Qualification - JuDocS Transferable Skills Courses
JuDocS offers training and support to all doctoral researchers for conducting independent research and working alongside scientists and specialists. In addition, the training programme provides the opportunity to gain qualifications for a further career in or outside a scientific setting. Our courses provide professional, interdisciplinary expertise, helping you to gain social competencies that are of crucial importance within a professional environment, be it in science, business, or research management.
All new doctoral researchers who are supervised at Jülich and spend more than 50% of the working hours for their doctorate at Forschungszentrum Jülich must participate in the transferable skills curriculum. The mandatory and optional courses are divided into four thematic areas and doctoral researchers will spend a minimum total of 8 days during a three-year doctoral project for the mandatory part. In addition, they can register for two more optional courses if their supervisor agrees.

Please note: The structure and content of the curriculum changed in July 2021. Therefore, the basic course “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” is only mandatory for doctoral researchers who started their project on 1 July 2021 or later. Doctoral researchers who participate in the JuDocS Curriculum, but started their project before 1 July 2021 are welcome to participate voluntarily.
Also, the course “Management of a Doctoral Project” is equivalent to the course “Doing Science”
General information on the courses:
- The courses are held entirely in English.
- Optional courses can be chosen after consultation with the supervisor.
- For all courses, we give a recommendation as to when it is best to participate in them. However, since the course of a doctoral research is of course very individual, you are basically free to decide when to attend our workshops.
- After completing the transferable skills courses and submission of the doctoral thesis, doctoral researchers receive a certificate.
- Confirmation of participation in a specific course can be issued on demand. Please contact judocs-training@fz-juelich.de.
- The costs of the courses are borne centrally by Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Course requirements by other programs/universities and recognition
If there is a course programme or requirements specified by the university/faculty, doctoral researchers should check beforehand, if the courses taken at Forschungszentrum Jülich will be accepted.
We are currently working on mutual acceptance agreements for our courses with our most common university partners, in order to make sure that they will accept our courses in their programmes. All current agreements can be found here.
If courses with similar content to the JuDocS courses have already been taken at the university, we are happy to check if we can accept them for our programme. Please send your certificate of participation for the respective course(s) to judocs-training@fz-juelich.de.
If you need ECTS-Credits in your PhD programme at your university, your university/faculty can calculate them based on the amount of working units given on the JuDocS certificate/confirmation of participation. Please be aware that you will usually not receive more than 0.3 - 0.6 points for one of our courses!
Please clarify with your university/faculty how many ECTS-Credits you need to provide in your university programme and how many points you can receive for our courses.