PhD Program of the IGB April-December 2010

No.

Title

Lecturer

# of participants

jochem.kail@igb-berlin.de

This is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research

Besides the advice of your supervisor(s) and the offered courses you have the possibility to get personal advice on your project with respect to experimental design and statistical evaluation, as well as regarding your time plan for your PhD projects or all sorts of other questions that might pop up. Please make sure to ask essential questions as early as possible to avoid unnecessary flaws or mistakes! Your advisor is welcome to join us!

This is suitable for groups of PhD students/researchers in all stages of their research

If you are working together with other researchers (e.g. in larger projects, sharing facilities etc.) proper communication and coordination are essential for an optimal output. Groups should set clear rules and aims and task divisions to avoid or solve conflicts. The best acceptance of these solutions is reached if the entire group develops them. I offer to moderate processes leading to clear group-developed solutions, thus minimizing time effort and ensuring goal-oriented discussions using visualisation techniques.

Contact me if you and a group of colleagues require help in such a group process

This course is suitable for students in all stages of their research

Carefully designing and practicing your scientific contribution at meetings or conferences is not the only necessary preparation. There are many other things to organize in advance, carry out during the meeting, and follow up afterwards to optimize the outcome of a conference. The larger the attended meeting, the more important is a proper preparation. Join me to find out how you can optimize your networking around such meetings!

This course is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research, recommendable as early as possible

The better you plan your work, the higher the output will be. An effective time management is essential to maximise the output and also your satisfaction with your work. I can easily promise that the time you invest in this course is saved manifold later on in your work! But planning your experiments is only one aspect you should consider. In order to set the right priorities it is instrumental that you develop an idea of your career aims and strengthen your networks accordingly. These are other aspects that need to be taken into account in your time management.

There is the possibility to continue meeting in a small group in regular intervals to present your personal time plan and to report your progress with respect to a timely finalisation of your PhD.

This course is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research, recommendable as early as possible

Christine Große from the IGB library will give an introduction on how to search for relevant research publications using the ISI Web of Knowledge and how to locate articles not freely accessible in electronic form. Other information that might be relevant to your own choices of a journal (e.g. impact factors) can also be obtained from this source. Further, you will receive information on modalities of the IGB’s library, your personal library account and the planned remote access to the IGB’s electronic journal licences. This first part will be IN GERMAN.

Dr. Peter Casper will introduce you to Reference Manager, specifically how to enter or import references and how to use the reference manager to add and format citations when writing your own manuscripts.

This course is suitable for PhD students in a later stage of research who have sufficient evaluated data for a publication and an overview of the relevant literature

This course will not be theoretical, but aims to support writing of your first scientific paper. Therefore, there are some requirements. You need to have prepared (until end August) the material outline for a paper, in close cooperation with your supervisor. With outline, I mean

• all necessary (or even a few more) figures, converted into .wmf (Windows metafile), .tiff or similar graphics format
  
• all tables in Word format (use the table function, not the tabulator)
  
• all statistical tests with any detail (direct SPSS/other program output)
  
• suggested audience of the paper (limnology, microbiology, ecology, fisheries management, evolution, aquaculture,…)
  

This material must be available in both digital and hardcopy format.

From these material, we will interactively and step-by-step develop a paper that should be ready for submission at 90% after the course.

What the course will not cover

• language training (but I will correct all mistakes as far as I can
  
• data evaluation and statistics
  
• production of graphics and tables
  

Accordingly, this will be mainly a teacher-guided, active-learning, peer-based course I do not teach content, I teach how to write!

We will work in the small lecture room MSD 310. For each student, we will have a PC-client available (and faster ones than during the last course) such that exchange of material and internet access is possible.

This course is suitable for female PhD students in all stages of their research

In diesem Workshop geht es um Fragen, wie auch schwierige Situationen, die Euch in Eurem beruflichen Alltag begegnen, erfolgreich zu bestehen sind. Solche Situationen wollen wir im Workshop aus verschiedenen Perspektiven betrachten und miteinander nach Ideen und Strategien für Erfolge suchen.

Ein wirkungsvolles Auftreten für wichtige Situationen soll individuell erprobt und geübt werden: In Übungen (Sprechen und Auftreten) mit (Video-) Feedback, in Gesprächssimulationen, über Übungen zur Verbesserung der eigenen Präsenz und Performance (im verschiedenen sozialen Situationen)und mit Techniken zur Entspannung, zur besseren Nutzung der eigenen Ressourcen, etc. können zudem mehr Ruhe und Gelassenheit, Gesprächsoffenheit, Sicherheit und Entschlossenheit erreicht werden.

Beatrix Wildt, Diplompsychologin mit langjähriger Erfahrung im Promotions- und Wissenschafts-Coaching, wird diese Übungen anleiten und den Workshop moderieren, mit Unterstützung von Angela Krüger und Kirsten Pohlmann.

Der Kurs findet in Neuglobsow statt, alle Teilnehmerinnen werden im neuen Gästehaus untergebracht. Teilnahmevoraussetzung ist die komplette Teilnahme!

