News

17. January 2023
TU Vision – TUesday Lounge Talk
“TU Wien Doctoral School - space and structure for scholarship”

Students pursuing a doctorate at TU Wien either do so in “stand-alone mode” or within a structured PhD program such as in a doctoral school. Participants will discuss the benefits and challenges of either model, the currently active programmes at TU Wien and the purpose of a doctoral school. Can too much structure impede creativity? Could certain features be made available for all PhD projects? What will the PhD project of the future look like?

 

Participants:

– Chiara Ceriotti, Vienna BioCenter PhD Program Manager

– Dimosthenis Giannopoulos, ENROL Doctoral College

– Ioanna Giouroudi, Doctoral School

– Eugenijus Kaniusas, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology

– Andreas Steininger, Embedded Computing Systems

– Stefan Szeider, Algorithms and Complexity

– Hilda Tellioglu, Artifact-based Computing & User Research

Moderator: Philipp Thurner, Lightweight Design and Structural Biomechanics

Prof. Andreas Steininger, Chair of the Doctoral College “Resilient Embedded Systems”, pointed out that it makes no sense forcing the students into a structure. But one should inform the PhDs about what is the intention of the structure e.g. at welcome events. It is not to be nasty if students are asked to do more than the 18 ETCS it is to guide them. Push into some guidance but also pull with good quality of courses. PhDs must chose courses because it also takes a critical mass of PhDs to deliver a course.

He emphasized the advantages of structured studies, e.g. that PhDs have deadlines like the Proficiency Evaluation. So one can react in good time if something doesn’t go according to the plan.

Prof. Steininger statedanother advantage of a co-supervisor. Since interdisciplinarity will become more and more important a PhD will benefit from two or more experts from different scientific fields