In time for the summer semester 2021, the Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) announced the launch of its Graduate School (GS): 12 PhD students from France, Russia and Germany, among them four women, make up the first cohort. The scholarship holders have obtained their master’s degrees in physics, computer science or bioinformatics; two of them are currently researching at Freie Universität Berlin, one at Universität Potsdam and nine at Technische Universität Berlin.
“The Corona Pandemic didn’t make it any easier for the Graduate School to start. In the on-going seminar series, our PhD candidates each present their research topics. This will be followed by a course in good scientific practice in May. Later on we plan to offer courses on technical writing, presentation techniques, interdisciplinary teamwork as well as seminars on advanced scientific topics,” says Dr. Tina Schwabe, who together with Dr. Manon Grube, is responsible for the program of the newly founded BIFOLD GS. The second cohort will follow in October 2021.
The goal of the GS is to educate students in critical competence areas of Big Data (BD) systems and Machine Learning (ML); to enable them to devise novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science (DS) solutions to scientific problems in an interdisciplinary environment; and to equip them with the necessary technical skills and scientific capabilities. All students are expected to finish their PhD within four years. In the near future, the GS will offer a fast-track Program that will allow outstanding Bachelor graduates to complete a newly designed, research-oriented Master’s degree en-route to the PhD.
“We are very happy to finally welcome the first cohort of PhD candidates at BIFOLD” greets Prof. Dr. Volker Markl, one of two directors of BIFOLD, the new PhD students. “We are convinced that excellent training of future Data Science and Machine Learning experts is an important investment in the future,” adds Prof. Dr. Klaus-Robert Müller, co-director of BIFOLD.