Ph.D. Retreat 2025
This year's PhD Retreat took place from July 7th to 9th at the Jäger von Fall hotel in Lenggries, Germany. The retreat was held in the picturesque surroundings of Lake Sylvenstein. 31 of our Ph.D. candidates gathered for two and a half days to get to know each other better, build their soft skills and focus on cross-cutting scientific topics.
On the first day of the retreat, a workshop on Intercultural Communication lasting several hours was held by the two IC trainers, Ms Marie-Catherine Rausch and Ms Hannah Tongpouwo.
The second day started with a Career Development Session that was kicked off by Dr. Kerstin Bleuel, (GraduateCenterLMU) with a presentation on options and orientation after the PhD.
This talk was followed by brief presentations of three of our alumni, namely Dr. Anna Kilanowski, Dr. Nikos Nikolaou and Dr. Karl Emmert-Fees. This session was concluded with a discussion round, in which Prof. Eva Rehfuess, spokesperson for the PhD program and chair of Public Health and Health Services Research, also shared her experience and the doctoral candidates could address all relevant questions to the presenters.
Prof. Annette Peters (director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Munich) gave a talk on Ethics in Cohort Studies. During the presentation she illustrated the different perspectives of participants, principal investigators and researchers who play a key role in these studies.
The scientific program resumed with Dr. Moritz Herrmann (IBE & MCML), the Open Science Coordinator at IBE, who provided an overview of open science. He touched on topics such as the replication crisis, reproducibility versus replicability, and methodological applications. In the afternoon, the spotlight was on social interaction. One could choose between an excursion to Ahornboden and Alm Eng, a walk alongside Sylvenstein, or playing games with peers.
On the third day, PhD representatives Claire Slesinski and Jakub Fusiak provided an overview of their work over the past year and shared the results of a survey on various topics and issues related to the PhD program. The session concluded with the election of the new representatives Ganling Ding, Joanna Krajewska, Mairi McClean and Yanding Wang.
The scientific program continued with a session on AI and Machine Learning. Following a comprehensive introduction to this topic given by Prof. Anne-Laure Boulesteix (IBE), Prof. Michael Ingrisch (Head of Clinical Data Science at LMU Klinikum) and Prof. Guillaume Landry (Department of Radiation Oncology) shared their research and insights on the clinical applications of AI and machine learning.
The PhD retreat resumed with a highly interactive session on Mishaps and Flaws in Data Analysis: Finding the Traps led by PD Dr. Ursula Berger (IBE). She made all participants aware of the challenges of applying statistical methods and analyzing data.