Supervision of doctoral students is our top priority!

Symposium speakers, HAS board members and D-HEST scientists having a traditional swiss fondue at the “Welcoming Dinner” of HAS Symposium’19. @Walliser Keller Restaurant Zürich, 20/10/2019.

In 2019, we organized our first ETH-wide symposium “Supervision of Scientific Success” to contribute to increasing consciousness and appreciation for good supervision practices and mentoring of young aspiring scientists. Remarkable speakers of the symposium were Prof. Dr. Joan A. Steitz, Lasker awardee 2018 from Yale University, Prof. Dr. Michael N. Hall, Lasker awardee 2017 & Nakasone awardee 2019 from Basel and Prof. Dr. Laura Nyström, ALEA awardee 2018 from ETH Zurich. Speakers shared their wonderful scientific achievements and perspectives as successful scientific leaders regarding mentorship, work atmosphere and productivity. Aim of this symposium was to raise awareness for excellent supervision practices and the importance of the inspiring leading example for scientific accomplishments.

Related to the symposium, we also organized a number of social events such as “Welcoming Dinner” and “Pre-Symposium Lunch” and “Symposium Apero” to foster networking and exchange of ideas among students, academic staff, professors, sponsors and the invited speakers.

Moreover, in this year, HAS contributed to the consultation process on enhancing the doctorate at ETH Zürich by joining related discussions in the DK and providing comments to tasks and recommendations on the consultation measures concerning doctoral students’ recruitment, research plan and admissions colloquium, supervision, education and training, academic progress report, duration of employment, funding, salary, scholarship and doctoral examination.

As it was in last years, the welfare of the D-HEST scientific staff was one of our priorities and HAS continued to give support to its members via “Support!Desk” which is a strictly confidential mediation service where we aim to listen and provide advice in case of conflict, as well as follow-up long term in case this is necessary. Additionally, within D-HEST, we worked on the cultivation of “Annual Progress Report” which HAS implemented it in last year together with the professorial administration to bring doctoral students and supervisors together to discuss all conflicts and resolve them in the form of an official form.

For all of our activities and events please visit us at www.has.ethz.ch. If you are interested in joining us or have ideas, or questions please get in touch with us via haoss@ethz.ch.