[staff-physics-and-astronomy-HL-UHD-UD] Fwd: [VWP-l] Request for 1st year student projects in June

[Juan Rojo]

Dear colleagues,

Please note that the deadline to submit projects for the N&S BSc Year 1 
project (happening in June 2025) is March 10th.

It is very important that VU physicists (including those based at ARCNL 
and Nikhef) offer a sufficient number of projects to meet the number of 
students looking for projects.

As we try to enhance our footprint and visibility in the physics joint 
degree, showing that we can offer a sufficient number of projects 
meeting the demand is crucial for our ambitions.

If some moderate support from the MT would make it possible that you can 
offer more projects in your labs (for example, via the purchase of some 
small equipment) please get in touch with Jordi to consider this option.

Those groups submitting proposals for projects please also inform Lyuba, 
who is keeping track of the contributions from VU staff.

Many thanks in advance for your support with this.

best,
Juan



-------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Juan Rojo
Professor of Theoretical Physics
Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy
Faculty of Science, VU Amsterdam
De Boelelaan 1081, 1081HV Amsterdam
----
Nikhef Theory Group, Science Park 105,
1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands
----
Webpage: http://www.juanrojo.com/
Zoom: https://vu-live.zoom.us/my/juanrojo
E-mail: j.rojo at vu.nl
         j.rojo at nikhef.nl
-----------------------------------------------


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[VWP-l] Request for 1st year student projects in June
Date: 	Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:31:18 +0000
From: 	Joshua Dijksman <j.a.dijksman at uva.nl>



(apologies for duplicates)

Dear Amsterdam-based Physicist or Astronomer,

*tl;dr:* Please submit your proposals for 1st year projects in June at 
the following link:

https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0dlEPOf8wkgaq2y 
<https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0dlEPOf8wkgaq2y>

Deadline: *March 10th eob*

Thanks!

Joshua, Clara

/__/

/_More information_/

The UvA/VU Physics and Astronomy BSc program wants to *make your 
experimental research activities more visible* in its program. You can 
help out! Help is much appreciated because we need to cater to 100+ 
students. Please make time and capacity available in your research lab 
to supervise groups of students (3-5 students per group) in the month of 
June.

We use a survey form to collect your project data, among which:

   * Your name/email
   * Optional: intended (PhD/PD) supervisor name/email
   * Project Title
   * Project Description
   * # students per team
   * # teams that you could host
   * Optional: upload a scientific (non-review) article that students use
     to prepare. We will need one later if you don’t provide it now.
   * An indication of when the students should be in the lab (e.g. due to
     your absence for traveling etc).

Please keep in mind: The first-year students like freedom but also need 
more structure than you may realize. For the project, include:

(1) Expected working hours/days (usually 10-17h, total 80 hours lab time 
from June 2-20, work from home possible, etc)

(2) Project goal. Can be: explore open ended question, calibrate 
sample/machine, extract feature from data, etc. (more details below)

(3) Supervision strategy: introductory meeting, periodic meetings, group 
meeting attendance, etc.

/Project submission 
form:/https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0dlEPOf8wkgaq2y 
<https://uva.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0dlEPOf8wkgaq2y>

We use the same form as for Research Project. *The deadline for 
submission is March 10th eob*

/__/

/_Even more background and practical information:_/

The students need to work about *two weeks fulltime* in the lab total, 
to be distributed over the first three weeks of June. They will spend 
the remaining time on training on how to perform teamwork, Github use, 
poster presentation and video communication. Training on teamwork will 
be provided by others. It is NOT needed to keep the entire team busy 
with lab work - they need to also read literature, make a poster, 
animation, do data analysis: dividing labor is a skill they need to 
learn as well.

In our course, which will run in the month of June ‘24, we aim to train 
students in (1) the scientific skill of “ownership” (2) team work (3) 
scientific group attitude (4) poster presentation and (5) animation.

There is considerable flexibility as to what the students should do. 
Students can:

   * Get confronted with a simple experiment and let them
     describe/rationalize observations.
   * Repeat experiment from a PhD student/postdoc at slightly different
     settings
   * Perform data analysis on a (new) data set with (new) code and
     perform some systematic study
   * Build a necessary component in a slightly different way
   * Prepare a sample in a different way (if sample prep is reasonably
     involved)

In all these tasks, the idea is to *spark creativity, curiosity, 
ownership*. The project is best designed to have a fixed 1-3 day 
experimental part in the beginning to get going with the activity with 
something that you know will work. After this initial phase, the 
students are requested to come up with a research question by 
themselves, guided by the supervisor. *For examples of projects*, please 
see here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5bltupdeidn2t84fjqfgl/Project_description_examples_appendices.pdf?rlkey=obegmktxgg9zpexk5jktpsrgp&dl=0 
<https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5bltupdeidn2t84fjqfgl/Project_description_examples_appendices.pdf?rlkey=obegmktxgg9zpexk5jktpsrgp&dl=0> 


The project phases will consist of the students

   * Studying research literature (in April/May, before starting the
     project),
   * Performing some (basic) experiment hosted by a research group in
     early June
   * Presenting the research work in a poster and short video in the last
     week of June (please save the Thursday if you would like to attend
     the poster session).

If this sounds familiar: another approach to expose students to research 
is via the second year BSc “Research Practicum”, in which students get 
to interact for one week with a scientist and work on a suitable 
project. *Our course comes before the “Research Practicum”* and you are 
encouraged to participate in both (with the same topic), as the learning 
goals for both courses differ substantially, and the same students will 
not be assigned to the same project.

Note: we have probed the students' interests in research topics with a 
new updated version of a booklet with very brief topic descriptions. We 
have grouped the research activities per topic and will so be able to 
use these preferences to build the teams. The booklet is updated each 
year as research groups evolve and we receive comments from researchers, 
so please send us your feedback! Please find the 2025 booklet here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2zcxi5934vnpsubjdx9dj/First-Year-Booklet-2025.pdf?rlkey=oh9zw8kcu9jrta6mp3taf1adf&dl=0 
<https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2zcxi5934vnpsubjdx9dj/First-Year-Booklet-2025.pdf?rlkey=oh9zw8kcu9jrta6mp3taf1adf&dl=0> 


We will make sure that your project gets assigned to students who have 
indicated interest in the topic of your project.

Any further questions can be sent to:

j.a.dijksman at uva.nl <mailto:j.a.dijksman at uva.nl>

c.nellist at uva.nl <mailto:c.nellist at uva.nl>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
Vwp.nat.few mailing list
Vwp.nat.few at listserver.vu.nl
https://listserver.vu.nl/mailman/listinfo/vwp.nat.few