Mastering the Art of Research

Research is an art as much as a science. The Elite Graduate Programme teaches both, through the following means:

Integrated courses

Both vision and technical skill are required to conceive of original and relevant research projects and to successfully execute them.
Learning this requires a highly individualized process that strongly benefits from students being taught and supervised intensively in small learning groups.

The programme achieves this by combining the theoretical and experimental standard courses in each semester into one single integrated course – taught by one experimenter and one theorist to only a small number of students – in order to allow for the cross-fertilizations that are so important for conceiving and judging research ideas.

Research Projects

Mastery of any art needs practice galore. Three research projects – injecting students in the programme directly into research teams – will provide for this essential aspect. These take students to the research frontier very early on. Particular emphasis is placed upon gradually enabling students to work independently.

Communication

Masterful communication of great ideas is as important as their conception. Semi-annual Study Days and an annual Study Week provide intensive training for communication of what students have learnt or discovered in their projects. The Study Week will usually highlight one area of physics of foundational importance or an area of current research interest, which will be chosen together by students and professors.
The Study Days and the Study Week are a unique opportunity for students to interact informally with professors, invited guest speakers from all over the world and their fellow research training course students from Regensburg and Erlangen. Many scientific ideas are born in such informal settings

Access to Other Lectures and Seminars

There is nothing lost, only opportunities gained. Students admitted to the Elite Graduate Programme of course continue to have full access to the entire spectrum of advanced courses offered at the University beyond the programme. This way, students in the programme can freely combine courses to suit their individual plans.

Degrees and certificates

Regularly the programme is concluded with a Ph.D., but intermediate B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees and a special certificate by the Bavarian state government are also obtained.