If you are interested in PhD research or to join as a guest scientist, please keep in mind that financing is one of the most important issues. We do have financial support for outstanding students but in general it will be very unlikely that we can provide the money for your research or PhD studies. As one of the possible sources for foreign researchers you my try the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD). Other national and international options for stipends, grants etc. are found on on the net. In case you write us an email concerning a research cooperation or to express your interest in PhD studies, please don't start it with "Dear Sir" since such mails usually directly go to the trashcan. Such mails are most often send to a very large number of email addresses (i.e, spam) and it is a waste of time to respond to people who don't even scanned our web pages at www.geophysics.zmaw.de and are unfamiliar with our research interests.
Your serious intent in a cooperation should be expressed through an innovative and focussed research statement, which briefly describes your project and points out the links to the research work carried out here. Please also provide a brief CV and a list of publications. Two to three names of references are of further help.
Following this very simple instructions, you can be assured that your request will be considered seriously and answered within a few days. If your research is new and innovative and overlapping with our interest we will also provide all possible support to raise the money for your project. A prerequisite for PhD studies within the Department of Geosciences of the University of Hamburg is, that your master thesis corresponds to the german diploma grade (master equivalent) of grade 2 (good). This can be checked on an indivudual basis by evaluating your thesis here. Since we currently transfered to the BSc/MSc system you may enter into the PhD program with a BSc degree in the future. This, however, may still take some time since legal issues are not yet resolved.