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Top research and more

For ten years now, the “Research Internships in Science and Engineering” have been bringing students from North America to Germany.

13.08.2014
© DAAD/Pierel - Natural Sciences

“I am interested in a career in scientific research and wanted to put my abilities to the test,” explains Emily Chua, a RISE alumna from Canada. “What better place for this than in a country that is renowned for its research institutions the world over?”

In summer 2013, Chua arrived as a RISE scholarship holder at the University of Konstanz, to do a research intership at the Physics Faculty there. At the time, the 
Canadian student had just finished her second year studying Physics and Oceanography at Dalhousie University in Halifax. However, she was not only interested in the research being done in Germany but also in European culture. “Until then, I had not set foot on European soil and I was very curious about the new impressions that its culture would make on me.” For the young Canadian, everything in Germany was new – and overwhelming: “In that one summer I experienced more about life than I had in the 20 preceding years.”

Many alumni have similar stories to tell about their stay in Germany on the “Research Internships in Science and Engin­eering” program, known as RISE for short. The program is sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and was launched ten years ago. Since then, around 2,800 internships have been arranged at German universities and research institutes – for undergraduate students in the natural and engineering sciences from the USA, Canada and the UK. “Both then and now, the idea is to allow young people insights into top research at a very early stage of their studies,” explains Christian Schäfer, who helped to get RISE underway at the time and who now heads a DAAD unit by 
the name of “Internationalisation of Research”. “What has repeatedly become 
apparent over the last decade is that the RISE scholarship holders have experienced a wonderful phase of self-discovery. They learn to trust in their own abilities and to grow as people.”

The secret of this success lies in the 
fact that these young interns are well supported by doctoral students at the rel­evant research institutes. “The doctoral students are themselves young and highly motivated in regards to presenting their own research work,” explains Michaela Gottschling, one of the administrators of the DAAD’s RISE program. “The doctoral students are also partly responsible for choosing their own interns, and this forges close links that 
often endure well after the internships have come to an end.”

This is something also discovered by 
Cedric Thiel, a RISE scholarship holder who in 2011 attended the German Research Center for Environmental Health in Munich, where he worked in the Comprehensive Pneumology Center. “I am very grateful to the doctoral student who was my mentor, both for what he taught me and his patient support – meaning that I had a very positive experience with the Germans and have made lasting friendships.” As a result, Thiel is returning to Munich – to his friends and to the research. Thiel completed his Bachelor’s in Biology and Chemistry at Walla Walla University in the southeast of Washington State in June 2014 and thanks to a 
Fulbright scholarship will now be conducting research at the Comprehensive Pneumology Center in his own right: on a specific lung tissue disease.

The RISE internship in Munich aroused Thiel’s interest in research and provided him with a clear idea about his future 
career path for the first time. The reason: at the lab in Munich biologist Thiel was also working with medical students of a similar age. The young American was provided with the opportunity to accompany one of them on his rounds at a nearby hospital. “This gave me an insight into the German health system and into the approach to patients,” reports Thiel. Inspired by the experience, he decided to aspire to a career in medical research. “None of this would ever have happened without my RISE scholarship in Ger­many.”

In addition to the way practical insights of this kind can help shape the scholarship holders’ future careers, there’s the bonus of a stay in Germany. “Beforehand, I had never been away from my parents for more than a few weeks, had never before explored the subway in a large city, had never been to the opera or to a music festival alone, had never stayed at a youth hostel and had never before hiked in the mountains – by the end of the summer I had done all those things,” reports Emily Chua enthusiastically. DAAD’s Christian Schäfer has often encountered this enthusiasm among the RISE alumni: “Germany boasts a very closely interwoven transport infrastructure that is both reliable and safe, which is why the young Americans and Cana­dians are very confident about traveling on their own, often for the first time.”

For Emily Chua, the scholarship also had a considerable effect on her chosen career path. When, in 2013, she was able to present her research in Constance at a get-together of RISE scholarship holders in Heidelberg she realized for the first time “just how much I enjoy discussing my work with other scientists – this brought it home to me that research is the right path for me.” Shortly after having returned home she received a research grant from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts where she will be able to bring the insights from her time in Constance to bear. ▪

Bettina Mittelstraß