Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) is one of the largest and most internationally renowned universities in Germany. While the university was re-established in 1946, its historic roots date back to 1799. Today, nearly 35.000 students are enrolled at TUB, instructed by ca. 350 professors and 2700 research and teaching staff. Nearly 33% of the students are women and 24% are foreign citizens.

The main profile of TUB is science, engineering and technology (SET). However, its seven faculties and 40 institutes offer more than 130 study programs from both the fields of engineering and natural sciences and from economics and business, planning sciences, humanities and the social sciences.

On PhD level, more than 2.500 candidates are enrolled, more than 1800 of them in SET disciplines. Each year around 500 doctoral degrees are conferred.
In Germany, doctoral candidates constitute the major part of the academic staff on fixed-term contracts as the dominant status while aiming for doctoral qualification is employment. Thus, the largest part of PhD candidates pursues research within the individual qualification framework of working together with the supervisor or in the respective research team – the traditional apprenticeship model. Other doctoral candidates work at research institutions or in the industry and obtain a status of “external doctoral candidates”. Also, a relevant number of PhD students are affiliated with one of the 36 structured doctoral programmes of TUB (research training groups, initial training groups, graduate schools and the like).
TUB is committed to strong international ties with leading universities abroad, such as the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Politecnico di Milano or Warsaw University of Technology. Further strategic cooperations exist with scientific institutions in Southeast Asia and South America.

Among others, TUB is a member of the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research (CESAER) and the Association of the Top Industrial Managers Europe (T.I.M.E.).

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) is the largest university in Norway. With a history dating back to 1910 and traditions going back to 1767 NTNU now have 42.000 students, 7400 teaching and research staff, campuses in three Norwegian cities and offices in Brussels and Japan.

NTNUs main profile is in science and technology, but also offer a variety of programmes of professional studies in medicine and health sciences, social sciences, economics, humanities, educational sciences, architecture, entrepreneurship, art and artistic activities.

Extensive research infrastructure is key to NTNU. Occupying approx. 170.000 m2 the university operate more than 120 laboratories within their strategic research areas, https://www.ntnu.edu/research

About 2000 candidates are at any time enrolled in a PhD program at NTNU, within the SET disciplines there are about 250 PhD defences every year and more than 40% of the candidates are non-Norwegian citizens. Doctoral training is a three-year full time study including a training program equal to the workload of at least 30 ECTS. Some requirements apply but the candidate and supervisors design plans to cater for individual training needs. Admission require secured three-year funds and a master’s degree in a relevant field. Most candidates are offered scholarships from the University or they bring a scholarship from their home country.

NTNUs network of cooperation is widespread with extensive national and international industry cooperation as well as relations to more than 700 institutions in more than 100 countries