Welcome to a short introduction or explanation of getting a doctoral degree in Germany and

then also at FAU.

Getting a doctoral degree in Germany or German speaking countries is quite different from

how to get a degree in Anglo-Saxon countries.

So we will have to discuss that.

Here's the agenda.

What is the doctor title?

Why would you want to get one?

And also then of course how do you actually get there once you've decided that this is

what you want to do.

So formally a doctor title is that, a prestigious academic title that you are awarded if you

present, submit.

Note where the scientific research, non-trivial scientific research in a written form, the

so-called dissertation to some accredited institution, meaning FAU, you submit a written

piece, 200 pages perhaps, that will then if it's done properly get accepted as a dissertation

to give you that title.

The actual titles vary.

It's a doctor of engineering in the engineering faculty of FAU and in the natural sciences

a doctor Rea Nutt and so forth.

There are also PhDs.

We'll talk about that later.

So before I explain how to get there, you need to think about why do you actually want

it and don't just jump into it.

You need to have a reason in my opinion and here the cartoon asks, is there more to life

than discovering, uncovering, unlocking the mysteries of the universe?

That's of course what science research is about and ideally that's the best motivation

for you as well.

Trying to understand, wanting to solve really hard problems, ideally such problems that

bring society forward.

So there needs to be curiosity, interest in a particular topic that should drive you.

Also I'm completely valid as well.

You may simply view this as a stepping stone in a career.

Some disciplines, some industry jobs require it or at least it's very beneficial to have

a doctor title and certainly if you want to become an academic, even a professor, then

it's a must, it's a precondition.

Before we jump into what you have to do, I would like to clarify the type of work you

will be doing because there are so many misconceptions.

I often find that students who just finished high school have a better understanding of

what science is than people who just finished a master's degree and that is because if you

ask a high school student what is science, they say something with controlled experiments

which is actually not wrong.

While in particular engineering students at the end of a bachelor or master degree program

mostly will have learned how to engineer something and building things is not science.

You build things in support of science to evaluate for example a model or a theory you

have to develop but building something itself is not science.

So science is when you design, develop concepts, so called theories or knowledge, theories

that help you predict the future.

If we build it this way, the factory will not explode.

So the science is how to build factories that do what they're supposed to do reliably in

the future.