Education

Education at EC²/BIG-NSE is very diverse.

Scientific education of course plays the largest role.
However, other aspects of education also receive close attention.
Our students are offered a series of non-scientific activities such as a wide range of soft-skills courses, but also a variety of other activities aimed at developing the personality of our future researchers and managers.

In the following and in the sub-menus, we explain thetimeline of our PhD program and present further highlights of this program. Then we take a look at the daily program. Finally, we provide a list of our alumni, statistics about them, and details on the further course of their careers.

The timeline of our PhD educational program is broken up into two phases:

* Usually a little bit longer, depending on the PhD student's ability to deal with her/his topic.

The curriculum starts with the "initial phase."
During the initial phase, which usually starts in October and finishes in mid-January the following year, the new batch of PhD students is offered a varied program, containing the following elements:

But the educational program includes more than just courses and classes:

However, the program offered by EC²/BIG-NSE does not end with the initial phase. Even during the "research phase", in which our students join their individual research group to perform their PhD research, they regularly receive an invitation to take part in one of the following activities:

During the initial phase, the new batch of students takes part in a daily program consisting of language courses, lectures, excursions, soft skills seminars and social activities.
This program is quite intensive but very rewarding. Once the students are finished with it, they know a good deal more about the cluster, catalysis and other essential skills.
However, by that time they have also grown together into a team of friends which they will keep not only during the following years in Berlin completing their PhD but also possibly during their future career.

To facilitate student participation, the planned daily activities can be found on the EC²/BIG-NSE website, in the "daily program" section.

Click here for an overview of past programs [Old BIG-NSE website].

The latest program can be found here [usually only visible from mid-September to mid-January every year).

The list of alumni can be found here.

Statistics about our alumni, such as how long it took them to finish their PhD, how many publications they wrote, and what kind of positions they found after leaving the doctoral program, can be found here.