE ZERO. If necessary, the last meeting is repeated every six months before the admission to the "final exam" (or defence or viva).
WARNING 01 - Each document to be prepared is a creative work, not a mere bureaucratic step. Your best critical thinking skills are required for each of them.
WARNING 02: Candidates will be asked to upload the documents few weeks before the meeting date, in order to give reviewers enough time to read and study their work.
WARNING 03: Start your work as soon as possible, not few weeks before the deadlines, as continuous evolutionary task.
MILESTONE ZERO - The "Research and Training Plan" (R&TPlan)
The Milestone Zero is the first official meeting of the new Candidates with the Board. During this meeting, they have to present themselves, their research proposal (as agreed by their proposed Supervisor) and their Research and Training Plan.
The area/field
The first step for each Candidate is to find a Supervisor (even a provisional one) to discuss and to set the Candidate's Research Area or Field. It may be a first provisional PhD Thesis Title or just a first set of keywords ... followed by a first statement: «I am going to deal with ... I aim to ...».
In the Italian Academy, each Supervisor is identified with his/her SSD, the "Settore Scientifico Disciplinare", i.e. the area of research to which he/she is accredited. Supervisor's SSD is inherited by the Candidate but the SSD always has a too broad area for a PhD thesis and the first thing to do (with his/her Supervisor) is to limit everyone's field of work.
The R&TPlan
The Research and Training Plan is presented at your Milestone Zero Meeting and will be reviewed at every End of the Year (EoY) Meeting. It consists of a simple table, accompanied by explanatory comments, in which Candidates are expected to list all the activities to be performed in the following years, their future work, in a reasonable detail: every activity with a training and research value for his/her PhD thesis as well as for future professional capacities: