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ICTP welcomed a new class of Postgraduate Diploma Programme students during a ceremony that took place on 5 September 2019 in ICTP’s Budinich Lecture Hall. Pictures from the ceremony are available on ICTP's Flickr page.
After a rigorous application selection process from a pool of more than 800 applicants, the 48 successfully admitted students are ready to begin an year of studying and training. This year’s students come from 28 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The Postgraduate Diploma Programme is designed to assist students from developing countries who come from various educational backgrounds and are interested in further study in physics or mathematics. The programme especially strives to fill in any gaps in the students' education and helps them reach international standards of knowledge and competencies. This is done to prepare them for graduate studies at any institution in the world. The programme offers five areas of instruction: high energy physics, condensed matter physics, mathematics, Earth system physics, and new for this year, quantitative life sciences.
Nearly 1000 students have graduated from the Postgraduate Diploma Programme since it began in 1991. Of these students, more than a quarter are female. Hundreds of Diploma graduates have gone on to earn PhDs from international universities, mainly in Europe and in the United States, and then have returned to their home countries to put their acquired skills to good use, by becoming teachers or researchers.
A quick survey of several new Diploma students reveals their excitement and expectations about the programme. “This year I expect to study a lot and improve my research skills, and also to expand my network,” says Poetri Tarabunga, a condensed matter physics student from Indonesia.
“I am 100% sure that the Diploma will help me with my perspective career,” says Hamid Momeni, an Earth system physics student from Iran, adding, “Maybe it will help me to be a better scientist, maybe it will be an occasion to be more in touch with other students from all over the world, who could be my colleagues in the future.”
This hope is shared by Mostafa Mohamed of Egypt, who is studying high energy physics. “I am here to try and become a better physicist,” he explains. “This year I really hope to learn how to grasp physics concepts, to gain that typical ‘physicist’s intuition’, to get that feeling of physics.”
More information about the Diploma Programme can be found here.
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