What are the basic expectations for a PhD project?
Working hours and conditions
In the German system, a PhD is a “real job”. If you are paid by a grant or by institutional funding you are officially an employee of the university, even if you are also registered as a student. Officially PhD students are paid at government salary level E13 (research scientist) with 50 – 65% time commitment (of the standard 40 hour working week); this is to account for the fact that it is both a training period and that to some extent you are expected to write your thesis “on your own time” (but don’t worry too much about this division of time). Postdocs are paid 100% of this same E13 salary level, although may move up to E14 with experience (E14 is more of a group leader position, so usually achievable only with e.g. acquisition of own grant funding and supervision of PhD students). If you have your own scholarship funding then the contractual employment obligations do not apply, but it is nevertheless recommended to treat the PhD like a full time, 40 hours a week job.
In terms of working hours, I don’t actually mind how you organise your time, with the following exceptions. Firstly, if you are doing laboratory or experimental work then you need to be doing this primarily during “core” time, when technicians and other people are around for support (between 8 am – 6 pm weekdays). This is firstly for safety reasons, since you are not allowed to work on your own with any potentially dangerous equipment or chemicals (which is pretty much most lab work) in case of accidents, and secondly because if something goes wrong with an experiment or you need help or advice part-way through then it’s better that there is someone around to ask. You also need to attend group meetings, group seminar and other scheduled events, and also respect other people’s right to only meet during official working hours and not at times which may interfere with other life-related commitments or social activities.
It’s a marathon, not a race, and there should be no need to work very long hours, weekends or evenings. Much better to put consistent time in than to work in bursts – this is not a good strategy long-term for a PhD project. A lot of people come out of undergraduate studies partially trained into working a lot based on upcoming deadlines then idling when there is nothing urgent. Don’t do this. There is not enough external motivation (deadlines etc.) to get you through a PhD project successfully, and it’s very difficult to effectively motivate to work towards a deadline several years away. Motivation problems are extremely common for PhD students, and if you find you are really struggling with this please let me know so we can discuss strategies, including setting small, self-determined deadlines etc. together if necessary. I will never check to see what hours you are working or ask you to self-report this, provided that you are still meeting previously discussed goals, are not having motivational issues, and there are no other extenuating circumstances.
You get 30 days of holiday a year, and I expect you to take it. Also though be mindful that you will in some cases need to plan around experimental work – it’s not reasonable to start growing plants then disappear for several weeks and miss sampling times, for instance. On the other hand in many cases it should be possible to ask someone else to look after your plants or ongoing experiments if necessary for a while, and definitely in emergencies. You can also think about doing a “favour exchange” with other students or postdocs in the group where e.g. you watch their plants and take samples for two weeks while they go on holiday, then they do the same for you. Try and make sure that you give back the same as you take from others though!
Literature review and research proposal
Within the first six months of the PhD you should provide a detailed literature review and research proposal (see other documents provided by me on what this should look like) which details exactly what experiments you plan to do and the timeline for these. Always use the 2.5 times rule for experimental planning: everything will most likely take two and a half times as long as you think it will. Don’t worry if this ends up changing dramatically later during the project, the important thing is to have a plan to follow in the first place, and to have practice in designing experiments to test hypotheses and then writing this out. If you are employed on a grant note that there will already be a grant proposal which has information on proposed experiments, but you are not bound to do what is written in this proposal – in fact very major changes are almost always possible (with justification).
For the literature review it is possible (in the case of experienced writers or if you already have done an MSc project on a similar topic etc.) to plan for the literature review to be a publishable manuscript. However, there are some major differences between a standard PhD literature review (which mostly just contextualises the research you are about to do) and a literature review paper (which should add something novel to the literature), so please discuss this with me as soon as possible if this is a route you want to take. Please note that if I say no (which I probably will do if you are new to your research topic or if you still need more writing practice first) there will undoubtedly still be opportunities to work on literature review publications later in the PhD, either individually or jointly with other people in the team.
