PhD Pool Projects 2013 - 2017

In the second funding period of the Excellence Cluster Universe, 2012–2017, a new structure was established called "PhD Pool Projects".

Dedicated Cluster Principal Investigators were invited to apply with a PhD Project for which the Cluster would fund one PhD student to a maximum of 3,5 years. These projects were reviewed by a number of criteria like scientific attractiveness, feasiblility, timeliness, interdisciplinary and institution-connective aspect.

In a competitive selection process, a Cluster committee reviewed 28 proposals out of which 13 were awarded for funding. The independent evaluation committee was composed out of 14 scienists representing all research areas, theory and experiments and selected across all institutions. The research board discussed the recommendations of the committee at its meeting on 27 June 2013 and decided with no modifications as to the recommendations – thereby stretching the financial framework to the maximum. The projects start in summer/fall 2013.

PhD Pool Projects selected for funding

Proposer	Institute	Category	Title	RA
Buchalla	LMU	particle phy, th	QED radiative corrections to rare B-meson decays	C
Dolag & Komatsu	USM/MPA	astro, th	Hot & Warm: Simulating Galaxy Clusters with Interacting Dark Matter	E, I
Emsellem & Neumayer	ESO	astro, th+obs	Fuelling and growth of galaxy nuclei	F
Gerhard & Burkert	MPE/LMU	astro, th	What shapes the conspiracy between luminous and dark matter mass distribution in elliptical galaxies?	F, E
Göger-Neff	TUM	particle phy, exp	Precision measurement of the neutrino mixing angle theta_13 with the Double Chooz experiment: background reduction through pulse shape discrimination and search for oscillation into sterile neutrinos	C
Hertenberger	LMU	particle phy, exp	High-precision large-area micropattern detectors	B
Ibarra	TUM	astro, th	Searching for spectral features in the gamma-ray sky	B, E
Kluth	MPP	particle phy, exp	Determination of the top quark mass with ATLAS data and complete	A, I
Majorovits	MPP	particle phy, exp	Limitations of rare event HPGe experiments due to neutron induced backgrounds	C, E
Ratz	TUM	particle phy, th	Flavor symmetry and origin of CP Violation in Grand Unified Theories	A - D
Saglia	MPE	astro, th+obs	Triaxial modeling of elliptical and barred galaxies	E, F
Steffen & Garbrecht	MPP/TUM	particle phy, th	Thermal Production of Extremely Weakly Interacting Particles in the Early Universe	A, B, D, E
Testi	ESO	astro, th+obs	Gas and dust evolution in protoplanetary disks	G

These PhD Pool Projects are awarded once during the second funding period of the Excellence Cluster Universe. In addition, there exist more Cluster PhD Projects.