PhD Student representation – Bridging the gap between science, service and politics

Many universities have one or several doctoral colleges that train up to several hundreds of students. But different to undergrad students these PhD students are usually not part of any social groups or classes within the university. So it is the job of the PhD students itself to gather and share their experiences and expertise when it comes to start a new project or to wrap up your thesis and submit it to the final examination. At many universities PhD student representation is done by enthusiastic students that want to help their peers. This comment aims to outline the daily duty of student representatives. The subtitle “Bridging the gap between science, service and politics” outlines the vast opportunities a student representation has. Motivated students are able to organize conferences or science days, they can organize get togethers and horizontal transfer of ideas and methods, but they are also able to influence policy making at the university. However, this comment is only a loose accumulation of ideas and it is open to the reader to add his own experiences and methods in Phd student representation (a mail to the author would be very much appreciated!).