FYI: DELPHI policy on Ph.D. theses:

There is no formal allocation of topics, or review of content. That 
is a matter for the student, his supervisor and the university. It 
will usually be the case that the student and supervisor are working 
in some team and will be aware of what other students are doing. In 
this way the supervisor will ensure that the student's work is 
original. It has never been DELPHI policy that the thesis contains 
an official DELPHI result. Very often the thesis will contain an
analysis which was later published in developed form, or it might 
be an analysis that was used as a cross-check.

The agreed custom was that the DELPHI Spokesman was kept informed
about theses submitted.

In general this policy has worked quite nicely, ensuring a good
relationship between the collaborating institutes and the 
collaboration itself. Enforcing of strict rules on theses
might give more "correct" results, but with a large loss on
scientific freedom, which is essential for a Ph.D. thesis.

Very few conflicts have occurred during 10 years of
data analysis with approximately 350 Ph.D. theses and these 
have not damaged the reputation of the DELPHI experiment at all.

For the assignment of topics to individual students this has also 
been up to the local institutes fully to decide. This is less
efficient, but since many institutes have conferred with the physics 
analysis teams before making any decision, the negative impact 
has been rather small for DELPHI. 

I would propose that you just ensure that the analysis which are 
in need of more manpower are highlighted in your collaboration,
and then the students and institutes will follow. Also students that
perform a unique analysis which the collaboration appreciates is
naturally more likely to be assigned an important conference talk.

Best regards, 
Niels Kjaer