=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1991/paper-06
|storemode=property
|title=Getting a PhD in Software Engineering in Germany and Especially at the University
of Rostock
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1991/paper-06.pdf
|volume=Vol-1991
|authors=Peter Forbrig
}}
==Getting a PhD in Software Engineering in Germany and Especially at the University
of Rostock==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1991/paper-06.pdf
Getting a PhD in Software Engineering in Germany and
especially at the University of Rostock
Peter Forbrig,
University of Rostock, Department of Computer Science, Chair of Software Engineering,
Albert-Einstein-Str. 22,
18051 Rostock, Germany
Peter.Forbrig@uni-rostock.de
Abstract. The paper gives an overview of possible ways to get a PhD in soft-
ware engineering in Germany. Additionally, it discusses the different support
activities at the University of Rostock. Conventional individual decorates and
structured doctoral programmes are distinguished in Germany. Graduate
schools are a very good organizational form of cooperative research of several
PhD students. The graduate school MuSAMA and their results are presented as
an example. Finally, some ideas for a PhD programme are provided.
Keywords: PhD programme, Software engineering, Graduate school.
1 Introduction
A University in Germany consists of several faculties like Medicine, Natural Scienc-
es, Philosophy, Business Administration, and so on. Those faculties consist of insti-
tutes. This organizational structure is the same for all universities. However, the size
and the name of the faculties vary. Computer Science is sometimes an own faculty,
sometimes Mathematics and Computer Science form a faculty, and sometimes Com-
puter Science is part of Natural Sciences
Traditionally, in Rostock there was a Faculty of Engineering that consisted of Me-
chanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Computer Sci-
ence. However, Civil Engineering was closed after unification of Germany. Mechani-
cal Engineering founded an own Faculty and a Faculty of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering was founded as well..
Graduation is the most important task of faculties. Therefore, the PhD degree is of-
fered by a Faculty. In our case the degree is Dr.-Ing. It is given to all PhD-theses in
the domain of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. A PhD grade for Soft-
ware Engineering does not exist. However, the domain of a PhD can be Software
Engineering.
2 Doctoral Programmes
Currently, there exist two different approaches that are called “conventional individu-
al doctorate” and “structured doctoral programme”.
2.1 Conventional Individual Doctorate
A conventional individual doctorate consists of a Thesis that has to be accepted by
three reviewers. One of the reviewers is the supervisor. The other two should be from
other universities. However, nowadays reviewers from the own university are accept-
ed as well.
It is assumed that a Thesis is accompanied with a series of international publica-
tions. In general the Thesis is a summary of the research results in form of a
monography. However, it is possible to organize publications in such a way that they
can be used as chapters of the Thesis. In this case only an introduction and a summary
have to be written. Only five percent of PhD-Theses are organized in such a way.
They need a strategic approach from a very early stage of the research.
The defence of the Thesis is organised in very different ways at universities. At
some universities even the talk is not open for the public. However, most universities
allow public audience. At our university in Rostock even the discussion is public and
at the end everybody is allowed to ask questions. However, first question rounds only
allow questions from the reviewers. After, reviewers are satisfied members of the
graduation commission are allowed to ask questions.
At other universities the whole part with questions is private.
Finally, at all universities a decision is made whether the faculty council is advised
to accept or not to accept the PhD-Thesis
2.2 Structured Doctoral Programme
A structured doctoral programme is currently most of the time related to a graduate
school that is funded by the German Research Fund (DFG). However, graduate pro-
grammes exist as well in other domains. They do not exist for Software Engineering.
2.2.1 Graduate School
“Graduate Schools play a key role not only in developing internationally competitive
centres of top-level research and scientific excellence in Germany but also in increas-
ing their recognition and prestige. They serve as an instrument of quality assurance in
promoting young researchers and are based on the principle of training outstanding
doctoral students within an excellent research environment.
Graduate Schools thus offer ideal conditions for doctoral students within a broad
scientific area and, as integrative institutions with international visibility, they en-
courage students to be active members of their academic and social communities. As
a result, graduate schools will extend far beyond DFG Research Training Groups and
differ from them substantially.” [1]
In a graduate school several professors supervise PhD students. The whole research
has a common theme. Students are offered special courses and invited talks.
A typical graduate school consists of 12 to 15 PhD students supervised by six pro-
fessors. Scholarships are provided for three years for one generation of students. The
German Research Foundation supports three generations of students. Students are
encouraged to publish papers with their fellow students. However, the Thesis has to
be written by each student alone. There is not much different to the procedure of the
classical individual doctorate.
2.2.2 Graduate Academy.
At several universities there exist “Graduate Academies”. The website of Graduate
Academy in Rostock can be found via address provided by [2].
The website provides the following statement:
“The promotion of junior scientists is one crucial factor for success in international
scientific competition. The Graduate Academy seeks to create an optimum surround-
ing to support young doctoral candidates, postdocs and scientists successfully at our
University. As the central service and coordinating office for junior scientists, the
Graduate Academy contributes to improving and developing the conditions for doc-
toral candidates at our University.”
The academy provides a qualification program that supports PhD students in their
scientific activities.
“The aim of the Graduate Academy's qualification program is to support your work
on your research projects and to provide useful information on career possibilities.
Unless otherwise specified, the courses are open for both, doctoral candidates and
postdocs.”
Such courses provide support for skills like reading, academic writing, presenting
at conferences, analyzing data, etc. Such skills are necessary for a PhD. However, the
courses are not mandatory. They are a service that is provided by the University that
can be used but can also be neglected.
