Funding

Funding for PhD students

Money plays a crucial role in science. Everyone who has worked in groups with different level of funding immediately knows the difference. While it is possible to pursue your PhD without spending a thought on budgets and grants, you benefit from securing funds in multiple ways:

1. It enables you to do things previously out of reach (e.g. attend a really nice conference) or makes your research life easier (e.g. through expensive specialized kits for your experiments).
2. It boosts your chances for a scientific career. Funding you secure is a valuable asset for your CV and increases your chances for a good postdoc or group leader position.
3. Writing applications for funding is a key skill for everyone aspiring to a group leader position and this is an area where experience plays a big part.
4. You make your supervisor happy, if you tax his resources less.

In this section of our homepage, we introduce the funding the GSLS provides to all of its doctoral researchers. 

GSLS Travel Fellowships:

GSLS travel fellowships offer GSLS doctoral researchers the opportunity to participate in conferences and workshops (active participation, talk or poster presentation, is a prerequisite) or support a research stay in a foreign laboratory. Each GSLS doctoral researcher can receive up to 2.000 EUR until graduation.

More details and how to apply for the GSLS travel fellowships.

GSLS Career Development Fellowships:

Graduation often does not coincide exactly with the end of research projects. In many cases there are papers left to write or a few experiments to conduct before the project can be completed successfully. Other graduates have an idea that needs some prep work, before applying for a grant. The GSLS offers career development fellowships, which offers six months of salary at postdoc level - time which can be utilized to capitalize on data from your PhD project.

In contrast to the travel fellowship, there are only a very limited number of career development fellowships. Therefore there is a competitive selection process, so be sure to read the details and application information carefully.

External Fellowships & Funding:

As the resources of the GSLS are limited, we strongly recommend to explore the funding opportunities from external organizations. In order to help you getting started, Dr. Stephan Schröder-Köhne from the University of Würzburg Graduate Schools (UWGS) has compiled a useful introduction on gathering funding.