Graduate School

Else Kröner-Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health:
Understanding Health and Prevention

Embedded in the Strategy 2030 of the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health offers a structured training program for medical students at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, with the aim of introducing medical students to substantial scientific activity at an early stage and to support and mentor them individually beyond the doctorate, thus preparing them in the best possible way for a career as Clinician Scientists.

The EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health offers a special mentoring program specifically tailored to female physician scientists, which is intended to illustrate career paths for female physician scientists. Part of this specific program is mentoring by leading international, female Physician Scientists as role models.

The Faculty is composed of scientific leaders and scientists with a recognized track-record in mentoring and graduate education. The EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health is open to all research group leaders who would like to offer challenging scientific projects with a focus on understanding the molecular programs that underpin, maintain and promote health. This open constellation enables broad interdisciplinary translational approaches to scientifically relevant questions that contribute to the understanding of health and identify options for early therapy and prevention by investigating the underlying molecular signaling pathways.

The Else Kröner-Fresenius Stiftung, together with the Faculty of Medicine at Charité, is responding to the growing need for medical professionals with in-depth scientific training who can integrate the complex biological background of the scientific understanding of health, understand the underlying molecular signaling pathways and apply their knowledge to the development of suitable preventive therapies by establishing the EKFS-Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health.

The EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health thus aims to provide an additional scientific qualification for medical students who want to conduct a challenging experimental doctoral thesis on an MD/PhD track and encourages them to apply for a scholarship.

Tight Connection to ZIBI Graduate School

The EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health will closely collaborate with the ZIBI Graduate School Berlin, the graduate school of the Center for Infection Biology and Immunology (Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Chiara Romagnani). ZIBI offers a wide range of programs that our students can attend. Since 2005, ZIBI serves as an umbrella for all graduate training programs with a focus on research in infection and immunity. ZIBI represents a strong and lively community of interdisciplinary research groups, with doctoral students located at the Berlin universities (Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Charité – Universitätsmedzin Berlin, Technical University Berlin) and non-university research institutes/basic science institutions (Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Robert Koch Institute).

In addition, our young researchers benefit from the broad and optimized range of competence courses at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), the Dahlem Research School (FU), the Humboldt Graduate School (HU) and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC).

Doctoral students of the EKFS Promotionskolleg Re-Thinking Health take advantage of this offer and can optimally complement their personal curriculum in this way. In addition, the international research environment of the ZIBI Graduate School and the intensive scientific exchange between life science and medical doctoral students enable the further expansion of an interdisciplinary environment in the field of translational research.

Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung

The Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (EKFS) was set up in 1983 by the entrepreneur Else Kröner, neé Fernau, who bequeathed it all her assets. The non-profit foundation is dedicated to advancing medical research and medical-humanitarian projects.

Faculty

All members of the Re-Thinking Health faculty have one thing in common: excellence, curiosity, collaborative spirit, multidisciplinarity, and the goal of introducing medical students to the scientific understanding of the state of health as an active process driven by mechanisms of continuous adaptation to the environment, thus training the next generation of experts in this scientifically highly attractive biomedical field in a structured graduate program.