As a PhD candidate, you face many challenges: deliver first-class research that will qualify you to get the PhD degree, organise your own project, manage time and resources, facilitate cooperation with collaborators, cope with unexpected processes in your research, publish papers, write a thesis, and many more.

This online program provides you support, additional to your supervisor’s guidance, and skills, techniques, and specific strategies often required to enable you to conduct and complete a PhD study successfully.

We recommend this course to students in the end of their first year or within their second year. For PhD candidates who are further beyond, the program will provide useful strategies to bring the project to the finish line.

• Plan and manage a PhD project effectively, setting realistic goals and timelines
• Communicate professionally and effectively with supervisors, collaborators
• Apply structured approaches to thesis writing, including planning and executing each section productively
• Develop organizational skills to become a focused and efficient PhD candidate
• Identify strategies for successfully completing the PhD project

PhD students registered to the GSMHS or former PhD programs Health Sciences (PPHS) and Biomedical Engineering. Preference is given to those in the end of their first year or within their second year. 

We have 10 spots available. 

Bärbel Tress (PhD) is an enthusiastic research career expert. She has researched and taught at various universities and research institutes across Europe, served as an Associate Editor for an international peer-reviewed journal, and regularly has supervised students herself. For 15+ years, she has coached and advised PhD candidates from all fields to help them successfully complete their PhD projects on time. She is a graduate of Heidelberg University (DE), obtained a PhD in Landscape Ecology from Roskilde University (DK), and worked as researcher and lecturer at universities in Wageningen (NL) and Aberdeen (UK).

The workload is about 2 hours per week, for 12 weeks, total about 75 hours. You will be flexible when you work on the course material and receive dates for the live sessions on program start. There are 5 live sessions via video call, scheduled approximately every second or third week on a Thursday at 4 pm CET. The first session takes place in week 1. You’ll receive all session dates in the course calendar.

The course awards 3 ECTS after you completed all modules and attended the live sessions. Students need to create a learning contract in advance.