Education

Scientists at VSI teach predominantly in the Bachelor’s and Master’s Physics programmes of FSE, most notably the Bachelor’s Particle Physics track and the Master’s Quantum Universe track. Generally, staff teach 2 -3 courses per year each and supervise their share of the annual around 30 Bachelor and 10-20 Master individual students’ research projects at VSI, corresponding to about half of all (Applied) Physics Bachelor students and almost ⅔ of all Physics Master students.

The key programme for VSI is the Quantum Universe Master’s track, to which our staff has been instrumental in setting up and coordinating since its start in the academic year 2013-2014 together with the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute (KAI) and the Bernoulli Institute (BI) for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. The Quantum Universe track connects the training of Master students with the research of VSI as well as KAI and BI. The research-driven education is exemplified by the QU triangle below showing the 2022-2023 core and elective QU courses. During their Master’s project, students further develop themselves towards becoming independent researchers. This excellent teaching and learning environment prepares them primarily for a research career - creating a pool of prospective PhD candidates - but equally equips them with a versatile skill set for a successful non-academic career.

VSI staff is also involved in teaching people at the level of the PhD programme, for example through organizing (inter)national summer schools, symposia, workshops, topical lectures, and local PhD presentation meetings, journal clubs, etc.