Thank you for your post. Yes, the initial advertisement was stated as an Early Stage Researcher for pre-doctoral training, and on the interview my PI said that is my choice if i want to be enrolled with a university. But afterwards he made it look as if i had no choice but to enroll. Anyway, as you saw, no training is provided whatsoever. Two other phd student with an MC are here, they were kicked out from their lab because their PI was fired[My PI is the head of the Mol. biology department], they are now in another department in the same institute and they are just paying tuition fees in universities abroad, and doing practically nothing.

Hello everyone,

So here is the story. Last year i finished my master's degree, and got accepted for a PhD with a Marie Curie studentship in order to study bioinformatics. The studentship was actually awarded to a private research institute and when they posted the studentship i got it.

So i have a number of problems,

i am here for almost a year now, and since i joined this centre, i never got any true training, no lectures, i am not even registered with a university [because the institute itself does not award PhDs]. When i first came here, they told me what project were they working on and they gave me this set of data to work on. They also pointed a bioinformatician within the institute and then they said do the analysis. Notice that i was just a biologist with no experience in bioinformatics whatsoever. Is that how a PhD should be? Shouldn't there be a guidance, some formal training? All i did, i did it all by myself by clinging onto this bioinformatician guy until he is fed up and help me.

The other problem is the financial. I am pretty aware of the fact that a Marie Curie studentship is a very prestigious one. Because of the economical crisis of the country, i never receive my salary on time, it's been a year and i always receive my salary half at the beginning of the month and the rest at the end of the month. The thing is that i know that the funding comes on time but i never receive it on time, plus they spend zero for my education, which is supposed to be included in the studentship [e.g i am still waiting for a good PC to work on and still working on my laptop]. Should i make a deal out of it?

I am in the verge of quitting the whole thing! The worst part? My supervisor hates me, he thinks i do not work enough!

Any advice will be appreciated =)

N.