Topic of the doctoral dissertation can be defended after mandatory courses are passed, and must be defended by the end of the second year of the study programme. Procedure is as follows

1. Student submits (to Office of doctoral studies) two originally signed hard copies of English version of form Dr.Sc.-01, and two originally signed hard copies of Croatian version of the same form Dr.Sc.-01. Both English and Croatian forms should be additionaly sent to Office via email.
2. Council of doctoral studies recommends the mentor and defence committee to the Council of either Physics or Geophysics department, which appoints the committee.
3. Student, within one month after committee is appointed, publicly defends the topic of dissertation. Time, place and title of the dissertation should be emailed to the Office, which takes care of announcing the defence at least eight days in advance.
4. After defence, all members of the committee sign the Certificate of the public defence of the dissertation topic, which is then brought to the Office by the president of the committee.
5. Within three months from the appointment, committee submits to the Department council (via the Office), the evaluation of the defended topic, on a form Dr.Sc.-02. (two originally signed English versions and two originally signed Croatian versions) 
6. After acceptance of the positive evaluation by the department council, both Dr.Sc.-01 and Dr.Sc.-02 forms are sent to the Senate of the University of Zagreb which grants the final approval of the topic of dissertation. (This step can take several months!)

Note: Title of the actual dissertation has to be completely identical to the title of the topic of dissertation as approved by the University Senate. If for some reason title of the final dissertation must be changed, repeat of the step 6 above is necessary!

After passing all the exams and presenting the doctoral seminar on the third year, student can submit doctoral dissertation for evaluation. At that point at least one scientific paper resulting from the work on dissertation, with doctoral student as main or one of the main authors, should be accepted for publication in a respected international journal. (This is not a strict requirement for submitting the dissertation for evaluation, but is a strict requirement for the actual defence.). Procedure is as follows

1. Student submits to the Office of doctoral studies:
   • Form for submission of dissertation for evaluation
   • Letter from the mentor, agreeing to the procedure
   • Dissertation itself in electronic form (PDF)
2. Council of doctoral studies proposes the committee for evaluation of dissertation to the Department council, which appoints this committee
3. Committee, within three months from the appointment and receipt of the dissertation, should submit (via the Office) the evaluation of dissertation on the form Dr.Sc.-10  (two originally signed English versions and two originally signed Croatian versions)
4. Public defence of the dissertation is organized within two months after Department council accepts positive evaluation by the Committee for evaluation of dissertation and appoints the Committe for defence of dissertation.

Recent dissertations are available from the

• Repository of the Faculty of Science

Older dissertations are listed on this page.