Overview  
 

Berlin School of Mind and Brain

Facts about the School

1 The Berlin School of Mind and Brain is an international Graduate Research School. It offers a three-year doctoral degree program in English (curriculum).

2 The School was established in 2006 and receives its funding through Germany’s Excellence Initiative.

3 The focus of research at the School is on the interface between the humanities and behavioral sciences with the neurosciences. Main topics of research are: ‘conscious and unconscious perception’, ‘decision-making’, ‘language’, ‘brain plasticity and lifespan ontogeny’, and ‘mental disorders and brain dysfunction’.

4 What do ‘mind’ or ‘brain’ in education and research stand for?
Mind: humanities and behavioral sciences such as philosophy, linguistics, behavioral and cognitive psychology, neuroeconomics, neurology and psychiatry (depending on research question and methods).
Brain: neurosciences such as neurophysiology, computational neuroscience, neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry (depending on research question and methods).

5 Interdisciplinary research: it is our mission to train outstanding young scientists to become experts in one of the relevant fields, to provide them with knowledge over the gamut of mind and brain research, and to give them the ability, and the opportunity, to cooperate with researchers from other disciplines. Find out more about our idea of interdisciplinarity.

6 The training program covers all fields relevant to mind/brain-related research. Students engage in eight teaching weeks which lay the foundations for interdisciplinary work. They are held during the first half of the doctoral program.

7 Through funding awarded by the Excellence Initiative the School was able to establish and fund several additional teaching and research posts: a full professorship in philosophy of mind, an adjunct professorship in lifespan ontogeny, an adjunct professorship in decison making, a junior professorship and an assistant professorship in medical psychology, two assistant professorships in philosophy of mind, and an international visiting scholars program.

8 Each year the school accepts 10 to 15 doctoral students into its program. Currently the school has 33 student members, 8 alumni, and 58 faculty members. There is also a growing number of associated researchers and associated research groups.

9 Supervision: students will be supervised by (at least) two professors. Usually, one is from the ‘mind sciences’ and one from the ‘brain sciences’. 

10 There are no tuition fees payable for this program. Administrative fees come to approx. 240 Euro per semester (including a public transport travel pass). Students will have pay for their own health insurance and personal liabilty insurance.

11 Funding: Each year the School can offer a number of scholarships to the best applicants. These scholarships are highly competetive. Students who were not successful in winning one of the School’s own scholarships will receive support in obtaining an alternative source of funding (e.g. a research post within a university department or with one of the research groups, or an alternative scholarship).

12 Students will be offered academic soft-skill courses (e.g. scientific writing, grant-application writing, high-performance presentation), mentoring, and career counseling. Students are obliged to take part in journal and methods clubs and to attend the School’s weekly lecture series.

13 The School is a founding member of Humboldt Graduate School (HGS). HGS is an umbrella support organization to a select number of doctoral programs wihthin Humboldt-Universität. Together with the School’s administration, HGS offers services to doctoral candidates including assistance with visa applications, matriculation, health insurance, local authorities, academic soft-skill courses, and language classes.
You will find photographs of the splendid Humboldt Graduate School building around this website. It was originally erected in 1841 as the Royal School of Veterinary Medicine. Since January 2009, the second floor of the building’s North Wing is home to the Berlin School of Mind and Brain.

14 The School closely collaborates with seven neuroscience graduate schools in Berlin (Neuroscience Berlin), especially with the two Ph.D. programs Medical Neurosciences and Computational Neuroscience. It is a member of Neuroschools Germany and of the Network of European Neuroscience Schools (NENS

15 General information

The brochure Die Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in der Exzellenzinitiative contains a chapter on Berlin School of Mind and Brain, pp. 30–33 (in German) (pdf 49 kb). Press reviews and articles under Press.

16 Find us on Facebook and ResearchGATE.

17 Find us also on the DAAD database.

18 The School runs a mailing list to advertise lectures, seminars, and job opportunities. It has more than 800 subscribers, nationally and internationally.

Subscribe by sending a blank e-mail to: mind.brain.verteiler-subscribe@lists.hu-berlin.de

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This page last updated: 30 September 2011