You can look forward to the following workshops and sessions during the Onboarding Days. Please refer to the Timetable for the exact dates and times.
Exploration on interculturality – intercultural training
At MPIB, around 350 people from 44 different countries work together (as of December 2025). Successful communication is key in this diverse environment: it facilitates collaboration and plays a crucial role in the successful completion of projects and research activities.
Our intercultural training raises awareness of potential pitfalls, encourages reflection on one’s own cultural background, and opens up new perspectives to make communication and collaboration even more effective. Last but not least, the workshops provide a valuable opportunity to meet and network with colleagues across research and service.
Presentation of service units and employee representatives, as well as tours of the building, garden, and labs
Who can help me with copyright questions concerning my paper? Who should I contact if I want to commission an external laboratory to carry out specific measurements? What are the responsibilities of the works council and how does this affect my work?
Answers to these questions (and more) will be provided during the presentation of the service units and employee representatives. You will learn about the wide range of services offered, the diverse support options, and the respective contact persons.
During a tour of the building, Stefan Heßler and Sabine Norfolk will share lots of interesting facts about the institute's extraordinary architecture and history. Afterwards, Erna Schiwietz will take you to the garden, where a wide variety of plants and animals are just waiting to be discovered. The day will conclude with a tour of the various laboratories with state-of-the-art research infrastructure, including the VR, EEG and MRI labs.
Git workshop “Track, organize and share your work: An introduction to Git for research”*
In today’s digital age, the majority of scientific insights in research are gained through analysing data using programming code. Although data and code are integral parts of their work, scientists do not always apply an effective version control leading to questions like “Which version of my data and code did I use to get this result?” or “I found a bug in my code. Since when was it there?”. This affects the reproducibility and trustworthiness of science.
Save yourself the trouble and frustration and learn how to keep your data well-organized with Git, a so-called version control system: By adopting Git, you gain the ability to trace the evolution of your work, experiment with new ideas without fear of irreversible consequences, and collaborate with a global community of researchers.
In this hands-on course with practical exercises, Lennart Wittkuhn, Senior Specialist for Data & AI, will show you how to track, organize and share your work using Git.
Research data management*
Conducting research often implies data management skills: Do I store all data in one file or rather split them up by participant? How do I organize or name the data files that I collect? Where do I store data so they are safe and secure?
Although adequate data management is a prerequisite for transparent, reproducible research, it does not usually receive the attention it deserves. And yes: It is dry, it takes time, it is not directly rewarding. Yet, a good data management strategy not only increases the value and accessibility of the data for the broader research community, but also for yourself when, for example, you return to your data folder for a revision after a year. To make the benefits of RDM tangible, we will be working with published data sets, and consider good and bad data management practices that hopefully soon inspire your own data management strategies.
Research ethics*
This workshop provides an overview of essential ethical principles for conducting research involving human participants. The session will address the potential ethical challenges researchers may face and offer guidance on aligning study designs with ethical standards to ensure participant safety and data integrity. In addition, we will explore the process of obtaining approval from an institutional review board (IRB), highlighting the key steps, and practical considerations required.
Data protection for scientists*
The aim of the workshop is to create an understanding of the GDPR and to embed its most important principles in the context of our (research) work. Participants will learn about the GDPR and its regulations, find out in which areas of our work the GDPR has an impact, develop their own solutions to comply with the regulations and learn both the restrictions and the potential that GDPR offers us. This workshop consists of both technical input and interactive elements in which participants can exchange ideas with each other.
* Workshops and trainings marked with an asterisk are mandatory for new scientists at the MPIB.
