Following, we, as the doctoral representatives, want to forward a message from the student representation regarding the upcoming GARNIX festival.
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We would like to warmly invite you to this year’s GARNIX Open Air! As every year, the festival will take place on the Garching campus and offers a vibrant mix of live music, delicious food, exciting sports and Schafkopf tournaments, and plenty of good vibes. We've also thought of our younger guests: for the little ones, there will be face painting and headphones available for loan. Admission is free.
Besides enjoying the festivities, there is also the opportunity to actively take part in organizing the event: We are always looking for helping hands and would be delighted if some of you would like to sign up for one or more volunteer shifts – group participation is more than welcome! It’s a great opportunity to have fun together, get a behind-the-scenes look, and be part of a unique event.
Starting in early May – as every year – individuals will be able to sign up for volunteer shifts. Additionally, we’d like to give your organization the chance to reserve a group shift (minimum of 4 people) in advance. This way, you and your members can contribute to the event and enjoy the festival as a team.
Of course, your physical well-being during the shift is taken care of – food and drinks are provided free of charge. As a thank you, you’ll receive tokens after each shift that can be redeemed at the festival. Those who take on two or more shifts will also receive a GARNIX t-shirt!
For general planning: GARNIX will take place this year from June 30 to July 4. Group shift registration is open until May 4. During the week, most shifts last around 4 hours and end by 10 PM at the latest.
You can find more information on our website. If you’re interested in supporting us, please let us know your group size and available times to get more details: https://garnix-openair.de/gruppenschichten/
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out! We look forward to increased exchange and participation in Garching!
Konrad Gößmann
Referent für Sanitäter*innen
Helfendenorga GARNIX 25
Technische Universität München
Studentische Vertretung
Arcisstraße 21
80333 München
Tel. +49 89 289 22990
Fax +49 89 289 22900
Mobil +49 152 33691205
The Laura Bassi scholarship programmes are aimed in particular at female postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates who do not have a permanent employment or service contract. They offer an excellent opportunity for committed female scientists to advance their research and realise their projects, which are closely linked to TUM. The scholarships have been specially designed to support talented young female scientists on their academic career path. Call for applications from the beginning of May.
The EWC provides free one-to-one consultations on any and all English texts for all members of the TUM community. These consultations are available online via Zoom and in person at the Munich, Garching, and Weihenstephan campuses. Text is read with the writer and used as a means to teach long-term writing skills. These appointments help develop writing skills in general and focus on all writing forms: application writing, academic writing as well as creative writing.
More information: https://www.sprachenzentrum.tum.de/en/sz/languages/english/english-writing-center/
The university Library is offering a new course directed especially at CIT doctoral candidates.
What: Literature Research Deep Dive – Optimizing Search Strategies for Research and Doctoral Studies. The course offers to show you how to find literature databases that are important for your field, and develop targeted search strategies for literature. You also learn how to access the researched material, quote correctly and publish electronically on our media server mediaTUM.
Topics:
Develop a search strategy
Find journal articles and papers in subject-specific literature databases
Tips for citing
Publish your doctoral thesis on mediaTUM
Requirements: Profound information retrieval skills
When: Thursday, 15.05.2025 10:00 – 13.00
Form: Webinar
Course language: English
Dear doctoral candidates,
multiple CG-CIT forms for proving your qualification elements have just been updated. From now on, please use the new forms for:
- mandatory qualification: Subject-specific courses
- elective qualification: Transferable skills, Scientific presentations, International experience and Teaching experience
You will find the new forms in our Wiki under "Forms" as well as in the entries for the abovementioned individual qualification elements.
Your GC-CIT
Easily upload, structure, version, share and add metadata to data: The virtual research environment TUM DataTagger offers the solution for your data management during the ongoing research process.
The web-based platform includes transparent rights management with flexibly assignable access and editing rights for all project participants. The open source software was developed by the University Library for the specific requirements of researchers. It is available from April 7.
More information: https://www.ub.tum.de/en/datatagger
Please note: The Q&A session planned for 31 March has been canceled!
Are you a doctoral candidate at CIT and still have questions about submitting your dissertation after reading the guidelines and the information in this wiki? Then come to our Q&A session, ask your questions, and learn from the answers to other candidate's questions!
When: Monday, 7 April 2025, 9:.30-10:30
Where: Zoom
Meeting ID: 626 6225 6846
Identification code: 158811
More information:
→ → Deadline: 18.03.2025 ← ←
Dear doctoral candidates of the CIT,
this year we’re rolling out the GC-CIT course program to give you more options for fulfilling the mandatory subject-specific element of your doctorate.
As we want to offer you courses suitable for your research interests, we are asking you to submit course ideas& wishes scientifically close to your research field as well as give recommendations on helpful subject-specific courses you have already participated in.
Furthermore, we are asking for your input regarding suitable dates for the Course Program Launch Day including several subject-specific courses as well as a networking event, which will be organized at the beginning of the winter semester 2025/26.
You will find the details in the survey: SURVEY: GC-CIT subject-specific course program & Course Program Launch (Deadline: 18.03.2025)
Thank you for participating till 18.03.2025!
Your GC-CIT team
Are you a doctoral candidate at CIT and have questions about submitting your dissertation? Then come to our Q&A session, ask your questions, and learn from the answers to other candidate's questions!
