International PhD students in Germany - experiences - video Dailymotion

DW (English)

Science and beyond: Being an international PhD student in Germany. Find out more about research projects, experiences and daily life.

Transcript

00:00Having this opportunity that you can actually go and search, find your passion,

00:04that's something really cool about the German education system.

00:09I never thought of becoming a scientist or doing a PhD per se, but then while

00:14working my hunger for knowledge grew and I wanted to learn more.

00:19My name is Shruthar, I'm from India. I'm doing my PhD in high-speed robot perception.

00:25My name is Nila, I come from India and I am a PhD student working on human motion generation.

00:35I would say that TU Dortmund has a really good department which integrates the new students to the university campus

00:42so that they don't feel kind of okay lost in the big campus that we have.

00:47Research here is basically to show that human-drone interaction is possible

00:54and it is perfectly safe that drones fly around humans in a warehouse doing some tasks.

01:02I did my bachelor's in India. I attended various workshops.

01:05That's how I thought okay let me search for good institutes in and outside India.

01:12In Germany the government, academia, industry work together. This is something new.

01:17The education here is very good and it's affordable.

01:31My story is that I did my bachelor's back in India of course.

01:36I constantly have mentors throughout my life and they are the ones who told me go for higher studies that will broader your prospects.

01:46My mom is the one who did some research and she was like Germany is the way to go.

01:51I applied for only German institutes to be honest.

01:56We look at human beings in logistic scenarios.

02:00We envision a futuristic warehouse where the drones would be flying around in a warehouse alongside humans.

02:07This is the motion capture suit. These balls reflect light and then the cameras will be able to identify his bone structure

02:16so that we can get his skeletal image using the motion capture system.

02:23I'm coming from an institute which wasn't that research oriented.

02:26Coming to Germany I saw a lot of differences in the sense that here the universities are more like practical oriented.

02:34The students have opportunities to try out stuff and get a real experience rather than just learning in the classroom.

02:44With the bachelor and master programs that I've seen here there is an opportunity for the students to choose what they want to look into,

02:51to look for internships and work closer with projects.

02:55I think that's really cool.

02:58I was actually working here as Visentia Flesher Hilfskraft and that's when my mentors were like oh cool you seem to be interested,

03:07you're doing your research, you're inquisitive, so why don't you try a PhD.

03:21Many times we are working till late, probably like 10 in the night.

03:35That's fun in the sense that we are like 3-4 people in the hall, we just hang out, dim the lights, put on the lasers.

03:44Over here we have this culture in the office, we have beer at 4 o'clock on Friday evening.

03:50When I came over here there was beer in the fridge, I was like huh?

03:56I like the work culture in Germany.

03:58There's work life balance to a large extent and Saturdays are off.

04:14In India there is a thinking that Germans are serious, but then after coming here you realize,

04:20okay it's not like they are serious, it's just a language barrier,

04:23so if you learn their language then they are like normal any other people in the world or in India.

04:33I never felt like an outsider, so if I don't know the language,

04:37like some words in the language they would actually help me to figure it out with a lot of expressions and stuff like that.

04:43And I'm like, that's really sweet of them.

04:47One or two months for me at least I had to take time to get used to the silence essentially.

04:55In India it's like very loud.

04:57The TV is loud, the fan is always running, it's loud and over here everything is so calm, silent.

05:03It took me some time.

05:05But that's nice right?

05:06It's very nice.

05:11Thinking of Germany as a developed nation, I thought that of course it would be much more digitalized.

05:17Because in India every shop owner, small shop owner has a digitalized payment system with them.

05:26Coming from a female perspective I would say the safety that we have over here is phenomenal.

05:32I mean like I like to travel and I get to travel over here even at night times.

05:37But then that's not something I would have been so comfortable doing back home.

05:42Dortmund is the, I would say the second home.

05:47I'm pretty much at home here.

05:50Till I complete my PhD I'm in Germany, but after that let's see, maybe I go back to India.

05:56I consider myself a global citizen.

05:59Wherever research leads, that's where I want to go.

International PhD students in Germany - experiences

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended