The registration should be submitted at the beginning of the doctoral degree program if possible, but at the latest within the first 2 years (by email as pdf-file).

Further information

In principle, it would also be possible to register at a later date, but this is subject to a blocking period of 2 years, i.e. the dissertation may only be submitted 2 years after receipt of the registration.

If you were already registered at another university and register for a doctoral degree program with us after deregistering there, you will of course not receive a blocking period.

You are only entitled to submit a dissertation to the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy once you have been admitted. For externally supervised students, this is also linked to the necessary commitment of a professor from our department, whose primary employment is with the university, as a second reviewer; capacities are generally limited here. If you do not fulfil the admission requirements according to § 3 of the doctoral regulations, in many cases conditions must still be fulfilled, such as attendance of courses, knowledge level examinations, etc., for which it is again necessary that there is still a corresponding remaining period of the standard time to completion.

No, once the dissertation submission has been made, an extension is no longer necessary. The deadline only applies to the submission of the dissertation.

This cannot be answered in a general way; the application must be reasonably justified and supported by the supervisor. An extension should be requested for a maximum of one additional year; if more time is needed, a new request must be submitted.

Yes, in this case please submit the application for an extension of the standard time to completion due to maternity leave and parental leave.

No, the author may decide on this independently, it only has to be legible.

In principle, yes, but you should have made a correspondingly large substantial contribution to the publication and must indicate which parts are not yours.

You may responsibly use AI applications for certain purposes in the context of writing your dissertation. However, you must indicate this by specifying the tool/LLM used (including the version) and the purpose (prompt).

Your dissertation is your own work and not a work of Freie Universität Berlin. Therefore, you are not allowed to use the FU logo.

No, the publications are included in the dissertation as they were submitted or already published, similar to a chapter. They can only be included as a LINK in the context of the subsequent publication at the University Library's University Press Office (instead of the complete publication).

Of course, composite illustrations with several parts can also be included in dissertations. There is no objective reason why this should not be possible.

You do not have to provide evidence of first authorship, but you do have to hold a prominent position; this is also the case for correspondent authorships. This applies to the required two publications accepted or published in the peer review process.

The cover page must be in the same language as the dissertation.

You can find the template for this here.

The English B2 language certificate must be submitted in advance. This is normally done as part of the application process. You can find out from your admission letter whether the language certificate has already been submitted.

Please inform us about 10 days before the planned submission what the final title of the dissertation will be. This does not have to be the registered title, the registration is only a provisional working title, which can be changed or optimised without further application. Since this final title is entered into the database and will be queried later for the preparation of the certificate, no further changes may be made afterwards! In addition, please tell us the names of the two reviewers and whether your dissertation is a monograph or a cumulative dissertation.

Further information

All reviewers who are not employed by the FU Berlin must sign a confidentiality agreement. Former professors of our department who have retired are exempt from this requirement, as § 37 of the Civil Servant Status Law still applies.

No, this is not possible. The supervisor may submit suggestions (by email) before the thesis is submitted. These will be submitted to the doctoral board. If no proposal is received, the doctoral board will appoint a doctoral committee.

Hybrid in 2 separate rooms

Only you and the chairperson are present on site, but physically separated in an FU video conference room and the adjoining room - all other doctoral committee members and any audience are connected via Webex.

Hybrid in one room

You and the chairperson are present in the same room - all other doctoral committee members and any guests can choose to attend online or in person in the same room.

Online-only format

You and all doctoral committee members connect via Webex.

Attendance-only format

You, all doctoral committee members and any guests are in the same room.

No one is connected online and there is no streaming.

In any case, the doctoral committee must agree to the choice of format in advance!

The doctoral committee consists of

- the two reviewers

- two further university lecturers (professors or private lecturers)

- one academic staff member with a doctorate (employed at the FU Berlin)

The doctoral committee should include at least two full-time professors from the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy.
It should not include more than one university lecturer who has been retired.
The majority of the committee members must belong to the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy.
For the group of university lecturers and the academic staff member with a doctorate, a substitute member is appointed.

The substitutes of your doctoral committee (one substitute for the university lecturers and one for the academic staff) will stand in if a member of your doctoral committee is unable to attend at very short notice (e.g. due to illness).

Since your defense can only take place with a complete doctoral committee (4 professors and 1 academic staff member), substitutes should always be named by the day of the defense.

You will then receive an email stating the earliest possible date and asking you to arrange a date with the doctoral committee members.

On the day after the display period ended, provided that it is a working day (Monday - Friday).

When you are informed about the start of the display period, you will receive an email with the names of the doctoral committee members and their email addresses.