Course program
Imposter Syndrome in Academia
Workshop in cooperation with PIER Education Platform
Dates & times: 14th April 2026, 1pm-3pm
Location: online
Trainer: Dr. Nese Oktay-Gür
Info & registration: via indico
Content: This two-hour online event includes a 1-hour talk on 'Imposter Syndrome' by Dr. Nese Oktay-Gül and a facilitated discussion, followed by the introduction of help facilities for mental health at DESY and University of Hamburg.
Academic excellence often comes with invisible pressure. Many doctoral researchers experience self-doubt, perfectionism, and procrastination - especially in high-performance research environments. This interactive session explores why imposter feelings are so common in academia and how to build confidence, resilience, and focused momentum in your PhD journey. What participants will learn:
• How imposter syndrome develops in academic environments
• How to strengthen resilience and confidence under pressure
• How to break the cycle of procrastination and move into action.
Python Basics
Workshop in cooperation with PIER Education Platform
Dates & times: 18th & 19th March 2026, 9am – 5pm
Location: online
Trainer: Bernd Klein (bodenseo)
Info & registration: via indico
Participation requirements: programming experience in some programming language like C, C++, Java or other. Without sufficient programming knowledge, participation is not recommended.
Content: This Python intensive courses will give you all the necessary basic Python skills, which you can apply advanced courses in order to get started with data analysis and machine learning in Python.
Topics are:
1 Jupyter-Notebook Introduction
2 Data Types and Variables
2.1 The special nature of variables in Python
2.2 Sequential Data Types: Lists and Strings
2.3 Dictionaries and Sets
2.4 copying vs. referencing data, Shallow and Deep Copy
3 Conditional Statements
4 Loops: While and for-loops with the Python „else“
5 Functions
6 Modules and Modular Programming
7 Read and Write Files
8 Using Regular Expressions and their usage in Python
Convincing scientific talks: presentation skills
Workshop in cooperation with PIER Education Platform
Dates & Times: 9th & 10th March 2026, 9am – 5.30pm
Location: Bldg. 1b, seminar room 5 & 4a
Trainer: Dr. Matthias Mayer (mmsc.de)
Info & registration: via indico
Content:
1. Prepare Clear Content
Many scientific presentations suffer from too little clarity and too much content. The result is a lecturer running through the slides, losing the audience at the very beginning. You should instead learn to deliver a clear presentation by setting dis-tinct goals and finding vivid examples that make your talk memorable.
2. Design Proper Slides
Today's leading standard for visualization in scientific presentations is Power-Point: a powerful tool, however, often poorly used. Lecturers frequently try to re-mind themselves what they wanted to say by reading their own bullets – thereby facing the projection screen instead of their audience. With overfilled, graphically cluttered, visually incoherent slides they try to support their speech. Do better!
3. Be Convincing on Stage
With your body language and spoken word stands or falls your talk. Aside valuable content you must be able to deliver it in a convincing way that motivates your au-dience to follow you. Many great researchers miss this chance and obligation. You will give an example of your talk, receive feedback, learn from a video recording of it, and you will know how to do better, if necessary. We will train for onsite and online talks.
Topics:
• How to start and end well
• Telling a vivid story: Creating Brain Cinema
• The Six Golden Rules of Slide Design (How many words? How many slides? What background and fonts? …)
• PowerPoint tech tips (slide masters, Smart Art, etc. No full introduction)
• Body language: where to put your hands – and other questionshe Six Golden Rules of Slide Design (How many words? How many slides? What background and fonts? …)
• Prepare clear content: audience focus, take home message, etc.
• Answers to your questions
Methods:
Mixture of trainer input, practical exercises, participants’ presentations, and discussion. Each participant will conduct a short 3-5 minutes’ presentation twice (an excerpt of a larger one), receive feedback by peers and trainer and learn from a video recording. Participants need to send in samples of own slides and their learning goals before the seminar. Also, they need to prepare for their short talk.
Past Courses
See here for additional educational opportunities:
Many of these offers are open to you.