The PhD in Germany is really individual research work only. There is no need for
further courses.
In the following paragraph, we would like to present some details about a specific
graduate school that was finished last year in Rostock. The school was called Mu-
SAMA [3] (Multimodal Smart Appliance Ensembles for Mobile Applications)
2.2.3 Graduate School MuSAMA.
“MuSAMA is based on the hypothesis that ubiquitous machine intelligence, envi-
sioned for our future everyday environments, will be provided by dynamic ensembles:
Local agglomerations of smart appliances, whose composition is prone to frequent,
unforeseeable, and substantial changes. Members of such ensembles need to be able
to cooperate spontaneously and without human guidance in order to achieve their
joint goal of assisting the user. The resultant concept of autonomous cooperative as-
sistance poses new challenges for the research on ubiquitous and ambient information
technology.
Work in MuSAMA therefore concentrates on the investigation of models and algo-
rithms that allow dynamic, ad-hoc ensembles to deliver the assistive power of Smart
Environments independently of external or global knowledge. Globally coherent en-
semble behavior with respect to a user's need emerges from local interaction of indi-
vidual appliances. The application scenario for MuSAMA are instrumented rooms
that support teams in knowledge exploration and knowledge integration based on
distributed display facilities.”
The graduate school MuSAMA was funded from 2006 to 2015. However, some
students were supported till the end of 2016 because of extension options.
Fig. 1 gives a visual representation of the MuSAMA domain.
Fig. 1. Visualization of the domain of the Graduate School MuSAMA [3].
The school was organized by 12 Professors that identified four different research
fields. These research fields are:
• Context analysis
• Multimodal interaction and visualization
• Intention analysis and strategy development
• Management of resources und infrastructures.
Research questions were identified and PhD students were hired. For the first three
years 15 PhD students a scholarship for two years was offered only. After two years,
students had to provide their plan for the third year. This plan has to be supported by
the 12 professors. After acceptance students were allowed to proceed with their re-
search. However, in some cases students did not get further support.
Further extensions of the research were provided based on the need and available
funds. Statistically, students got scholarships for 36 months + 3 months extensions.
11 PhD students were supported by an additional year because of parenthood.
Additionally to PhD students few postdoc positions were available. Also funds for
student assistants were available. These students were intended to support experi-
ments. Finally, so called “associated” PhDs were part of the school. They were fi-
nanced from other resources but their work was related to the research questions of
the school.
The following table will provide some numbers about participants in nearly ten
years.
Participants Status Number
PhD financed 45
Postdoc financed 3
Student Assistant financed 132
PhD external 29
Table 1. Different types of students in MuSAMA
The success rate of the research projects was good but not as good as expected.
1. Generation 2. Generation 3. Generation
Finished 12 10 10
Cancelled 2 7 4
Table 2. Different generation of students and their success in MuSAMA
3 Ideas from other PhD Programmes
The Carnegie Mellon University provides a PhD programme in Software engineering.
PhD students have to meet the following requirements:
In order to meet the requirements for ABD/ABS in the Software Engineering PhD
program all students must:
1. Meet Star course requirements
2. Meet Elective requirements
3. Complete both (2) practicums
4. TA two courses
5. Speaking requirement approved
6. Writing requirement approved
7. Residency requirement of 4 semesters “[4]
PhD students have to participate in two presentations in a research seminar every
week. They have to give two well prepared talks every year. The role of the seminar
is described as follows: “The Software Research Seminar (SSSG) at CMU relies on
active participation and a supportive community to help students broaden their under-
standing of software research and hone their presentation skills.”[4]
The faculty of Carnegie Mellon University selected a canonical set of papers in the
domain of software engineering [Error! Reference source not found.] that students
have to read in the first semester. It seems to be a good idea to provide papers. How-
ever, some papers are very fundamental and should be already known by the students.
Concordia University in Montreal allows even Bachelor alumni for their PhD pro-
gramme. The University provides very precise requirements for the degree, admission
requirement, and the admission process [6].
Additionally, a list of typical offered courses is provided. This list contains the fol-
lowing courses:
o Software engineering development process
o Mining large software system data
o Software re-engineering
o Software comprehension and maintenance
o Software architecture and design
o Software requirements, verification, testing and validation
o Human computer interface design
o Software project management
o Services computing: Foundations, design and implementations
Students with a Master degree have to participate in course work for 12 credits and
students with Bachelor degree have to have 28 credits. Additionally, a seminar with 2
credits and doctoral research proposal with 6 credits have to be passed.
4 Summary
In the paper some general ideas of PhD programmes in Germany and especially at the
University of Rostock were provided. An example of a graduate school was discussed
based on the experience with the school MuSAMA.
There are discussions about structured PhD programmes in Software Engineering
in Germany. However, currently there exist only additional services. It is still as-
sumed that the result of a PhD is presented in form of a monographic work. Real PHD
programmes do not exist yet.
Good practices from other programmes could help to establish such programmes.
A list of papers or books that are expected to be known by PhD candidates could be
such an idea. Also the list of courses provided by Carnegie Mellon or Concordia
could be helpful.
4 References
1. http://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/programmes/excellence_initiative/graduate_school
s/index.html
2. https://www.uni-rostock.de/en/research/promotion-of-early-career-researchers/graduate-
academy/
3. http://musama.informatik.uni-rostock.de/index.php?id=321&L=12.
4. http://isri.cmu.edu/education/se-phd/
5. http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/isr2015/abstracts/15-107.html
6. https://www.concordia.ca/encs/computer-science-software-
engineering/programs/graduate/phd-software-engineering.html