To be eligible to enroll in the PhD programs at Aithyra all candidates are required to have

• a Master’s degree or equivalent* in computer science, computational biology, bioengineering, engineering, physics, statistics, mathematics, medicine, biology, chemistry, or a related scientific or technical field.

• research experience in a relevant scientific area (>6 months full-time research experience).

• a fully completed application form submitted before the relevant deadline, including two submitted references.

• full details of two referees with institutional email address, at least one of them should have supervised you in a research project. The deadline for both reference submissions is Nov 3. Make sure both referees have submitted the references on time – your application will only be considered if 2 references have been submitted.

• High level of both spoken and written English (official certificate is not required).

The working language at AITHYRA is English, so excellent written and oral communication skills in English are required.

* Applicants with degree equivalent to Master Degree must

• have a 4-years Bachelor’s degree with excellent grades (first-class honours or upper second-class, 2.1) equivalent to 240 ECTS,
• provide the degree certificate and academic transcripts at the time of application submission,
• have a significant amount of research experience
  

The applications will be collected on the portal of the University of Vienna*. Please create a u:account to access the portal and submit your application. You will be able to access and edit your application until the submission deadline, using your u:account credentials.

Please follow the instructions on how to create a u:account and how to start and manage your application here: How to Apply for a PhD Position

*Please note that our students are enrolled at either the University of Vienna, Medical University of Vienna and Technical University of Vienna depending on their background.

Please provide information on your

• Education: You may provide details of one to two Master’s, Diploma or Medical degrees and one Bachelor’s degree. Please share the information of the degrees most relevant to the PhD call. If you have completed more degrees, you may include them in your CV.
• Research Experience: You may list one to four relevant research experiences (bachelor thesis, master thesis, internships, or other) and list any supervised research projects with a duration of at least 8 weeks full time each. Indicate whether your contribution to the project work was of a theoretical (computational) and/or experimental nature. Describe the research project and your role, your direct contributions, techniques you used, skills you obtained and key outputs that demonstrate experience relevant for your application.
• Training/courses/study visits: You may list up to three key trainings or courses you obtained outside of your degree program, and/or study visits (e.g. Erasmus).
• Research Outputs: You may list up to 5 publications (journal articles, preprints, conference papers or presentations (talk or poster)).
• Career Breaks: We recognize that career paths are rarely strictly linear. If you have any gaps in your employment history (e.g., parental leave, caregiving responsibilities, continuing education, or a sabbatical) that you would like to provide context for, please feel free to do so here. Indicate here also any non-research job or other employments to provide a complete timeline of your CV. 
• Research motivation and personal statement: You will be asked to outline your scientific interests, your desired directions for future development and select the research groups you are most interested in from the drop-down menus. You can find more information about the groups here.

The working language at AITHYRA is English, so excellent written and oral communication skills in English are required.

* Applicants with degree equivalent to Master Degree must

• have a 4-years Bachelor’s degree with excellent grades (first-class honours or upper second-class, 2.1) equivalent to 240 ECTS,
• provide the degree certificate and academic transcripts at the time of application submission,
• have a significant amount of research experience
  

To complete your application, you need two references (mandatory) to be submitted before the deadline to be able to submit the application. Please note that the deadline for application submission is Nov 1 and the deadline for reference submission is Nov 3.

Register your referee

1. Open your application form and navigate to the ‘Referee 1’ and ‘Referee 2’ section. Your personal details (name and email) are pre-filled, so you can skip the “Applicant Details” section.
2. Enter the official email address of your chosen referee. Please note that personal email addresses (e.g. gmail, yahoo, hotmail, gmx) will not be accepted.
3. Double-check before saving: Once you submit a referee’s email in the portal, you cannot change it yourself. 
4. If you make a mistake, please contact phd@aithyra.at and indicate the correct email address to reset it.

Send the invitation manually
Important: You Must Contact Your Referee
To protect your data and privacy, this system does not send automatic emails. Adding a referee’s details to the portal will not notify them. It is your sole responsibility to:

1. Initiate Contact: Email your referee personally.
2. Provide Information:
   • The link to access the referee portal to provide the reference: phd.careers.univie.ac.at/auth/external-reviewer/anmelden
   • Their professional email address you used to register them in the application form (it will be required for verification for your referee to access the referee portal).
3. Confirm Receipt: Follow up to ensure they have received your email and the link.

Why is this? We prioritize data protection. By sending the link from your own personal account, you maintain full control over the communication and ensure your referee recognizes the sender.