Alumni Day of the RTG 2753
As the current cohort of our PhD students are nearing the later stages of their PhD, career topics become more and more relevant. To provide our group with first-hand insights into the different career paths that are open to them after completing their PhD, we organised an Alumni Day on the 24th of February 2025.
For this event we invited alumni of our PIs, who are in different career stages inside and outside of academia, both in Germany and elsewhere. During the event, our guests each introduced their career path, their current job and answered questions from the group. In between the talks all participants engaged in open discussions regarding the challenges and advantages of their different career paths.
The event was divided into two sessions. During the first one, five guests joined us on the campus: Dr. Luisa Balzus, Dr. Gundula Zerbes, Prof. Dr. Lena Jelinek, Prof. Dr. Jan Peters and Dr. Antonius Wiehler. They provided honest and informative insights into their professional journeys and covered a number of careers in industry, academia and clinical work, as well as combinations of those.
In the second session, our group had a chance to meet Dr. Mario Bogdanov and Dr. Manuel Kuhn, who gave our group an overview of their work at McLean Hospital / Harvard Medical School and the respective paths leading up to their current positions. Both speakers shared valuable career advice with our doctoral researchers, gained through their extensive international experience.
Our group really appreciated the event, as shared in the evaluation. In particular, the informal context, the range of the presented career paths which developed from similar backgrounds, and the honesty and open-mindedness of the guests were highlighted by the participants. We thank all our guests for the time they took for this important event!