The University of Luxembourg has signed an agreement with four other research institutions in Luxembourg, namely the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law (MPI), stipulating that they will cooperate in doctoral education. The signature took place on 26 October 2016 at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

More supervisors for PhD projects

Among the Luxembourgish research institutions, only the University has the right to award PhD degrees to students. In the new agreement, the contracting parties determine the way in which research projects for obtaining the doctor's degree are carried out by the non-university institutions together with the university. Still being the sole degree-awarding institution, the University of Luxembourg remains responsible for the verification of academic standards of the doctoral training, but the supervisors for PhD projects within the framework of the cooperation can now also come from one of the other institutes.

“This memorandum strengthens the spirit of cooperation between the various Luxembourgish research institutions with the University in the centre. By further integrating researchers and doctoral candidates from other institutes into our PhD regulations and by building up joint PhD programmes we broaden the research base of the whole country and contribute to the education of a highly skilled workforce,” said Prof. Rainer Klump, the President of the university of Luxembourg. “The University of Luxembourg looks very much forward to further collaborative projects in the same spirit.”

The joint doctoral programmes will be set up in areas, where research interests of the other institutions overlap with those of the University. The partners defined 13 areas of cooperation including law, economics and finance, computer science, physics and material sciences, and biomedicine. For each joint doctoral programme, a separate agreement will specify the contributions of each partner.

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Caption: The University of Luxembourg has signed an agreement with four other research institutions in Luxembourg stipulating that they will cooperate in doctoral education, © Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche