Summer students

The Nano Theory group of the Low Temperature Laboratory will hire 1-2 summer students for the summer 2012. The summer student project can be made as a special assignment or a bachelor's thesis. Alternatively, it can be used as a start for a master's thesis work.

The topics of the works are connected to the research on the phenomena in nanoelectronics that we perform in our group. The method that we apply in our group is usually the combination of the traditional "pen and paper" analytic derivation of the equations governing the desired phenomena, and numerical work. For the numerics the students usually write their own codes. Sufficient skills in mathematics for the projects is typically obtained within the first two years of studies. As physics methods we use the formalisms of quantum mechanics and statistical physics, but these the students typically learn during the projects (so it does not matter if you haven't taken these courses yet). Because of the nature of the work we seek especially mathematically oriented students.

In our group it is possible to get an access to a "real" research work. Examples of this are the previous special assignments made in the Nano Theory group. Many of them have lead to a publication in some of the highest-level physics journals.

In many cases the summer trainees have stayed in our group, first as part-time research assistants, and later as full-time diploma students and graduate students. The first have already completed their doctoral degrees and work or will work as post-doctoral researchers in high-level research groups abroad. Possibilities for building an academic career are thus very good in the Nano Theory group, but obviously the decision on starting the career does not have to be made at this point. The European Research Council Starting Grant received by Tero Heikkilä guarantees good working conditions and possibilities for students in making a career in physics.

Although our group contains still mostly Finns (one of the graduate students is French and one post-doc is Italian), we collaborate with many foreign research groups. This can be seen for example in our list of publications. Recently we have worked together with scientists from Delft University of Technology, the Autonomous University of Madrid, Michigan State University, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Paris in Orsay and Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. We have also frequent collaborations with the experimental nanophysics groups of the Low Temperature Laboratory.

If you are a mathematically oriented physicist and interested in learning to describe quantum-mechanical phenomena in nanoelectronic systems, you are welcome to apply to the Nano Theory group of the Low Temperature Laboratory.