On November 1, a Memorandum of Understanding and a Cotutelle Framework Agreement were signed between Charles University in Prague and Dresden University of Technology. In addition to representatives of both universities, the Czech consulate in Dresden and the Saxonian Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism, non-university research institutions participated in discussions concerning scientific Cooperation: the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (IFW Dresden) and the Helmholtz Center Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) on the German side, and the J. Heyrovsky Institute and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences on the Czech side.
In cotutelle doctorates, doctoral students are inscribed at and obtain a doctoral degree from two universities. Another benefit of the binational doctorate is the development of a large international network and broader personal experience.
This is also emphasized by Ruben Dario Gonzalez Betancourt, who has been working on his doctorate at the IFW Dresden and the Institute of Physics in Prague for almost three years. He is researching magnetic transport properties in altermagnets. In 2021, he had just completed his master's thesis on a material that seemed interesting for this research topic when the subject of altermagnets suddenly took on greater scientific significance. The close collaboration between colleagues in Prague and Dresden that had already taken place beforehand gave him the opportunity to continue his work on the topic.
Today, he is simultaneously registered at the TU Dresden and the Charles University in Prague. In addition to the intercultural advantages and international experience, he also sees economic aspects in the German-Czech doctorate. The potential use of two infrastructures is particularly valuable in day-to-day research: if a laboratory or device is not accessible in Dresden, it may well be available in Prague, or vice versa. In addition, the personal network is twice as large and therefore automatically represents a much broader source of knowledge and experience.
For the institutions, the Cotutelle agreement is an opportunity to attract excellent young scientists for their own research topics and to strengthen binational cooperation. The IFW Dresden maintains such relationships not only with its neighboring country, the Czech Republic, but also with the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, the Universities of Parma and Genoa in Italy, and the Bogoliubov Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ukraine.
Read more:
Link to the Press Release of the TU Dresden
Contact
Patricia Bäuchler
Communication IFW Dresden
eMail: p.baeuchler[at]ifw-dresden.de
Phone: +49 351 - 4659 249
