Giving a talk is both an essential part of the profession of a ph.d. student and a task that ph.d. students are not likely to be trained in. Moreover, giving a talk let students to collect relevant feedback from both other students and professors, likely helping ph.d. students in their research path. For this reason, the ph.d. program organizes ph.d. talks, which consist of short sessions with 1-3 presentations given by ph.d. students. The sessions are advertised to the department, so everyone (from other ph.d. students to professors) are invited to attend and interact during the sessions.
The talks are proposed by the ph.d. students. They can happen before presenting papers at conferences, but also completely independently from conference presentations (e.g., just to collect feedback about the ongoing work). We invite each student to propose at least a ph.d. talk during the phd.
In order to propose a talk, a student has to send an email to both the director and the deputy director of the ph.d. program indicating: the period the talk is supposed to be given, the title of the talk, a short abstract of the talk and finally the information whether the talk is linked to a conference presentation or not. The email must be sent 3 or possibly 4 weeks before the period the talk is supposed to take place. This delta is useful to organize the session, possibly involving other students, and to advertise the program to the department.
All PhD students are strongly encouraged to attend ph.d talks.