How to address Phd dissertation committee members in email?

3 certainly seems safe. 4 would be really weird in my culture, but I don't know anything about yours.

All of them are acceptable (but 4 and 5 should only be used when your committee consists of males only)

@DannyRuijters That's not so clear. If you are writing an English official/business letter to a group of people or institution, you generally use "Dear Sirs". Anyways, the truth is, it doesn't really matter, these people receive way too many letters to care much about how you call them. At least in math/CS.

2 Answers 2

At my place, they are called SRC (Student Research Committee) members, so that makes the acronym more usable. I always started my emails by writing:

The SRC members part additionally makes the context clear (in addition to the subject of the mail). I prefer Respected to Dear, and while that may (or may not) be culture specific, it never hurts to shower respects on these people, unless of course, they explicitly ask you not to do that.

Additionally, I deliberately avoided Professors. Even though these committee members could generically be addressed as professors, one of my SRC members was technically still not a Professor, but an Associate Professor. While the distinction might be a bit over-strict in this context, I preferred being technically correct too. (That might be a nerdy, personal choice.)