Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering

The Bavarian Graduate School of Computational Engineering (BGCE) was established in 2004 within the framework of the Elite Network Bavaria. As its primary objective, this Bavaria-wide initiative aims at both challenging and individually training and furthering the most excellent and motivated graduate students in our three participating master's programs - Computational Engineering (CE) at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg as well as Computational Mechanics (COME) and Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) at the Technische Universität München.

"Do more - get more!" is the motto of our elite program. After their first semester in one of the three master's programs, our selected applicants are admitted to BGCE, in parallel to their ongoing master's studies. During their next two semesters, they earn 30 additional credits - for a tailored combination of summer schools, block tutorials, advanced courses, project-based education, and soft skills training. At the end, all successful BGCE participants will be awarded a Master of science with honours degree, which manifests their outstanding excellence throughout their graduate studies.

BGCE's course program is a highly attractive offer to those who are willing to invest a bit more of work in order to get a deeper insight into modern research topics in the field of computational engineering. For example, BGCE students get the opportunity to take part in renowned summer schools such as the Ferienakademie in Northern Italy or JASS in St. Petersburg, Russia; they are invited to attend block tutorials given by leading experts of their respective field; they can experience writing numerical software in larger teams, sometimes in cooperation with industry partners; and they are offered specially designed seminars on soft skills topics such as presentation and communication, teamwork, project management, or leadership.

The Elite Computational Engineering (CE) program at Erlangen is aimed at those activities in engineering that use computers as their main tool. These may include the solution of ordinary or partial differential equations that model physical phenomena, the optimization of a process, or the stochastic simulation of a complex system.

The program is built on a solid core of courses in computer science and applied mathematics, and currently offers technical specializations in engineering fields such as computational electromagnetics, chemical engineering, thermo- and fluid dynamics, and the material sciences. The engineering disciplines provide motivation and technical expertise; mathematics supplies the necessary models and algorithms; computer science, finally, provides the efficient implementation and data handling for parallel high end computing. To support this interdisciplinary nature of the field, the Erlangen CE program features special project oriented courses taught jointly by faculty from the participating institutes.

Participants are required to have excellent grades and maintain a grade average of 2.0 or better. 10 credits have to be taken from either of the two partner programs at TU Munich. Participation in the elite program will therefore be most seamless for the TAFs which fit to those at TUM Munich, such as Thermo- and Fluid Dynamics, Computational Mechatronics, Sensorics, or Material Sciences.

The study plan must of students in the elite program must include at least Numerical PDE I, and either a course in Optimization or Numerical PDE II. In the computer science field, at least 8 SWS must be taken in continuous simulation, the remaining 8 SWS form a choice of visualization, pattern recognition, simulation, or high performance computing. The 30 credits of Elite courses can be taken from an annually changing selection and together with the study plan must be approved by the chairperson of the Elite program.