Advice on the doctoral thesis
Please read the preliminary information "Statistical Consulting" first.
To register for "Omics Experiments", please contact the Omics Ambulance of the AG Computational Biology.
The Institute of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics (IMSB) is committed to good scientific practice. Therefore, please note:
- The use of statistical advice is not obligatory. However, please note that any advice received must be stated in the dissertation.
- "Quick consultations" in the sense of an emergency outpatient clinic - in particular consultations requested by telephone or at short notice by e-mail - are not provided for in this context (exception: the Omics Ambulance). Well-founded advice is not possible without exact knowledge of the experimental design and the data structure.
- Only doctoral projects that are submitted to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Cologne can be advised.
- Once you have registered, you will receive an invitation to the next available "Course for Doctoral Candidates", which usually takes place monthly (see below). Participation in the course is obligatory in order to be able to take advantage of counseling services.
Procedure:
1. Registration
2. Course for PhD students
Once a month, the Institute of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics (IMSB) offers a course for postgraduate students in which basic knowledge about the statistical planning and data analysis of your doctoral thesis is imparted. Participation in this course is a prerequisite for further consultation. The courses are web-based without recording. Once your registration has been confirmed (see point 1.), you will be informed of the next possible date for the course and further details on the procedure, depending on the number of places available. Following your participation in the course, you will be assigned a statistical advisor.
We reserve the right to cancel individual courses at short notice in the event that too few registrations are received.
Course dates (with reservation)
- Monday, 02.06.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m. (completely booked out)
- Monday, 07.07.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m. (completely booked out)
- Monday, 04.08.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
- Monday, 01.09.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
- Monday, 06.10.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
- Monday, 03.11.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
- Monday, 01.12.2025, 3:00-4:30 p.m.
Course material
3. Procedure and scope of the consultation
After attending the course, individual appointments can be arranged directly with your statistical advisor. The scope of the consultation comprises three appointments of 60 minutes each and is based on the progress of the respective work. For an efficient consultation, it is recommended to include clinical supervision at the beginning.
Note: For reasons of IT security, we do not accept zip files.
Possible organization of the consultation appointments:
- Discussion of the planned question, the created database and the description of the analysis sample
- Support for the selection of suitable data analysis methods and presentation of results
- Discussion of results and assistance in interpretation
Prerequisites for effective consulting are
All in all, we offer "help for self-help"!
4. Data analysis and responsibility
Doctoral students analyse their data independently, for example using the IBM SPSS Statistics® software (IMSB expertise in IBM SPSS® Statistics, SAS, R or Stata available). IBM SPSS® Statistics can be obtained from the ITCC as a campus license.
Responsibility for the data (correctness of form and content), data backup and data protection lies with the doctoral students/clinical supervisors.
Please also note:
5. Completion of the thesis
Before you submit your thesis to the Dean's Office after consultation with us:
- Please inform us about the finalization of your doctoral thesis
- Please submit your thesis to your statistical advisor
If services are provided in the context of consulting that lead to scientific publications, it is scientifically correct, collegial behavior to credit those IMSB staff who were involved in consulting, according to their share of the work, in the list of authors or in the acknowledgment. In this case, please submit the work to the IMSB staff member prior to submission for publication.
Affiliation: Institute of Medical Statistics and Computational Biology
Faculty of Medicine • University of Cologne • Cologne, Germany