PhD Programs

Progress is driven by courage, curiosity, and passion. We offer the freedom to pursue your own ideas, a practice-oriented research topic, and tangible opportunities for real-world implementation as well as a structured program and dedicated individual support.

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What to expect

Throughout the three-year phd programs, Audi supports you as a reliable and committed partner on your path to a PhD. The job posting already defines a clear thematic framework for your research project. You will then further shape the details together with us and your academic supervisor – tailored to your strengths and interests. You will pursue your doctorate at a partner university, working in close collaboration with Audi on real industrial challenges. In this way, you combine academic research with practical relevance.

Program coordination

Helena Dengl supports the doctoral programs as the central program coordinator. She is responsible for ensuring a well-structured process as well as the defined organizational and content-related elements throughout your time in the program. As the main point of contact, she assists participants with program-related questions and supports them with overarching matters.

The program support is complemented by dedicated expert supervision within the respective department at Audi. This supervision guides the implementation of the individual doctoral project and provides support on subject-specific questions within the project context. In this way, close alignment with the core topic is ensured.

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"Our doctoral candidates stand out through their passion, their willingness to challenge ideas, and their strong determination. Their fresh external perspective and their enthusiasm for rethinking things not only make the collaboration exciting, but also exceptionally inspiring."

Helena Dengl, PhD program Coordinator

Doctoral projects at Audi

Within our programs, we offer two forms of collaboration to interested researchers.

The form of collaboration is defined at Audi based on the topic, the department, and the required cooperation with the university and is determined prior to the project being advertised.

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Internal doctoral project

Within the framework of a three-year fixed-term employment contract at Audi, you will work on a research-oriented project with a direct connection to the company. The doctoral topic as well as the associated research question are defined jointly with Audi and in close coordination with the supervising university and the responsible professor.

Internal doctoral positions are advertised via the Audi job portal.

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External doctoral project

In an external doctoral project, you will be employed by the respective university on a fixed-term contract for a period of three years and work on a research project relevant to Audi. Audi is closely involved in the project as an industry partner and contributes, together with the university, to shaping the content based on the respective research question.

Current research topics as well as information on the application process can be found on the universities’ job portals as well as on the Audi job portal.

Requirements

You bring curiosity and a strong analytical mindset, enjoy working in a research-driven way, and at the same time value a practical connection within a corporate environment. Working independently in interdisciplinary, well-connected teams comes naturally to you, as does the ambition to develop robust and sustainable solutions with a clear application focus.

Important to know: Formal admission to the doctoral program is granted by the respective university and is subject to the applicable doctoral regulations.

Your benefits in the Audi PhD programs

Individual support

Integrated milestone discussions with your technical supervisor and the program management provide you with the opportunity for reflection and give you clear orientation for the next steps on your path to completing your doctorate.

Pitch Training

As part of the Doctoral Day within the Audi doctoral program, you have the opportunity to give a presentation to our Board of Management. To prepare for this, professional pitch training sessions are provided to ensure you are optimally equipped for this task.

Audi Doctoral Day

The annual Doctoral Day is a highlight of your program and provides a platform for professional exchange across departmental boundaries. Together with our university partners, the event fosters a dialogue between academic research and industrial application.

Doctoral network

The Audi doctoral network connects you with researchers at Audi and across the Group – enabling knowledge transfer, fresh impulses, and perspectives beyond your own project.

Active participation

The network thrives on the commitment of its members. Here, you have the opportunity to contribute your ideas and actively shape the doctoral programs – for example, by taking on roles such as doctoral representative or by participating in various project groups.

Professional exchange

In dialogue with Audi’s leaders and experts, you can gain new perspectives and expand your network beyond your own field.

Two doctoral students introduce themselves:

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Evelyn is a doctoral student in the Department of Aerodynamics and Fluid Mechanics at the Technical University of Munich. In her doctoral research, she uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to study the behavior of fluids in narrow gaps and openings.

What is your personal goal in your research and project?

My personal goal is to understand a physical phenomenon well enough that its internal structure becomes transparent — not only for theory’s sake, but also for practical application. I aim to make complex flow mechanisms tangible and to describe them with methodological clarity, so that the resulting models extend beyond the narrow boundaries of a single use case.

The models developed in this project are intended to be accessible and transferable. Ideally, they should apply to components with narrow gaps, be adaptable to adjacent domains, and remain robust enough to serve as a solid foundation for future research across different applications and disciplines.

In this sense, the project is both an exploration and an investment. It seeks to reveal how water behaves in confined orifices, while at the same time establishing a methodological framework that others can expand, refine, or reinterpret — for example for other fluids or solid materials — long after my own work is complete. If the outcome is a theoretical framework that is not only internally consistent and elegant, but also genuinely useful to engineers and researchers alike, then the project has fulfilled its purpose.

A woman is conducting a water test on a vehicle component in a test environment.

What do you value about working in a large cooperation and especially at Audi?

I value the proximity to real engineering challenges and the seriousness with which scientific results are considered. Research here is not abstract — it is closely connected to practice and meant to lead to concrete outcomes.

At Audi, experience and innovation interact in a constructive way. Ideas do not remain theoretical; they are translated into action, tested, and further developed. This close link between scientific insight and practical implementation is what I value most.

A person is watching a simulation of a water test on a vehicle component on a laptop.

Two people are using a laptop to examine a test setup on a vehicle component.

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As a doctoral student at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Nicolas combines a specific technical problem with sustainability optimization. Building on this, he develops materials science solutions for passive secondary noise reduction and uses them to create a practical design guide for circular product development.

How did you come up with your PhD project?

For a long time, product decisions were shaped primarily by technical performance, cost, and quality. Today, additional expectations have become important: customers are increasingly seeking sustainability and transparency. This requires a change in perspective, because circularity does not start at the end of a product’s life cycle, but is determined by the very first design decisions. This is exactly where my doctoral project is positioned. It combines a concrete technical research topic with a comprehensive sustainability perspective. The goal is to develop material-based solutions for passive, secondary noise reduction and, based on this work, to derive a practical design guideline. This guideline is intended to provide clear, sustainability-oriented design principles and to support informed decision-making from the earliest stages of product development.

Two men are examining material samples on a table in an indoor room.

A person is working on a laptop next to a technical component in an interior space.

How did the partnership with Audi come about?

After gaining experience at several companies within the Volkswagen Group and at other OEMs, I eventually joined Audi as a working student. During that time, the idea emerged to use my master’s thesis as a starting point and to develop it further as part of a PhD project.

The focus was mainly on questions around the sustainability of different materials and on how they can be evaluated and classified in a meaningful way. Over time, this created a clear link between my technically and economically oriented studies and the materials science focus of my doctorate — and at the same time a strong connection to my work at Audi.