Fellowships We received 127 applications: 33 for Chile, 71 for Garching, 23 without preference 32% female applicants for Chile, 44% for Garching Applications from 34 nationalities Interviews have finished and the first offers have been made →5 for Chile (40% female) →6 for Garching (33% female) Replies to the offers are requested by mid/end of January

Lise Christensen Congratulations to Lise for the Leibniz Nachwuchspreis! This prize is given for the best PhD thesis written at any Leibniz institute You can find more information at

DGDF Notification planned before Christmas Oversubscription this year means not all requests can be funded Some thoughts: Make use of the existing programmes for some of your science work (visitors, travel)

Garching Science Day

IMPRS studentships 2008 Deadline was The selection of the students will go through the same procedure as the last year 1.FSSC will make a pre-selection of 4 candidates who will be invited to come to Garching – other participating institutes (LMU/MPA/MPE) will also invite some pre-selected candidates If you are aware of some good applicants please contact M. Rejkuba –help in pre-selecting good potential students is appreciate; the last year we had to scan through more than 100 applications. 2) The workshop will be organized together with MPE/MPA/LMU/ESO in January/February (dates still to be confirmed) where all the institutes will present themselves (the science, faculty, etc.) and where the students will be asked to give a short presentation of their work - the workshop is expected to last 2-3 days in order to give enough time to meet with the students and talk to them 3) the best students (based on their applications, presentations at the workshop and "interviews"/discussions with ESO staff) will be selected - the last year there were some students who were selected by more than one institute and it was therefore decided to make "multiple" offers from different institutes - the students get to choose which offer to accept --> therefore it is important that ESO staff shows the interest and that ESO is the best institute for the students to do their PhD thesis 4) ESO hires 2 students (starting date September 1st 2008) who are allowed to choose their PhD topic and the supervisor from the list on the web page: topics/ Conclusions: If you are interested to get a student, put a topic on the web page (contact Christina Stoffer) and come to talk to the students during the workshop! Workshop dates will be announced in January.

IMPRS studentships The workshop will be organized together with MPE/MPA/LMU/ESO in January/February (dates still to be confirmed) where all the institutes will present themselves (the science, faculty, etc.) and where the students will be asked to give a short presentation of their work - the workshop is expected to last 2-3 days in order to give enough time to meet with the students and talk to them

IMPRS studentships The best students (based on their applications, presentations at the workshop and "interviews"/ discussions with ESO staff) will be selected - the last year there were some students who were selected by more than one institute and it was therefore decided to make "multiple" offers from different institutes - the students get to choose which offer to accept  therefore it is important that ESO staff shows the interest and that ESO is the best institute for the students to do their PhD thesis

IMPRS studentships ESO hires 2 students (starting date 1 September 2008) who are allowed to choose their PhD topic and the supervisor from the list on the web page: Conclusions: If you are interested to get a student, put a topic on the web page (contact Christina Stoffer) and come to talk to the students during the workshop! Workshop dates will be announced in January.