Formal requirements at the beginning of your doctorate

In order to give you the best possible support and provide you with the right information, it is important that you register at Graduate Center.
Please use the following registration form:

Registration graduate center

Doctoral researchers have various options to finance their livelihood during their doctorate. The most common positions are as academic staff in research and teaching or third-party funded projects as well as scholarships from organizations promoting the gifted, but there are also other sources of income.

Overview doctoral scholarships

Funding opportunities at Graduate Center

A confirmation of supervision is a short confirmation from a professor that they will supervise your doctoral project. You need a confirmation of supervision, for example, if you want to apply for a doctoral scholarship or if you want to enroll for a doctorate at the Graduate School for Applied Research in North Rhine-Westphalia (PK NRW).

Good supervision throughout the qualification phase is the key to a successful doctorate. We therefore advocate the conclusion of an agreement between doctoral researchers and supervisors. The supervision agreement drawn up by TH Köln regulates the rights and obligations between doctoral researchers and supervisors. Of course, you can adapt and add to the agreement to suit your own needs.

Supervision agreement cooperative doctorate

If you are planning to do a cooperative doctorate, you must plan your doctoral project in cooperation with a university (this is not required for a doctorate at PK NRW). Depending on the cooperating university, they might provide templates for a cooperation agreement.

Alternatively, TH Köln also has a template for a cooperation agreement in German and English:

Kooperationsvereinbarung mit Universität

Agreement on Joint Supervision of doctoral Work

It is possible to enrol as a doctoral researcher at TH Köln. For doctoral researchers according to the doctoral law of the Graduate School for Applied Research NRW (PK NRW), enrollment is mandatory.

Cooperative doctoral researchers who are employed as research associates at TH Köln are free to enrol at TH Köln. All other cooperative doctoral researchers are obliged to enrol at TH Köln as soon as they have found a supervisor at TH Köln and at the university with the right to award doctorates.

Further information on enrollment at TH Köln

As a doctoral researcher of TH Köln you have the possibility to become a member of the PK NRW if your doctoral supervisor is a member of the PK NRW. For all doctoral researchers who are doing their doctorate at the PK NRW, membership is obligatory. For all other doctoral researchers, membership offers an additional opportunity for networking as well as access to the services of the PK NRW.

PK NRW

To get your doctorate off to the best possible start, we recommend participating in the following events:

• Welcoming new doctoral researchers. At this event of the Graduate Center Service Desk, which is offered every 2-3 months, we would like to present the diverse offers and funding programs for doctoral researchers at TH Köln in detail, answer questions and get to know you personally. Of course, you also have the opportunity to make contact with other doctoral researchers. As soon as you have registered your doctorate in the Graduate Center, you will receive an invitation.
• Seminar 'Good Scientific Practice'. The workshop provides an overview of the rules of good scientific practice and how to deal with scientific misconduct. Frequent areas of conflict and the gray areas between questionable scientific practice, rule violations and misconduct are shown.
  Good Scientific Practice
• Seminar 'Introduction to Research Data Management'
• Afternoon for Doctoral Researchers and Postdocs. The afternoon for Doctoral Researchers and Postdocs offers the opportunity to get to know each other and to exchange ideas and to talk to the university management.
  Exchange and Networking