PhD & Early Career Program

(AC)³ will take a holistic approach in training and guiding of its early career scientist (students, PhDs, postdocs and future junior group leaders), in an in-depth interdisciplinary framework. The qualification and organizational concepts including the non-university environment of (AC)³ will be synchronized to ensure an internationally recognized education and degree. We will make use of the well-established structures (e.g., supervisory principles) of the involved graduate schools.

All PhD candidates participate in the training programs in the following local graduate school programs:

• The Leipzig Graduate School on Clouds and Radiation (LGS-CAR) at the University of Leipzig in cooperation with TROPOS,
• The Postgraduate Environmental Physics programme (PEP) organized by the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen in cooperation with AWI, and
• The Graduate School of Geosciences (GSGS) established at the University of Cologne, and
• The Helmholtz Graduate School for Polar and Marine Research – POLMAR.

The Annual Scientific Conferences of (AC)³, the Topical Workshops and Scientific Colloquia organized within (AC)³ are regarded as part of the training of the doctoral and post–doctoral students. Guest researchers will take an active role in this regard. In addition, the participation in the planned observational campaigns will be of great educational value for the students. They are introduced to a scientific community far beyond their individual advisor and home institutions, thus establishing efficiently their professional networks at this important career stage.

Similar to the PhD students of the programme also for  young scientists (within their first 8 years of their professional career after completing the PhD) the TR 172 provides an excellent opportunity to increase their international profile and visibility, to establish long–lasting research cooperations, and to strengthen independent research and leadership skills.

Since June 2023, we have new PhD representatives (see above), who followed our previous council. We as a council are representing the concerns and ideas of the PhDs and are the student’s voice in the Scientific Steering Team (SST) meetings among the Professors, PIs and other senior researchers of (AC)³:

• (AC)³ PhD representative: Nina (nina.maherndl[at]uni-leipzig.de)
• Deputy (AC)³ PhD representative: Sofie (sofie.tiedeck[at]awi.de)

On general matters we are working as a team. You can contact your local rep at any time:

• Leipzig: Sophie (sophie.rosenburg[at]uni-leipzig.de)
• Bremen: Basudev (basudev[at]iup.physik.uni-bremen.de) and Kamesh (kamesh[at]iup.physik.uni-bremen.de)
• AWI: Lars (lars.aue[at]awi.de) and Sofie (sofie.tiedeck[at]awi.de)
• Cologne: Nils (n.risse[at]uni-koeln.de) and Niklas (nschnier[at]uni-koeln.de)

Of course, you can get in touch with us anytime if any problems arise during your PhD. We will treat your concerns confidentially. However, for serious issues, we initiated the implementation of an Ombudsperson within (AC)³ (further information).

We also organize virtual meetings (“Scientific-Kaffeekraenzchen” or virtual lunch breaks) or even scientific speed-dating.

With the support of Matthias Buschmann, we introduced a new calendar to the (AC)³-intranet (https://cloud.ac3-tr.de/).

Check out if there are any workshops or conferences which may be relevant for you. Let us know if you feel that something is missing.

Do you want to get more involved? We meet once a month via zoom to discuss ideas: What do we want to organize ourselves? What do we have to suggest to the Scientific Steering Team (SST)? All PhD students are very welcome to join our meetings or get in touch with us, whether it is with new ideas or simply out of curiosity about what we are up to 😉