About us

What is GradUS?

GradUS is the Support Centre for Doctoral Researchers at Saarland University. It offers doctoral researchers complementary qualification opportunities and promotes a cooperative, transdisciplinary and internationally oriented doctoral culture. GradUS focuses on the following areas:

• Quality assurance in the doctoral process
• General and subject-specific further qualification for doctoral researchers
• Integration of doctoral researchers and their work in excellent research contexts

Why a support centre for doctoral researchers?

Located at the interface between research and teaching, doctorates occupy a central position within the university. At the same time, their importance for later research-oriented activities is growing, not only in academia but also on the non-academic labour market, in business and in society.

However, the framework conditions for doctorates in the individual subject cultures are very different. Our doctoral researchers have therefore repeatedly expressed the wish to acquire their academic qualifications within the framework of a structured and manageable procedure. With GradUS, Saarland University is taking this wish into account.

What does GradUS do?

GradUS improves the research conditions of doctoral researchers - and indeed of all doctoral researchers. It promotes all young researchers at Saarland University, unlike research training groups, for example, which can do so within relatively narrow thematic boundaries.

Doctoral researchers can participate in the programmes with varying degrees of intensity, as they wish, and thus develop their qualification profile individually. By making models and experiences from individual fields and subject cultures available to all, GradUS promotes a new, transdisciplinary and internationally oriented doctoral culture at Saarland University.