During the PhD
Failure of experiments to work effectively etc. is a normal part of science, and there are always other options to try if something isn’t working well, or other experimental options to take instead. Please do not keep trying at something that is clearly not working without first troubleshooting with other team members or with me. In the event that something is really not working (particularly a new experimental protocol or analysis, something we haven’t successfully had working previously) then we need to discuss sooner rather than later. Usually it is better to just try a different strategy or approach than to waste time trying to make something work – think creatively about if there are other means we can take to address the same question or problem.
I want you to take ownership of your PhD project, and would be delighted if you propose new or complementary experiments, particularly if you have carefully thought these out in advance and made sure they are novel and effectively test hypotheses of interest. Please also consider your own aptitudes and interests: you know best what kind of work motivates you, and although all projects require some mix of different types of work, I will do my best to be flexible about reconfiguring projects so that e.g. you aren’t stuck doing something you hate for six months.
PhD thesis and graduation requirements
You should aim to finish your PhD within three years with three first-author experimental research papers (experiments) written up into complete manuscripts. There is nothing magical about the number three, this is just one major experiment per year of the project, and is widely considered internationally as the gold standard for research productivity for PhDs: if you complete with three experimental papers in reputable journals (see other material on the topic of journals and what is a “good” journal) this is usually considered to be a good to excellent PhD thesis. The more the better, if everything goes well, but plan for three! Please do not assume that it will be possible to get an extension past three years, and do not design a project which from the outset will take more than three years. Sometimes there are options to extend PhD projects, but I absolutely cannot guarantee this: DFG grants for instance are always 3 years, so that’s how much funding we have for salaries during the project. I will nevertheless do my best to support students in the case of unforeseen circumstances, life events etc. The reality is that it is not easy to finish within three years, even if everything goes perfectly, although this is definitely achievable. However, not aiming to complete in three years makes it much more likely it will take even longer than expected and that the money will run out in the meantime.
In Germany, there are two general thesis formats, which may or may not be strictly defined in terms of allowable format. The “traditional” format is the monograph, basically a single large scientific report which just describes everything which was done as part of the thesis. There is also a “by publications” format, whereby a PhD student with two papers published or accepted for publication upon submission of the thesis can submit these papers as experimental chapters within the thesis, with no other strict requirements for additional material to include. I find this system extremely old-fashioned, and quite restrictive at some universities. At the University of Bonn, there is nothing which says you cannot still use a more standard international thesis format in either case, which would be General Introduction, Literature Review, Experimental Chapters (in scientific report format, so Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion), then General Discussion. So please use this format! The most important consideration is that the experimental chapters should be written up already as if for journal publication, as this saves effectively having to write these out twice in different formats (once for the thesis and once for publication). Ideally aim to have two manuscripts submitted by the 2 – 2.5 year mark, then spend the many months of waiting on the peer review / journal submission process in the meantime working on additional papers or preparing the general introduction and discussion parts of the thesis.
Once the PhD is submitted it is reviewed (usually just by the supervisor plus one other reviewer from the Faculty), with a third external reviewer invited if the top grade (summa cum laude) is awarded by the first two reviewers. The grading system is however quite arbitrary: based on experience so far, fully 70% of students get magna cum laude (the second top grade), while about 15% get summa and 15% get cum laude. Practically no one fails: if you get to the point where you submit a PhD thesis for review it’s probably going to pass. As far as I know most countries actually only have a pass/fail system for the PhD, Germany is somewhat of an exception to this with the grade categories.
From PhD to Postdoc, or?
I expect postdocs to bring new techniques or perspectives to the group. Because of this (and also because I think in the long run it’s also a disadvantage for both sides, since doing a PhD and a postdoc in the same lab is negatively perceived for an academic career) I also have a policy that I will not hire my own PhD students as postdocs. I may however support independent applications for postdoctoral fellowships to external funding agencies from current PhD students, particularly if there are personal reasons why a graduating PhD student can’t move. Nevertheless this should be carefully considered and discussed. For PhD students considering a career in academia, be aware that this is not the default option, you are just currently surrounded by academics – try and source a variety of opinions and external information on where a PhD might take you in order to end up in the best place possible for you, wherever this may be. I can provide a lot of information on the pros and cons and possibilities in academia, but have very little experience with anything else. It’s never too early to think about this, since the PhD experience can incorporate many different elements depending on where you think you may want to go afterwards, and to some extent this is up to you.
