PhD students will benefit from being part of the Oldenburg graduate school OLTECH (Graduate School Science, Medicine and Technology). OLTECH provides tailored programs for PhD students that cover subject specific courses, courses on communication and knowledge transfer, and interdisciplinary competencies courses. In courses like Imaging Techniques in Medicine, Time Series Analysis, Complex Network Analysis, Neuroimaging Data Analysis and Matlab or Python Programming, and in seminars and lectures on neuromodulation, neurorehabilitation or health services research, PhD students can extend and deepen subject specific skills and knowledge. Courses targeted at improving communication and knowledge transfer include for instance advanced presentation skills courses, courses on didactics and on science communication, or German language courses for non-native speakers. Courses aiming to support interdisciplinary competencies include courses on career development in- and outside academia, on project management and on data privacy, ethics, and good clinical practice, to give just a few examples. To complete the OLTECH curriculum, PhD students will have to earn a total of 30 credit points (CP), with a minimum of 12 CP for courses on subject specific skills, a minimum of 6 CP for communication and knowledge transfer, and a minimum of 6 CP for courses on interdisciplinary competencies. How this could look like in a fictious PhD student is shown in the illustration.

Being a PhD student in our RTG also means that you will benefit from a number of measures aiming at supporting networking, internationalization and mobility early on in your career. PhD students will complete a mandatory visit of another lab, a visit to a rehabilitation center, or another RTG-related health facility of at least four weeks. Visits will be supported through the provision of travel grants. Students of the RTG will have the lead in the organization of the yearly RTG summer school. Networking will be promoted by student-let invitations of internationally renowned researchers to the summer schools or the more frequent RTG research colloquium, and by interacting with the RTG advisory board consisting of national and international experts in neuromodulation and neurorehabilitation research. Networking, internationalization and mobility will be furthermore supported by funds for participating in national and international conferences. International PhD students and scientists will be supported settling in by the International Office of the University of Oldenburg.

The RTG aims to support PhD students in their career advancement and career choices. Aside from the offers of the graduate school OLTECH, the provision of opportunities to network and to gain working experience in other labs or in the clinical field nationally and internationally, we will support students in gaining first experiences in securing own funding and in following up research ideas by giving PhD students the opportunity to compete for small internal research budget grants. All PhD students can actively contribute to research-based teaching, such as supervision of lab projects or master’s theses.