Support for Doctoral Researchers

Onboarding

All doctoral researchers, independent of their working contract, are registered in JuDocS if they spend more than 50% of the working hours for their doctorate at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Shortly after registration in JuDocS, all doctoral researchers are added to the mailing list (“Doktorandenverteiler”) and receive a welcome email with information and an invitation to the next JuDocS Introduction, which is mandatory for all new doctoral researchers at the FZJ.

We recommend that international doctoral researchers who do not have prior experience with the German academic system also attend the “Science Compass” course within the first six months of their doctoral project in Jülich.

Registration at the University

While doctoral researchers can conduct the research on their project at Forschungszentrum Jülich, graduation can only take place at a university. It is therefore important for all doctoral researchers to establish within the first six months of their project who will be their “Doktorvater/Doktormutter” and to register at the respective university faculty in order to be able to complete the entire doctoral process.

Qualification – JuDocS Transferable Skills Courses

JuDocS offers a programme of courses for transferable skills which includes mandatory and optional courses from four topic areas for all doctoral researchers in Jülich. Participants may receive certificates for all courses or upon completion of the mandatory curriculum (terms of registration and participation). Additionally, the entire curriculum is coordinated with the thematic graduate schools at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Doctoral researchers who are members of these graduate schools can therefore participate in these courses within their programmes and do not have to attend courses twice.

Project Monitoring

Doctoral researchers at Jülich participate in a central monitoring process, which means that they submit regular progress reports to a committee of experienced Jülich scientists who review the progress of the projects. The goal of this process is to support the consistently high standards of doctoral research projects at Jülich and to enable doctoral researchers to start establishing themselves as independent members of the scientific community. Currently the monitoring applies to doctoral researchers with a doctoral contract and will be extended to all doctoral researchers within the next two years.

Counselling in Supervision Conflicts

A committee of 6 Jülich scientists offers open-ended counselling in deadlocked supervision conflicts. Members of the committees are institute heads, experienced supervisors and doctoral researchers who are familiar with the framework conditions for researchers at different career levels and have received basic training in conflict counselling and moderation. All requests to the committee will be treated confidentially.

You can find more general information about the counselling service here.

The contact information of the committee members can be found here.

More Information and Advisory Services

During a doctoral project many different questions can arise, be it about professionally or privately challenging situations or about career prospects. At Forschungszentrum Jülich, there are various persons who can be contacted at any time. If you are unsure who to contact, the DocTeam is always a good place to start and gather information.

Additional useful courses that are not part of the JuDocS curriculum are offered by Human Resource Development, the Career Center, and the Central Library.

Finalizing the Doctoral Project and Graduation

In order to graduate, the thesis needs to be submitted to the doctoral office at the respective university faculty where the further graduation process will take place.

After completing the JuDocS curriculum and submitting the thesis to the university, doctoral researchers can ask for a certificate of the transferable skills courses, which they can use for applications in and outside of the scientific community (terms of registration and participation for JuDocS courses). Please contact judocs-training@fz-juelich.de for this purpose.