ASC Graduate School

The ASC Graduate School aims to contribute to interdisciplinary graduate training, to the internationalization of physics education and to the education of outstanding young scientists by offering a large set of advanced graduate courses to be held in English. These courses include specialised courses covering latest developments and state of the art research in the fields of activity supported by the ASC.

The membership in the ASC Graduate School is open to all graduate students whose advisor is a member of the ASC. Graduate students from the Technical University Munich (TUM) or from one of the Max-Planck institutes are also welcome to become members of the ASC Graduate School, provided that their advisor is an associate member of the ASC.

The successful participation in the ASC Graduate School will be certified upon attainment of the PhD degree, provided that the following conditions have been fulfilled:

• participation in and successful completion of at least two of the courses offered by the ASC, within the period of three years. Successful completion of each course has to be documented by fullfilling certain criteria of achievement (homework assignments, written or oral tests, etc.), as specified by the lecturer. At least one of these courses has to belong to a different area of specialisation, i.e. the lecturer and student have to belong to different theory groups/chairs;
• participation and presentation of at least one talk in a seminar;
• at least two semesters of teaching, each involving at least 90 minutes contact time per week (or one semester involving at least 180 minutes contact time per week) at the LMU/TUM at the level of a teaching assistant, while being enrolled as a PhD student;
• successful performance at a public graduation colloquium, consisting of a public lecture of 45 minutes explaining and summarizing the main results contained in the PhD thesis, followed by a question session on aspects related to the PhD topic and, more generally, to the associated area of research.

A prerequisite for being admitted to give a graduation colloquium is an excellent performance in the PhD examination, as follows: a grade of at least 1.0 for the PhD thesis; a grade of at least 1.3 in the oral exam.

The colloquium should take place as soon as possible after the PhD defense. Requests for being admitted to the colloquium should be submitted via an application form to the spokesman of the ASC.

Arnold-Sommerfeld PhD Prize

Two Arnold-Sommerfeld prizes will be awarded each year for the two best PhD theses of the previous year.

Prerequisites for receiving the prize are a graduation grade of "Summa cum laude" and the successful participation in the ASC Graduate School.

ASC Graduate Course Program

The ASC Graduate Course Program consists of a set of introductory courses as well as of advanced specialised courses.

The set of introductory courses consists of lectures in quantum field theory, the standard model of particle physics, string theory, solid state/condensed matter physics, physics of many body systems, statistical mechanics, biological physics, soft condensed matter physics, general relativity, cosmology and quantum optics.

ASC courses may also be offered at other institutions, such as TUM, if the lecturer is an associate member of the ASC. In addition, the ASC Graduate School aims at cooperating and coordinating its course activity with other graduate schools and with the Max-Planck Research Schools.

The ASC courses are, preferably, to be held in English.

The ASC Graduate Course Program can be found here

Last Updated ( Saturday, 17 April 2010 )