The "TU Wien Doctoral School" covers the entire structured doctoral education at the TU Wien. Within this framework, TU Wien ensures the implementation of multidisciplinary, structured doctoral programmes on the basis of the curriculum for doctoral studies in Social and Economic Sciences // Technical Sciences // Natural Sciences. The aim is to provide doctoral students with a strong and productive environment to become competent, responsible and independent researchers who are able to make a significant contribution at the forefront in their respective fields.

For this purpose once a year TU Wien doctoral programs are announced for TU Wien researchers via “Mitteilungsblatt”. They aim to provide young scientists with an excellent and interdisciplinary education based on top international research.
Essential for the application and financing is a strong multidisciplinary training concept over at least 3 years for max. 10 highly motivated students in top research areas of the TU Wien represented by 5 to 10 researchers as faculty. The decision is made by the University Board.
All these thematic programs are bundled in single PhD Schools (e.g. TU Wien Informatics Doctoral Schoo, opens an external URL in a new windowl) under the umbrella of “TU Wien Doctoral School”.

Structured doctoral programs at TU Wien are embedded in a focused and consistent research framework with clear structures regarding selection and admittance, education and transferable skills, supervision, dissertation agreement, progress reports, as well as evaluation and completion criteria. The given structure provides opportunities and sufficient guidance for the students to work and contribute to the given field, working on relevant, non-trivial problems and issues. It is completed with a dissertation that is independently evaluated and publicly defended to a doctoral thesis evaluation committee and public audience (assessment in the viva voce).

The doctoral programs at TU Wien are therefore structured into five phases:

  • Enrolment (announcement, selection and admittance of candidates)
  • Start-up (thesis presentation)
  • Study phase with Mid-term event (profiency exam)
  • Submission of thesis (evaluation)
  • Defense and doctoral degree