00000 0000000000000000      

 

 

 
   
 

PhD in Neurobiology
 
 
Doing your PhD on a neurobiological topic offers an excellent means of entry into a scientific career. Completion of a doctorate takes 3 years and is organised as a graduate program (PhD program). The most important part of this program is the research project that each student undertakes independently in a Neuroscience research group. During this time each student will be allocated one or two supervisors and can also take advantage of the expertise and infrastructure of the rest of the research group. Students are also offered a program of lectures, seminars and courses to further their understanding of relevant methods and concepts. Students will also have the chance to present their research results at international conferences and meet neurobiologists from other countries.
 
The time spent completing a PhD is the most important part of a student's education. During this time, students learn how the process of discovering scientific knowledge works. It is therefore of utmost importance that students complete their PhD in an excellent research group that they feel comfortable with.
 
The neuroscience research groups in Heidelberg provide PhD students with numerous options. The faculties for Biosciences and Medicine and other non-university research centres (MPI, EMBL, and DKFZ) offer multifaceted neurobiological research approaches. The areas of research range from the molecular cell physiology of neurons to the analysis of neuronal networks to the question of cognitive research. Students can choose any of these areas to qualify themselves for a scientific career.
 
 

Commencement of a PhD:

Currently the prerequisite for acceptance into the PhD is the successful completion of a Masters degree. However, efforts are being made to shorten the time from Bachelor Degree to PhD. The aim is to offer a one year postgraduate course. This year will correspond with the first two semesters of the Masters Degree. After this year students should then be able to directly change to the graduate program. This path is as yet not available. For information about the current rules please refer to the
 
faculty PhD Website.
 
During the Masters Degree students will be kept informed by their lecturers on potential PhD projects and options available in their respective research groups. Students are advised to discuss plans for a PhD with their lecturers as soon as possible, because it can take up to 10 month to organise personnel in the research groups.

Working as a Doctoral Student:

The doctorate starts with students and their supervisor/s defining a research topic and discussing a course of action. Following that, students must devise hypotheses, plan their experiments and become acquainted with the necessary methods and techniques. After that comes the exciting time of experimentation - actual scientific work, where students make discoveries that cannot be found in any textbook or in any scientific publication. Students then share their findings with other scientists. The process of disseminating information usually starts with students presenting informal lab presentations at their institute. Then students will prepare posters or short talks for scientific conferences. And finally students write their own paper for a scientific journal. In third year students then write their thesis in which they document their work in detail. The PhD finishes with the disputation, where students will present and discuss their work in front of four examiners.

What Next?

As Neurobiology Post Docs, students have the opportunity to work in many countries. Neurobiology is the largest and fastest growing biological discipline - an assessment based on the size, frequency and diversity of international conferences with neuroscientific topics. The job market in this area is therefore large and varied. Post Docs have the choice between basic or applied research between the borders of Biology and Medicine, Biology and Physics, Biology and Information Technology, Biology and Psychology and many other research areas that have developed or will still develop through the study of the nervous system.