Structure
Within the framework of the Heidelberg Karlsruhe Strategic Partnership (HEiKA), the KIT and Heidelberg University began a close collaboration in their Early Career support measures in 2018, drawing together the competencies of Heidelberg University’s Graduate Academy and the Karlsruhe House of Young Scientists at the KIT.
The Graduate School further intensifies this productive collaboration of two of Germany’s most prestigious universities.
The HEiKA Graduate School offers a comprehensive training framework, including:
- Development plan
- Mentoring
- Annual research conferences in rotating subfields of our Cluster
- Annual retreats for young researchers
Benefits
With our Early Career Program, we lay out a holistic concept that aims at developing a team spirit among the Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers and encourages them to work on joint projects. Furthermore, participants learn about instrumentation, techniques, and approaches available in other Cluster groups, thereby expanding their horizon and skillset.
We aim to recruit the best international talents for the HEiKA Graduate School and prepare them for a highly interdisciplinary research field as well as the demands and challenges in industry and academia.
3D Additive Manufacturing is a field with a high growth potential, thus providing an interesting and manifold avenue for research and development. It is therefore not only a fascinating field of academic research, but concern industrial applications, as well.
The variety in 3D Additive Manufacturing and, in consequence, of the Cluster, necessitates interdisciplinary cooperation. Members of the Graduate School work with distinguished scientists across disciplinary borders in a stimulating and enriching environment.
Mentoring
In order to provide a clear and defined structure of supervision, every Doctoral Researcher in the HEiKA Graduate School has a Mentoring Committee, which they choose together with their supervisor in order to ensure expert advice and guidance.
These individual Mentoring Committees regularly consist of the supervising PI, one or two PIs that are topically close and one Postdoctoral Researcher. The structure of the Mentoring Committee aims at increasing cross-thrust collaborations and provides multiple angles of feedback to the mentee.
The Mentoring Committee meets with the Doctoral Researcher annually to discuss the research progress and plan the next steps towards the doctorate.
Research Training
The HEiKA Graduate School offers a variety of modules in different areas of expertise to allow Doctoral Researchers to tailor their education to their own needs and interests.
The Scientific Modules offered by the Cluster are developed by the Principal Investigators and Postdoctoral Researchers of the Cluster as well as Cluster-adjacent scientists from Heidelberg University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This ensures a perfect fit with the research conducted in the Cluster. Therefore, the training is both high quality and state-of-the-art.
Due to the small number of participants, an excellent student-teacher ratio is achieved and modules can be adapted to the needs of the participating doctoral researchers.
The Scientific Modules are part of a comprehensive approach that not only advances the core scientific skill set of the participants, but also their abilities in science communication as well as management topics.
