The Thesis Advisory Committee (TAC) is responsible for the individual supervision of PhD students. The TAC consists of you as the first supervisor and two further supervisors. Its role is to provide support to the student and to offer advice. Furthermore, the TAC conducts and grades the intermediate examinations and the final disputation.

Duties of the Thesis Advisory Committee

• Monitoring of the student’s progress
• Support in all problems related to the PhD project
• Advice concerning experiments etc.
• Realization and evaluation of intermediate exams (at Spring and Fall Meeting)
• Evaluation of written dissertation
• Realization and evaluation of disputation at the end of studies

Establishing the Thesis Advisory Committee

The TAC should be established within the first months after admission into the PhD Programme. Generally, the graduate student and the first supervisor decide together on an appropriate committee structure, based largely on the research interests and areas of expertise of individual professors. Please check the Graduate School’s regulations to ensure that potential members of the TAC meet all requirements.

Requirements

At least one TAC member must be a Principal Investigator of the Graduate School. The second supervisor can be from Ulm University, but not from the institute where the PhD work is performed. The third supervisor is an external supervisor and must be from outside Ulm University. Industrial advisors are also possible. All members of the TAC have to be qualified for this duty, e.g. be a professor (equivalent to full or associate professors) or should be at the level of junior professors, junior group leaders or comparable.

The proposal of the TAC members needs to be formally approved by the PhD committee. After approval the TAC members will receive an official welcoming letter from the Graduate School. Please use <link fileadmin website_uni_ulm med.molmed formulare request__tac_approval.pdf download>this form for the proposal of your student’s TAC.