Journal club
We currently have journal club every week after lab meeting. Our format is that each week, everyone (or at least some of the group; since we don’t want this to go for more than an hour or so) reads a different paper then reports on the major findings/summarises it, then presents any criticisms and what they think are positive and negative aspects of the paper. Approximately 10 minutes per person/paper is what we’re aiming for.
Journal club can be replaced for everyone by a discussion of a manuscript in preparation by one of our group. This can be either optimising figures and tables/results section ordering-specific, or to do with greater manuscript structure, or also (with some warning in advance) everyone can read a manuscript draft in preparation to offer critiques and suggestions for improvement before submission to a journal.
Growing plants
If you are growing plants as part of your project then I will probably ask you to plant seeds at the beginning of the project, as an exception to the “no immediate labwork” policy. This is because for almost all projects it will take at least 4 – 6 weeks before the plants are big enough to take samples from, and if we need to grow the plants to final seed production then we can expect this to take up to 6 months, depending on the genotype. If you are growing plants as part of your project I expect you to record the sowing date, record how many seeds germinated after 2 weeks, record flowering time, take photos of each individual plant as a record of phenotype, and collect leaf tissue and store it in the freezer for each plant, in addition to collecting any other samples we discuss might be necessary for project goals (e.g. root tips, buds, flowers to estimate pollen viability, seed set etc.). All plants should be self-pollinated using pollination bags in the absence of any other project-specific guidelines.
Please also read the “glasshouse rules” document.
Lab work
See the “rules for laboratory work” document.
Technician and HiWi help
Technicians in our group are not generally available to help spontaneously with data collection, plant maintenance, sample collection or routine project work for MSc or PhD student projects except in specific circumstances. If we discuss that this may be necessary (you can also ask me about this possibility during one-on-one meetings or during lab group meetings), technician time may be allocated to help with specific projects, particularly if there are time-intensive steps. I will need to approve this, so please do not ask technicians for help with data collection tasks directly. As a research group we need to reserve technician skills and time for difficult and time-consuming projects that may not give publishable results, such as generation of new interspecific hybrid material for future projects. Technicians also need to be free to set up, maintain and optimise protocols and train incoming students in them.
Technicians can however be asked to help with training, including teaching you how to carry out specific protocols, how to make up particular solutions, locate necessary laboratory reagents and equipment, and how to carry out glasshouse tasks etc.
For routine tasks that take a lot of time, the most effective strategy for our research group in terms of time and money is to find and pay HiWi (research helper) students to do this on an hourly basis, using the established contract system with the university (contract documents need to be submitted six weeks before project start for new contracts). These tasks may include seed counting, pollen viability assessments and pretty much any repetitive task that we can’t automate easily, but also any task that you think you can train someone without too much experience to do where this might be helpful for your project. You will be responsible for training the HiWi students to do this to generate satisfactory data – make sure they are aware of the requirements and that you give clear instructions and expectations.
Conferences
For PhD students I will make sure you have the opportunity to attend at least one international conference and one local conference during your PhD, and for postdocs at least one conference per year. Please note that I expect you to apply for any available scholarship options or funding support that would enable you to attend. This is sometimes offered through the conference itself, sometimes by societies (e.g the German Plant Breeding society) and sometimes by external funding (e.g. DAAD). Conference attendance is also dependent on whether you have anything to present: in most cases first-year PhD students probably won’t have sufficient results yet for this, although I may make an exception for a once-in-four-years conference depending on circumstances. If you attend a conference I will also expect you to be able to give an oral presentation, not just present a poster. In both cases though the presentation should be sent to me in advance to check before submission, as should the conference abstract (at least 1-2 weeks before). Oral presentations should also be practiced within our research group beforehand.
PHASE Lab 