Registration

You are starting a PhD at DESY or Universität Hamburg and want to become a member of the PIER Helmholtz Graduate School? Here you can sign up.

Online membership database 

If you are already doing a PhD at Universität Hamburg or DESY and would like to register as a member in the PIER Helmholtz Graduate School, please read the information below carefully and then submit your data in our online membership database.

How do I benefit from being a member?

The graduate school gives its members privileged access to the facility and reserves fixed slots for them:

• Members can take part in non-specialist events for doctoral candidates, including language courses, career workshops and events for obtaining key skills.
• Members can receive financial assistance so that they can, for example, organise workshops, participate in conferences, conduct research abroad and take their children along when going on official trips.
• Members can also take advantage of other offers such as leisure activities, field trips and the buddy programme.

Members benefit from the graduate school's training programme

• Members receive excellent scientific supervision, thanks to regularly documented meetings between the doctoral candidate and his or her team of supervisors. The meetings help to ensure that the dissertation is quickly completed and of high quality. Mediation services are provided in cases where conflict resolution is required.
• Members increase their professional expertise and obtain key skills through the PhD training programme. A successful completion of the programme requires 17 semester hours (corresponds to 12 Credit Points): A minimum of 14 semester hours in the area of professional skills and 3 semester hours in the area of key skills
• Members’ accomplishments are documented in a transcript of records.
• Detailed information about the training programme.

How can I become a member?

To become a member, you have to be admitted as a doctoral student and conduct your studies in one of the PIER research and competence fields:

• Particle and Astroparticle Physics
• Nanoscience
• Photon Science
• Infection and Structural Biology
• Accelerators
• Theoretical Physics

In agreement with the spokespeople of the graduate school, PhD students who are admitted to do their doctoral studies at other universities as Universität Hamburg may also become members. In ambiguous cases, the steering committee of the graduate school decides whether or not an application for membership will be accepted.

Besides full membership, the graduate school also offers an asscociate membership:

• Associate membership is designed for doctoral candidates who are already members of another graduate programme (e.g. a research training group or a graduate school) and would like to take part in the professional and extracurricular events offered by the PIER Helmholtz Graduate School.
• Doctoral candidates who began writing a doctoral thesis before 1 January 2014 (date on which they were accepted by the PhD Admissions Committee) can become associate members of the graduate school even if they are not taking part in another graduate programme.
• Associate members who are not taking part in another graduate programme should participate in at least one of the graduate school’s professional or extracurricular courses (see 1. I-II) per year.
• The graduate school gives associate members certificates for the courses they have participated in (e.g. the buddy programme or events for obtaining key skills). Associate membership does not involve any obligations.