The Research Department Solvation Science is committed to providing an excellent education in a highly international environment and with strong emphasis on current research. The strategy for achieving this goal is reflected in recent initiatives:
For students with a bachelor degree, an international Master's program (iMOS, international Master Molecular Sciences) with strong links to Solvation Science has been established, with lab work and courses taught completely in English.
For PhD students, a thematically focused international Graduate School Solvation Science (GSS) was founded as part of RESOLV, with currently around 100 doctoral students. Central missions of the GSS are: high-profile research, early scientific independence, internationalization by networking, forming a culture of “universitas”, and gender mainstreaming. Doctoral students benefit from the challenging and inspiring international high level research environment. Each of the graduate students is guided from the beginning by at least two senior thesis advisors. They act as mentors with complementary expertise selected from respective fields to match the need of the research topic of the individual candidate’s thesis project.
The graduate students attend regular scientific workshops and even self-organize them, like the GSS Summer School that includes practice days in the labs as well as seminars with internationally renowned speakers in the field of Solvation Science. Training of important soft skills and leadership skills is a mandatory part of the GSS schedule as well as a three month international internship at one of the RESOLV partner institutions.
The students further get into contact with renowned researchers from abroad and benefit from their expertise by attending lectures when the international faculty members of RESOLV regularly visit the RUB (e.g. as part of the GSS summer school). Furthermore, these researchers from abroad can be selected as co-supervisors of graduate students within the GSS and may also act as members of the dissertation committee or referees. Integration of an international faculty is considered as a valuable measure to foster new collaborations and also an important part of the quality management of doctoral education in the Research Department Solvation Science.
An international internship is mandatory both within iMOS and the GSS. The students participate in a project at a university abroad and get to know differences and similarities compared to academia in Germany. The experience is shared with younger scholars both in person at GSS events and in the form of an account as part of the online platform "Solvation Science Alive" with blog and podcast.