On February 21, 2011, certificates were awarded to BMS Phase II students who sucessfully completed their dissertations in 2010 and to BMS Phase I students who completed their qualifying exams in 2010.

The award ceremony took place in the "Festsaal" of the Humboldt Graduate School. The ceremony opened with a welcome from BMS Chair, Professor Konrad Polthier, followed by a keynote speech delivered by Professor Peter Frensch, the Vice President for research at HU Berlin. In his speech, Professor Frensch spoke about his perspective on good conditions for study while working on a dissertation.

The ceremony also included musical interludes performed by the exceptional talents Julienne Mbodjé and Lennard Smith. Julienne is the winner of the NDR Kulturförderpreis 2010 (the North German Broadcast company's Advancement Award in Culture) for singing. Lennart was awarded the C. Bechstein piano contest at Hannover's School of Music.

After the ceremony all guests were invited to a reception at the Hall. Many photos were taken and can be viewed upon request.

Christina Büsing, who defended her dissertation some weeks ago, was impressed by the ceremony. "It is a fantastic feeling when someone, in my case professor Ziegler, calls out your name, a picture of you appears on the wall of the beautiful old hall and everyone is clapping while you receive a certificate for three years of hard work to obtain your PhD. And in this event you see many familiar faces because you met them at some soft-skill workshop, listened with them to an interesting talk at the BMS-Friday lecture or met them at the Kovalevskaya lunch. Celebrating my PhD with all these people who accompanied me along my way through university wrapped up the great time I had."