Curriculum
Goal of the qualification Programme
Goal of the qualification Programme
The goal of the IRTG ICSMD is to enable PhD and MD students to acquire the skills needed to perform independent research and to qualify them for ambitious international careers in a broad-ranging employment market. This will be accomplished by exposing these students to an interdisciplinary academic environment at two excellent institutions in Dresden and London that features internationally competitive research.
The IRTG-ICSMD consortium recognizes that doctoral training must meet the needs of a broad employment market in addition to academia. The IRTG-ICSMD will address these challenges (i) by equipping students with a range of the highest-quality research and innovation skills, (ii) by training them with the skills needed for the wider employment market and (iii) by providing them with multiple career options. To ensure a high academic and non-academic employability the IRTG-ICSMD will provide a highly interdisciplinary curriculum that includes supervised general and subject-specific training modules and international mobility.
The IRTG-ICSMD aims to train researchers, who can treat patients (in case of the MD students), conduct basic science, and perform translational/clinical research. Thus, the alumni of the programme will be able to hold positions at academic research centres, pursue clinical scientist careers or conduct research for public and private institutions (including pharmaceutical, biotech, and venture capital companies). The IRTG-ICSMD aims to train a new generation of life and clinician scientists, who are able to bridge the gap between clinical and basic research. Contributing to the understanding of the shared biology and interdependence of metabolic diseases, they will be well prepared to become future international leaders in the field.
The educational goal of the PhD programme is to provide interdisciplinary, in-depth training in programme-specific areas, translational research and individualized training, which is tailored to each student’s needs and interests, combined with stringent supervision and mentoring concepts within a three years (PhD) curriculum. The qualification program for the PhD students has been embedded within the Regenerative Medicine track of the DIPP (Dresden International PhD Program).
The DIPP combines two powerful partners dedicated to first-class doctoral training – the International Max-Planck Research School for Cell, Developmental and Systems Biology (IMPRSCellDevoSys) implemented by the Max-Planck Society in 2001, and the Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering (DIGS-BB) awarded of the TU Dresden in the Excellence Initiative in 2006. With the highly interactive PhD programs the DIPP optimally combines the advantages of a structural doctoral program with the requirements of an excellent scientific thesis. The IRTG-ICSMD PIs will be affiliated to the DIPP and in general faculty members of the DIGS-BB.
The IRTG-ICSMD qualification programme is designed as an extended DIPP curriculum that groups the students in a smaller class that focuses on their specific topics and creates an interactive environment within the programme. With respect to the structure of the IRTG-ICSMD the training will be interdisciplinary and cross-institutional. Training in transferable skills is provided to support students dealing with the challenges of the doctoral phase and to pursue their future careers.
MD students will be offered an ambitious one-year training programme that will ensure completing the methodical and experimental part of their thesis. The MD students will be included in the curricular structured Else Kröner-Promotioskolleg (EKPK) of the TUD Medical Faculty. The MD Programme will educate them in translating basic research into clinically relevant state-of-the-art treatments and in initiating their prospective careers as clinician scientists. Medical students will stop their medical training for one year and will focus entirely on their research project. They will take part in the IRTG-ICSMD training.