PhD Handbook

8 3 COMPLETING YOUR PHD WITHIN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION Completing your PhD at a Helmholtz institute, you will likely face different organizational and personal challenges and run through several steps of bureaucracy and decisions. This chapter covers information that you may need to successfully settle and perform your PhD project at a Helmholtz center. 3.1 BECOMING A DOCTORAL CANDIDATE There are a number of pre-requisites for starting your PhD. Not only you need to find the appropriate supervisor (or supervisory committee), but also you need to be accepted as a doctoral candidate in a university department or faculty. As a PhD student, you pursue an academic degree that can only be awarded by a university. Non-university institutions such as the Helmholtz Association are therefore unable to officially award your PhD. This is why you usually need to be matricula- ted at a university alongside your work on your thesis at the scientific institute. Most Helmholtz institutes and centers are closely affiliated with the universities in the same city/region and it is widely accepted that students enroll there within 6 months of starting their PhD. Note that this is not done automatically and you must contact the university yourself to enroll. Germany is a land where everyday life involves a lot of paperwork and enrolling in a university is no different. To enroll, there is usually an application form and the university may also require your academic records, certificates as well as the proof of support of your supervisor. The exact regulati- ons vary between universities as well as between states or countries, so see the “Promotionsrichtlinie” (i.e. guidelines) at your university for more information. Also the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) website is a useful source of information (www.daad.de). Ask at your center if someone in-house or at the international center at the university can help you with the enrollment process. It is usually a good idea to discuss with your group leader who your committee members should be. Many groups have a standard set of committee members who are familiar with the type of work done in the lab. In other cases, your group leader might have useful suggestions for a good committee. Other- wise, it is your own job to find members for your committee. 3.2 WHAT DOES A PHD THESIS CONSIST OF? There are different structures that the PhD written thesis can take. One of the more common structures is a compilation of the publications produced during the PhD which support the thesis, and also includes a synthesis of the results. One pub- lication is usually one chapter. A benefit is the feedback from co-authors and reviewers during the publication process. Another common way to produce a PhD thesis is the completion of a monograph. It is a single author contribution to a single subject and is a record of the state of knowledge in a particular subject area. Your university (or supervisor) might specify which you must do, and this should be discussed early in your PhD. See the “Promotionsordnung” of your university and the “Promotions- richtlinie” at your center for more information (i.e. regulations governing doctoral studies). JUN HELMHOLTZ JUNIORS l 3 COMPLETING YOUR PHD WITHIN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION

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