Programs for Graduate and Master Students

Do you study life sciences or medicine?

Are you interested in a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral thesis at our institute?

Then you are welcome to apply directly to our directors and research group leaders. 

You can find information on the various doctoral programs at the Göttingen Campus, in which our institute participates, here. If you have general questions regarding your application, please contact our coordinator Antje Erdmann (see contacts on the left).

All our students doing research at the institute for a thesis or doctoral thesis must be enrolled at a university at the same time. With a few exceptions, academic titles in Germany are only awarded by the nationwide universities. The institute, therefore, cooperates closely with the University of Göttingen in the IMPRS doctoral programs listed below, where our directors and research group leaders also teach and give seminars.

International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS)

In the competition for the best young minds, the Max Planck Society and German universities have established a special program of education and training for outstanding students: The International Max Planck Research Schools, short IMPRS. The Max Planck Institutes for Multidisciplinary Sciences and for Dynamics and Self-Organization have teamed up with the University of Göttingen to establish the scientific programs Genome Science, Molecular Biology, Neurosciences, and Physics of Complex and Biological Systems. The structured education and training offers excellent research and learning conditions and is open to German and foreign students. 

The institute and the IMPRS are also part of the Göttingen Graduate School for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB). GGNB offers structured graduate programs for master and doctoral students and supports young scientists with intensive courses and tutoring offers.

Max Planck Schools

In addition to the four International Max Planck Research Schools, our institute also participates in two Max Planck Schools started in 2019. The Max Planck Schools are a joint initiative of the Max Planck Society, German universities, as well as non-university research organizations. As national networks for graduate education, they complement the highly successful International Max Planck Research Schools.

Max Planck School Matter to Life

The new Matter to Life Master’s programs at Heidelberg and Göttingen University as well as the Technical University of Munich offer an interdisciplinary setting with students of different scientific backgrounds. These  programs are part of the new Max Planck School Matter to Life which supports students with scholarships, summer schools, and mentoring by experienced faculty members from the large Matter to Life network. The network consists of professors at Heidelberg University, Göttingen University, Technical University of Munich, RWTH Aachen University, Saarland University, DWI - Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials (Aachen), the German Cancer Research Center, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, and different Max Planck Institutes.   more

Max Planck School of Photonics

Photonics is a key scientific discipline that aims to optimize the control of light and that exploits the properties of light to develop non-contact sensors, energy, and information carriers. The Max Planck School of Photonics is a graduate school with an integrated Master's program that welcomes the best international young scientists with Master's and Bachelor's degrees. Students benefit from foundational education at one of the supporting universities in Jena, Karlsruhe, or Erlangen, and subsequently pursue their PhD research under the supervision of one of the highly-qualified Max Planck Fellows. Students are further offered various networking and training opportunities exposing them to exciting career prospects within academia and beyond from the offset. 
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There are also programs for young scientists within the framework of further cooperations between the institute and the University of Göttingen, the Max Planck Institutes for Dynamics and Self-Organization and for Experimental Medicine as well as the German Primate Center. These include:

• the European Neuroscience Institute Göttingen (ENI)
• the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen (BCCN Göttingen)
• the Göttingen Excellence Cluster nad DFG Research Center Nanoscale Microscopy and Molecular Physiology of the Brain (CNMPB)