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GSC 81:  International Graduate School of Science and Engineering (IGSSE)

Term from 2006 to 2019
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 24184165
 
Final Report Year 2020

Final Report Abstract

Since its founding in 2006, the International Graduate School of Science and Engineering (IGSSE) has been dedicated to funding innovative interdisciplinary and international research closely linked to excellent doctoral training. Its strengths in promoting science and young talent as well as its international orientation prompted the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2016 to establish this graduate school as a permanent institution for initiating and implementing major strategic decisions. Over the past 13 years of funding, the IGSSE has distinguished itself as a role model in many areas. Its composition of doctoral candidates from almost all TUM departments led to the development of internationally recognised quality-assurance standards for doctorates at TUM and, in 2009, to the founding of the university-wide TUM Graduate School (TUM-GS). Today, the IGSSE is one of its 8 thematic graduate centres with 190 members pursuing their doctorate in almost all of the 15 TUM departments. Scientifically speaking, the IGSSE aims to give emerging research fields at the interface of ‘classical’ science and engineering a head-start, creating a multi-thematic rather than a singlethematic graduate school. This concept has been cast into small, flexible project teams, based on either cross-departmental or international collaboration. The IGSSE calls for new project proposals annually, jointly submitted by either at least two senior scientists from different TUM departments or by one TUM researcher together with an international partner. Once granted, researchers of all career stages form a research group of up to 10 members, working towards a common research goal. By 2019, 151 project teams had commenced their research, of which 67 were collaborative projects with international partners. Within the graduate-school structure, the project-team concept provides doctoral researchers with exceptional cross-disciplinary experience. The complementing IGSSE qualification programme reflects the challenges of interdisciplinary teamwork and offers training that addresses collaboration and communication across the scientific disciplines, national borders, and towards the society at large. In addition, young postdoctoral researchers benefit from the IGSSE concept, in that it utilises them as project team leaders (PTL) to coordinate the team’s progress. This position is an early opportunity for TUM postdocs to take on responsibility for a small research group by managing the project team’s research activities and its budget. For a substantial number of them, this role has helped promote their academic careers, both with respect to follow-up funding for their own research projects and to climbing the academic career ladder. Since 2007, IGSSE has supported around 450 doctoral and around 180 postdoctoral researchers. For the future, this flexible graduate-school concept will remain TUM’s hub for innovative research and exceptional doctoral training across all TUM departmets.

Link to the final report

https://dx.doi.org/10.2314/GBV:1697017835

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