STUDY PROGRAM
The Molecular and Cellular Glyco-Sciences (MCGS) study program will include two compulsory, dedicated, advanced three-week courses in theory and practice on concepts and methods of glyco-chemistry and glyco-biology. They will be held each year around September, alternatively as a Winter School in Hyderabad focusing on carbohydrate-related proteins such as lectins, hydrolases, and receptors, and as a Summer School in Münster focusing on poly- and oligosaccharides as well as glyco-conjugates. The daily practical lab classes will be flanked by a lecture given by the local principal investigators in the mornings, and by project progress seminars given by the students in the afternoons. Workshops together with local industry will be organized in order to bring together academic carbohydrate-related chemistry and biology and economic needs in glyco-sciences, offering the students an opportunity for intersectoral discussions. The winter and summer schools will also be used for meetings and discussions of the doctoral students with their international doctorate committees.
Further study elements will include two Enabling Skills Modules, offering a choice of seminars and workshops to be chosen by the doctoral students according to their needs and wishes. The first of these modules to be studied during the first year of doctoral studies will target skills required for the successful completion of a scientific project, such as scientific reading and writing, presentation and project management, etc. The second module to be studied during the third year will help the fellows to start looking beyond the PhD, focusing on subjects such as proposal writing, development of a businessplan, etc.
Other elements of the MCGS study program will be individual Technical Workshops offered by the different MCGS partner labs, to be taken as and if required by the progress of the individual PhD projects, to make best use of the broad variety of expertises and resources available in the partner labs. In addition, the students will actively participate in their Department’s Lab Meetings, Seminar Series, Literature Seminars, etc. Roughly about every other year, the doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers will organise a MCGS network symposium, either in India or in Germany, where the doctoral students can invite eminent scientists and members of their research groups from across the world, to discuss with them the most recent progress in their fields of interest.
