How do research consortia create a spirit of innovation, creativity and exploration? Read this report by PIs Thomas Weiss and Peter Banzer about the NanoGraz Careers & Ideas Days 2025 on Career Paths After the PhD, and find out!
On October 13 and 14, the NanoGraz consortium of the Research Career Campus at the University of Graz hosted a two-day event to inform the consortium's doctoral candidates about their career options after graduation. In addition to exciting and personal insights into the career paths of early-career researchers and presentations by representatives from industry, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the University of Graz's research management, an ideas competition took place on the second day, giving participants the opportunity to develop collaborative, interdisciplinary mini-projects.
Doctoral candidates spend a significant amount of time during their doctoral studies advancing their research projects. Many are also involved in teaching and attend seminars and scientific conferences. This can sometimes leave little time to consider their career path after graduation. The NanoGraz consortium of the Research Career Campus took this as an opportunity to present potential career paths to its current cohort of doctoral candidates.
"Many of our doctoral researchers will complete their PhDs in about a year. It seemed like a good opportunity to organize an event showcasing these options,"
explains Thomas Weiss, one of the two spokespeople for NanoGraz, along with Peter Banzer.
"The primary focus in the conceptual planning of this event was to provide genuine added value for NanoGraz's doctoral researchers. It was to be an event completely tailored to their needs,"
adds Peter Banzer. With this mission as the driving force, the NanoGraz Careers & Ideas Days were born.
The first day began with presentations from Marko Simic, a postdoctoral researcher in the OpNaQ group at the University of Graz, and David Clases, who was recently appointed associate professor at the University of Graz. While the two speakers offered some very personal insights into their career paths in academia, the next section focused on career options in industry.
Christian Hill from the Graz-based startup BRAVE Analytics and Rainer Minixhofer from ams-OSRAM provided in-depth insights into daily work life at their respective companies and explained what ultimately matters.
Following this, Johanna Stadlbauer, head of the Research Career Campus, presented the early-career researcher support programmes offered there, followed by a presentation from Robert Fuchs from the University of Graz's research management department, who highlighted general national and international funding programs.
To conclude the first day, Simone Recchi from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) explained what to consider when writing research proposals and which FWF programs are specifically aimed at young researchers.
The second day was entirely dedicated to the scientific creativity of researchers.
"Consortia like NanoGraz aim to facilitate interdisciplinary doctoral training at the University of Graz,"
reported Peter Banzer.
“Usually, joint research projects are initiated by the supervising professors. We therefore wanted to give the doctoral researchers the opportunity to take the initiative and develop project ideas themselves.”
In three independently organized groups, ideas were brainstormed and developed into mini-projects.
“We originally wanted to award the best project €5,000 as seed funding. In the end, however, all the proposals were so good that the jury unanimously decided to fund all projects with €3,000 each,”
explains Thomas Weiss.
The two-day event was clearly very well received by the doctoral candidates.
“I thought it was a great idea. I found the experiences shared by the junior researchers particularly helpful. But developing our own project ideas was also a lot of fun,”
reports Diana Shakirova, a doctoral researcher at NanoGraz.
Report: Thomas Weiss and Peter Banzer, 28.10.2025, translated by Johanna Stadlbauer