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Educational aims and achievements

This program offers a unique, competitive and integrated education in both microbial ecology, functional genomics and geochemistry / ecosystem research. It relies upon the interdisciplinary teaching activities of the participating faculty that covers major theoretical aspects, as well as extensive technical training in the proposed research fields.

The students benefit from the integrative approaches offered by the participating Departments and their exceptional infrastructure, as well as from the collaborations with external colleagues.

In addition, the students obtain extra training through custom-made workshops organized on topics related to their research. The workshops and seminars foster interactions among DK students, which were the basis for fruitful in-house collaborations.

Our program that was outlined as an interdisciplinary and exceptional training has attracted some of the best and most dedicated students to Vienna. Most of them got particularly interested in the interdisciplinary approaches, but also in the strong focus on one theme (Nitrogen cycling) and the training in multiple internationally renowned laboratories. Coming with these high expectations, the DK students were primed from the beginning to foster interactions and collaborations and to ensure they would profit from an excellent education in the field.

Departing from tradition of most PhD programs in house, all DK-funded PhD fellows spent and are still spending a considerable time of their work in a secondment laboratory. This opportunity has tremendous influence on their personal development and on the quality of their project.

In particular, through the secondments students

·        expand the conceptual breadth of their projects

·        employ technical approaches not available in house and

·        develop independent and critical thinking about their research

All teaching and training activities specifically offered within this program is also available to other PhD students and researchers at the University. The lectures and workshops were attended by other students and sometimes other faculties.

For detailed educational measures, please see here.

 

 

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