Management and Responsibilities

Management Structure

SAOT is administered and organized in its daily activities by the SAOT Board of Directors (BoD) consisting of the Coordinator, the Co-Coordinator, and the Director of Administration. The Coordinator and Co-coordinator are elected for a period of two years by the Graduate School Executive Committee (EC) which forms the core of the decision making processes. The Board of Directors is responsible for all research and educational aspects of SAOT`s daily activities and in particular for the admission of the students, the course program and the assignment of Mentors at all different levels of supervision and mentoring. The Coordinators for Outreach and SciCom Measures initiate, plan and conduct projects and applications in the fields of Science Outreach, Science Engagement and Science Communication.  All are assisted by the Administrator of International Students’ Affairs who takes over the responsibility for monitoring the performance of the doctoral candidates relative to the credit point system and in particular for the special mentoring of the doctoral candidates with respect to the international affairs of the education program. The External Advisory Board (EAB), consisting of internationally renowned scientists and businesspersons from the field of optical technologies, monitors the quality of the graduate program and the progress of development of SAOT.

SAOT in the Framework of FAU

The integration of SAOT into the university is shown in the figure below, in which also the structure of SAOT is roughly displayed. As a basis for the coordination of the structured doctoral programs in different research disciplines, FAU has established a graduate center that provides the institutional framework for different graduate schools at FAU. The FAU graduate center itself does not have any particular thematic focus but establishes classes in different research fields. SAOT is one of the interdisciplinary classes.