Helmholtz Graduate Schools and Helmholtz Research Schools

The options for doctoral students at the Helmholtz Research Centres are an excellent qualitative and quantitative addition to the existing range of choices available in Germany. However, these programmes should be regarded as complementary to university-based training rather than as competition, not least simply because their capacities are much smaller.

The Association aims to set uniform standards for the supervision of doctoral students, to ensure that all research centres offer training of equally high quality. This means setting parameters that will provide all doctoral students with professional guidance by senior researchers and enable them to work independently within a well-structured framework, regardless of their research institute. These parameters include the goal that dissertations be completed within three years and providing expert supervision by a PhD committee and firm funding for the three-year period, with the rights and obligations of both the PhD students and the institution laid out from the outset in a "doctorate contract". Integrating partners from the universities into the PhD committees ensures close collaboration between supervising researchers at the Helmholtz Research Centres and university lecturers on issues relating to the respective dissertations. Moreover, the doctoral students are actively supported in gaining teaching experience at a university level.

The Helmholtz Research Centres are closely involved in a variety of structured training programmes, such as the DFG's national and international graduate schools, the International Max Planck Research Schools, EU programmes and the graduate schools of the universities participating in the excellence initiative. In addition, the Helmholtz Association has launched a new excellence programme in cooperation with universities, which is financed by the Initiative and Networking Fund and combines structured training and the promotion of outstanding doctoral students: the Helmholtz Research Schools. In these schools, highly talented doctoral students, who are chosen by means of a highly selective procedure, have the opportunity to acquire outstanding skills equipping them for careers in management positions, both in science and the business world. In addition to a three-year scientific programme, the curriculum includes a range of courses aimed to foster professional qualification and personal development, which are attended by all students in the Research Schools, regardless of their research field. In teaching these complementary skills, the Helmholtz Research Schools go a step further than other programmes for structured doctoral training. A key feature of the Helmholtz Research Schools is that doctoral students, scientific supervisors and teaching staff are all selected strictly on the basis of excellence.

The first three Research Schools were established in 2006 and 2007, with two more scheduled to open in 2008.

In addition to the Helmholtz Research Schools, the first Helmholtz Graduate Schools were founded to promote structured doctoral training on a high level. They offer group seminars, lectures, internships, etc., providing every PhD candidate with key professional and scientific qualifications. Whereas the Helmholtz Research Schools are small units with a limited scientific programme for up to 25 doctoral students per annual intake, the Helmholtz Graduate Schools provide a roof under which a varied number of curricula in different fields, or across disciplines, can find a home, depending on the size and nature of the research centre. Helmholtz Research Schools, for example, or even parts of the Marie Curie and other programmes, can form these curricula as sub-elements, i.e. the research schools are one element of the graduate schools. Interdisciplinary elements of doctoral training within a single research centre can be developed within a single graduate school, e.g. standard selection procedure for all doctoral students, development of a credit points system, design of curriculum guidelines on the basis of joint standards, teaching of key scientific and professional skills, development of an alumni concept, marketing, etc. The Helmholtz Graduate Schools also boast outstandingly professional and efficient management.