When: Monday, 31.03.2025, 9:.30-10:30 UPDATE: We will have to postpone this event. For the new date, check our Wiki blog!
Where: Zoom
Meeting ID: 626 6225 6846
Identification code: 158811
More information:
We are happy to finally share the results of the survey on the supervisory relationship. In August, we asked you, doctoral students within the School of CIT, about your relationship with your supervisor. We are very grateful to all who participated in the survey. We are satisfied with the broad participation of all the departments of our School of CIT. In total, 281 submitted evaluations reached us, with the majority from the computer science department (130), followed by the departments of computational engineering (54), electrical engineering (54), and Mathematics, including TopMath (38).
In summary, the results show that most students are satisfied with their supervision, though some face issues like lack of experts and infrequent meetings. Many work more than the expected 40 hours per week due to self-pressure and workload. The working atmosphere is generally collaborative, but some report negative experiences due to poor leadership skills. In the following, we report the details of the evaluation for different aspects.
Working Conditions
Those who started their PhD endeavour in 2019 or later and plan to finish in 2030 or earlier plan to complete their PhD within an average of 4.17 years.
Regarding the different departments, we see that within the computational engineering department, it is most common to plan with five years for a PhD, which also results in a higher average of the expected duration of a PhD within this department. In contrast, in the mathematics department (incl. TopMath) many students finish after three years.
The first working contract lasts three years in 43.1% of all submissions. We cannot see any major differences between the departments regarding the duration of the first working contract.
An amount of 68% of all study participants enter the doctoral candidacy list (Promotionsliste) within the recommended six months. Still, 5.3% enter the list even after more than two years.
Supervision
Overall, the majority of doctoral students at the CIT are mostly or very satisfied with their relationship to their professor, namely 65.8%. When problems arise in the supervision of doctoral students, the top three voted alternatives have been (multiple alternatives could be selected):
- Not enough experts in my group (38,1%)
- Not enough scientific discussion (26,7%)
- Not enough meetings (25,3%)
In the following, we further investigate certain aspects of the supervisor relationship.
We have asked the study participants whether they can freely decide on the type of dissertation they are going to write (cumulative or monograph). Furthermore, we have asked them whether they find it important to be able to freely choose the type of dissertation to write. Here, we find a small discrepancy: 47.7% can freely choose, whereas 67.3% would wish to freely choose. In particular, 45.3% of those whose supervisor decides on the type of dissertation would like to be in-dependent in their choice.
When it comes to the expectations for writing papers, 73.3% of participants reported that their supervisor does not impose any hard requirement on the number of papers to be published per year. The plot below shows the participants who have a publication requirement of at least one paper a a top-tier conference (y-axis) versus those who think that such a requirement is sensible (x-axis). According to the plot, the vast majority of participants are satisfied with having no or other requirements. More precisely, the actual numbers indicate that they wish to have no require-ment at all.
Next, the participants indicated, how often they meet their supervisor and which frequency they would prefer. On the positive side, we can note that most participants are satisfied with the frequency of the meetings. This is reflected by the fact that the majority of the participants are locat-ed on the diagonal from the lower left to the upper right in the heat map below. However, we see a slight tendency of participants who wish to have meetings more often. This affects all students above the diagonal, and, especially, many participants have meetings with their supervisors on an irregular basis but wish for more regular meetings.
Working Time
Among the participants of the studies who are expected to work 40 hours per week according to their working contract, 71.1% stated that they work more than the expected 40 hours. 23.3% indicated that they work more or equal to 10 extra hours per week. The most prominent reasons for working extra hours, according to the participants, were:
- Intrinsic (self) pressure (70.1%)
- I have too many projects/work tasks in addition to my PhD (40.6%)
- I am worried that I will not finish my PhD before my contract/stipend ends (34.2%)
When we take a look at the working time spent on teaching, we see different results for the four departments. According to the recorded data, doctoral students in the Department of Computational Engineering spent the most on teaching compared to other departments. Students in the Department of Computer Science are, on average, least involved in teaching. The remaining time is, e.g., spent on their own research or project work.
Surroundings
Finally, the survey contained some questions regarding the financial support that is provided by the chair and the general experience of the working atmosphere. To this end, most (78,3%) of the participants stated that their chair provides them with funding so that they can attend all conferences that they need—this implies simultaneously that 21.7% cannot attend all conferences they would need.
Most participants described their working atmosphere as "collaborative" (59.4%), a little less than a fifth (19.1%) as "ambitious", and 6.5% as competitive. The rest provided individual answers. Among those 42 individual answers, 20 participants described their working atmosphere as slightly negative, and six answers indicated a problematic atmosphere, e.g., frustrated, resigned, hostile. As a reason for a sub-optimal working atmosphere, often, the leadership skills of the supervisors are criticized.
We, the doctoral representatives, thank again all participants for these useful insights and welcome everyone to drop us a message if they want to provide any feedback or encounter a problem, e.g., within their supervisory relationship.
Registration for the seminars, which will take place from March to April 2025, opens on January, 15th.
Please note that the registration process for TUM-GS Kick-Off seminars in Raitenhaslach has changed from a first-come-first-served booking process to a random assignment of places. You will be able to apply for a place during the one-week booking phase. From these applications, we will select at random who gets a fixed place in the Kick-Off.
More information: tumgs21:Auftaktseminar