Max Planck School of Cognition

The Max Planck School of Cognition is a German graduate school coordinated from Leipzig, where the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences is a principal partner. It was launched in 2018 as one of the first Max Planck Schools, a Max Planck Society program that is a distributed network rather than a single university with colleges. Its defining fact is that cognition is taught and researched across participating Max Planck institutes and universities instead of inside one faculty.

The curriculum covers cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, computer science, and related life sciences. Students begin with laboratory rotations among network groups, then join a host laboratory for the dissertation. Participating sites include Leipzig and other German research centers with cognition, brain, and computational groups. English is the working language of the school.

Annual cohorts are small, on the order of twenty fellows, drawn from many countries. There is no large undergraduate body. Faculty are principal investigators across the network rather than a single-campus professoriate. Graduates move into academic neuroscience and cognitive science, industry research, and related applied fields.

The school is built around a funded doctoral track of about five years, including an orientation year, and can admit students with a bachelor's degree as well as those with a master's. Supervision is lab-based after rotations, with network courses and summer events. Fellows are placed in laboratories across Germany while Leipzig serves as the administrative center; daily life follows the host institute and its university city.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Max Planck School of Cognition lists 1 doctoral program, in biology.