This course is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research

Geographical information systems (GIS) are widely used in river ecology to analyse and present spatial data. GIS is a powerful tool to investigate spatial patterns which are not evident and can not be analysed by other conventional methods. Moreover, it is extremely helpful to visualize research results since “a picture [map] is worth a thousand words”.

However, as with many powerful tools, most GIS software packages are rather complex and one must be aware of some basic technical problems to apply theses tools (e.g. map projections and coordination systems). ESRI ArcView 3.X is still the most widely used GIS software in Germany, despite the fact that the new ArcGIS software packages “ArcView”, “ArcExplorer”, and “ArcInfo” are available since some years (probably because of the licence fees).

Depending on the prior-knowledge of the participants, I will give an introduction (“how to get started”) or some more advanced information on the possibilities, limits, and technical problems of using GIS, including an introduction to the ESRI software ArcView 3.X. using some practical examples (since I was working for years with ArcView, the focus will be on ArcView 3.X, but I will also give a brief overview about the pros and cons of ArcGIS):

• Where to get spatial data (e.g. digital elevation models, river networks, land-use data, hydromorphological data)?

• Data formats used in GIS (e.g. grid, vector, point, (poly-)line, polygon).

• How to get all the data in the GIS (e.g. GPS-data, projections and coordination systems)?

• How to process and analyse the data (e.g. tools, extensions, and AVENUE scripts in ArcView 3.X)?

The one day short course will take place between 14-16 July 2010 (I will fix a date to try to allow everybody who wants to participate). The short course will be held in German or English if any non-German speakers will participate.

This course is suitable for PhD students with knowledge in basic statistics and some research experience

If you have any requirements to get acquainted with specific statistical methods not covered in the introductory course please contact me as soon as possible!

This course is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research, recommendable as early as possible (e.g. useful for exposè presentation)

Participants will be introduced to principles of scientific presentations, including

• The Hamburg Concept of Intelligibility
  
• Structuring scientific oral presentations
  
• Designing visual aids for oral presentations
  
• Structuring and condensing a scientific poster’s contents
  
• Design and layout of a scientific poster
  

In practical exercises each participant will prepare a scientific presentation (oral or poster including short oral) and present it. Using video feedback the group will discuss the presentation.

Participants are required to bring the material and a first version of a presentation to work on during the course.

This course is suitable for PhD students in all stages of their research, recommendable as early as possible (e.g. useful for designing your first experiment)

This is the third course. Date and location will be tailored to your needs. Please register your interest with me and inform me about your specific. Please note that the course will last from morning to evening and that participants are expected to attend it all the time.

This course aims at all of you lacking the basics of experimental design and statistics and should be taken as early as possible in your research.

You will learn:

• how to design powerful experiments or investigations
  
• Hypothesis testing and data exploration
  
• the general logics of statistical analyses,
  
• to analyse and understand data distributions
  
• how to choose the adequate statistical test
• how to perform parametrical and non-parametrical analyses of variance, regressions and correlations
  

This course will not give you detailed explanations on mathematical formulae but teach how to choose and conduct adequate statistical tests. We will use PASW (former SPSS) for data analyses and spend quite some time to perform statistical analyses. We will also develop experimental designs for your individual research projects in group work.

Date and location will be tailored to your needs.

This course is suitable for PhD students in a later stage of research who have sufficient evaluated data for a publication and an overview of the relevant literature

This course will not be theoretical, but aims to support writing of your first scientific paper. Therefore, there are some requirements. You need to have prepared (until end August) the material outline for a paper, in close cooperation with your supervisor. With outline, I mean

• all necessary (or even a few more) figures, converted into .wmf (Windows metafile), .tiff or similar graphics format
  
• all tables in Word format (use the table function, not the tabulator)
  
• all statistical tests with any detail (direct SPSS/other program output)
  
• suggested audience of the paper (limnology, microbiology, ecology, fisheries management, evolution, aquaculture,…)
  

This material must be available in both digital and hardcopy format.

From these material, we will interactively and step-by-step develop a paper that should be ready for submission at 90% after the course.

What the course will not cover

• language training (but I will correct all mistakes as far as I can
  
• data evaluation and statistics
  
• production of graphics and tables
  

Accordingly, this will be mainly a teacher-guided, active-learning, peer-based course I do not teach content, I teach how to write!

We will work in the small lecture room MSD 310. For each student, we will have a PC-client available (and faster ones than during the last course) such that exchange of material and internet access is possible.

8 hours á 45 minutes, 8:30 -11:30, 12:30-15:30

Reserve at least four full hours additionally per day for homework after the presence time! Therefore, there will be no time for other research activities during this week. Please organize your work accordingly!

In your mail, please indicate whether this will be indeed your first paper. For more experienced writers (PhD students with one or more submitted papers), the course may be of advantage as well, but I will reserve all places in the course for first writers, and fill up the course with experienced writers only if less than 8 first writers apply.

All further details will be distributed to the attendees in late April.