Training Program
Become a Medical Scientist of Tomorrow!
By integrating local and network-wide training, the programme ensures that each doctoral candidate receives a comprehensive education aligned with the EU Principles for Innovative Doctoral Training including the triple i principles — international, intersectoral, and interdisciplinary learning.
Over three years, the TrackAF programme will equip each DC with 180 ECTS credits, distributed across core research activities, formal training courses, transferable skills development and secondments. This structure balances deep, specialised knowledge with broad, interdisciplinary exposure, ensuring that doctoral candidates are well-prepared for both academic and non-academic career paths as medical scientists, i.e. researchers in the medical field (academia, hospitals, industry, NGOs) who are not physicians.
Training by research
...within each individual DC project forms the cornerstone of the programme, allowing each candidate to develop leading expertise in a specific aspect of atrial fibrillation research. Supported by local training at the host institution, doctoral candidates follow specialised courses tailored to the institution’s strengths and the individual doctoral candidate's needs, covering both scientific and transferable skills. This local training accounts for 90–120 ECTS, emphasising the importance of in-depth research in the doctoral candidate’s specific disciplinary field to foster self-reliance and develop scientific independence.
Network-wide training
...complements local efforts by providing broader exposure to various aspects of interdisciplinary atrial fibrillation research and transferable skills. These events include specific scientific and transferable training modules and semi-annual progress meetings where doctoral candidates present their research progress and engage in discussions with peers and experts, including supervisors and the Advisory Board. These meetings are complemented by monthly discussion and integration platforms where doctoral candidates present their findings and additional workshops or summer schools, organised to focus on specific scientific aspects and transferable skills. These immersive learning experiences are crucial for promoting collaboration across the consortium and contribute 30 ECTS to the overall programme.
The programme’s blended learning approach combines online and onsite elements, allowing DCs to prepare through online lectures, reading and collaborative discussions. This ensures that they are well-prepared for the interactive and intensive onsite sessions that follow to maximise the value of the sessions and minimise environmental impact.
Scientific Training Transferable Skills Training
Local training
Each partner institution offers training reflecting its areas of expertise, ranging from digital signal processing and heart modelling (KIT, MUG, UPV, UZAR, NUMERICOR), AI and data science in AF care and healthcare in general (MU, UKE) to experimental cardiac electrophysiology (MUG, UM, UKLFR, IISLAFE). Besides technical training, also transferable skills are addressed: project and time management, leadership, team working, gender, communication media and methods, open science practices, scientific publications, oral presentations, exploitation of research results, IPR and copyright, project planning and delivery, risk management, private and public funding, entrepreneurship. These courses are accessible to doctoral candidates from other consortium institutions, promoting collaboration and cross-institutional learning.
| Secondments | Discussion platform | Integration hackathons |
|---|---|---|
| ...are another integral part of the programme, providing doctoral candidates with the opportunity to gain practical experience in international and intersectoral settings. These secondments are integrated into each doctoral candidate’s research and career development plan, aligning with their objectives for contributing directly to training and career development with a volume of 30–60 ECTS. Through secondments, doctoral candidates apply their research in real-world environments, expand their skillset, gain insights into diverse career paths, explore other disciplines and expand their professional network. Secondments are designed so that, in combination with their host institution, each doctoral candidate is exposed to all three sectors: industry, hospital and academic. The experience gained during these secondments is critical for broadening their perspectives and enhancing their interdisciplinary and intersectoral competencies and thus their employability as leaders in Europe’s medical science industry and academia. During their secondments, TrackAF doctoral candidates can take part in the local training offers of the host institutions. | To equip the doctoral candidates with a well-developed discussion and organisational skillset for working in cross-disciplinary and diverse project teams, the doctoral candidates will set up a monthly discussion platform, in which they can discuss their latest results and cover other relevant topics. The discussion platform is both question and topic driven, can have a technical and/or clinical nature, and is chaired and organised by the doctoral candidates. Academic/clinical/industrial supervisors and experts will be invited, so that doctoral candidates can also build their network. Doctoral candidates can also invite external expert speakers for this monthly platform. The specific concept will be up to the doctoral candidates and we envision that one doctoral candidate per month will also report on their results. In the last year of the project, the consortium will organise TrackAF workshops and special sessions at international conferences to share results from the project and to exchange knowledge with other researchers. All doctoral candidates will be encouraged to organise the workshops together to enrich their complementary skills (composing a program, inviting speakers, working within budget constraints, etc). The doctoral candidates will exchange knowledge with other researchers by presenting, discussing and defending their results in front of international experts, which will serve as network-wide dissemination events. | Two integration hackathons in the second half of the project are immersive, “hackathon”-style events, in which the doctoral candidates jointly serve as a think tank to integrate their research outcomes into functional prototypes that require an interdisciplinary and intersectoral approach. Here, the doctoral candidates can test their multidisciplinary innovation skills and will team up in groups with diverse and complementary expertise. We plan to derive an ECG from a wearable device (DCs 3,4), analyse the P-wave (DCs 2,15) to inform patient-level simulations with accelerated surrogate models (DCs 5,9,11) for dynamic atrial fibrillation risk prediction (DCs 1,6,10), all integrated in a smartphone app. The specific setup in which the other doctoral candidates, whose projects are not directly linked in an obvious way, will bring in their expertise, will be one of the preparatory tasks for the hackathon. |
Scientific network-wide training
| Module | Title | ECTS | Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | Data science and AI in healthcare | 2 | M7 |
| S2 | Digital twin modeling | 2 | M8 |
| S3 | Experimental electrophysiology | 2 | M13 |
| S4 | Clinical management of AF | 2 | M25 |
| S5 | Special session at conference | 2 | M37 |
Transferable skills network-wide training
| Module | Title | ECTS | Month |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | Ethical science and open science | 1 | M7 |
| T2 | Project management and leadership | 1 | M13 |
| T3 | Science communication | 1 | M19 |
| T4 | IP & Entrepreneurship | 1 | M37 |
| T5 | Career opportunities | 1 | M42 |
