University of Jena uses artificial intelligence to simplify binational doctoral procedures

For several years now, it has been possible to complete a doctorate at two universities in two different countries. Research is conducted alternately at the two universities, and at the end, the universities award a joint doctoral degree.

Until now, however, the bureaucratic hurdles for completing such a binational doctorate have been very high. Drawing up the necessary cooperation agreement between the two universities could sometimes take more than a year, as a multitude of national, institutional and department-specific regulations – often in different languages – had to be harmonised.

The University of Jena is now leading a project that aims to simplify the drafting of these agreements with the help of artificial intelligence. Documents from the two participating universities, such as the various doctoral regulations, can be uploaded to the EC2U PhD Agreements Tool. The artificial intelligence first translates these into English, then compares them with the cooperation agreement to see how compatible they are and automatically identifies potential problems. 

The project is part of the EC2U alliance. It is a cooperation of WP3 (Digital EC2U Alliance) and WP8 (Life Long Career - Subboard Doctoral Training). The development phase of the AI tool is now complete. This year, the pilot phase will begin, during which new cooperation agreements will be drawn up at the EC2U universities with the support of the tool.