FACULTY OF PHYSICS

Brief Description of The Faculty of Physics

The FoP of the VNU-HUS (formerly the University of Hanoi), was established in 1956, with the task of training Physics professionals. Throughout its 64 years of history, the FoP is the first and has always been the leading national institution in training at undergraduate and post-graduate levels in terms of both quality and quantity. More than 5000 Bachelors, 700 M.Sc. and 130 Ph.D. students in physics, 800 Bachelor in Materials Science students have graduated from the FoP, have contributed and are contributing effectively in building, modernizing, and defending the nation. Many alumni and members of the Faculty have become leading scientists of Vietnam and in the world.

Staff

Currently, with the total number of 76 staffs, the FoP has lecturers and researchers of excellent professional knowledge and skills, enthusiastic and dedicated to education and research. There are 47 lecturers (96%) with PhD. degrees among all permanent lecturers/main lecturers/advanced lecturers of the FoP. Especially, there are 4 full professors and 17 associate professors in the FoP. There are 48 academic staffs including 4 full professors, 14 associate professors, and 23 PhDs participate in the B.MSc.

The generation of lecturers born before 1970 is mostly trained and educated at leading education and research institutions in the former Soviet Union and other former socialist nations in East Europe. Currently, the majority of younger under-45-year-of-age lecturers holding Ph.D. degrees of the FoP were educated at various leading education and research institutions in USA, France, Germany, Netherland, Canada, Japan, and Korea. The quality and the quantity of the lecturers and researchers of the FoP are the strongest assets in teaching and researching in Physics and Materials Science that no other undergraduate programme in the nation can match.

Organization

The FoP has 14 member units overseen by the Science and Education Committee and the Faculty Dean’s Board. In detail:

• The Science and Education Committee have 21 members representing all member units and covering all research directions of the Faculty. The executive committee members are 03 leading national professors of Vietnam: People’s Honorable Teacher Prof. Dr. Bach Thanh Cong, President of the Committee; People’s Honorable Teacher Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quang Bau, Vice President of the Committee; Prof. Dr. Ha Huy Bang, Committee Secretary.
• The Faculty Dean’s Board has 04 members: 01 Dean and 03 Vice-Deans. The Dean oversees all affairs of the Faculty. The three Vice Deans assist three main areas of operation:  scientific research, technology transfer, and international cooperations; post-graduate affairs and administration; undergraduate programmes and student affairs. In June 2020, the Dean, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngac An Bang, was promoted to the position of Vice Rector of the VNU-HUS. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen The Toan is temporarily in charge of the Faculty’s affairs.
• Member units: 09 Departments of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Solid State Physics, Radiophysics and Electronics, Nuclear Physics, Low Temperature Physics, Geophysics, Quantum Optics, General Physics, and Computational Physics; 02 Laboratories at the Faculty level (Laboratory for Computational Materials Science, Laboratory for High Energy Physics and Cosmology); 01 VNU Key Laboratory for Multiscale Simulation of Complex Systems; Center for Materials Science; and the Front Office. The modern infrastructure, equipment, and laboratories serve effectively teaching and research activities of the Faculty.
• Other organizations: the Labor Union, the Youth Union, the Students’ Union, the Faculty Alumni Association, the Association of Former Employees… actively participate in many activities of the Faculty.

Scientific research at the FoP covers almost all areas of modern physics: Theoretical Physics, High Energy and Cosmology, Nuclear and Particles Physics, Geophysics, Solid State Physics, Materials Science, Computational Physics, Quantum Optics, Thermal physics, Radiophysics …  Main research directions related to MS are:

• Theoretical Physics: Low Dimensional Nanoscale Physics; Theory of X-ray Absorption Fine Structure and Solid Structure; Theoretical hard and soft condense matter.
• Computational Physics: Computer algorithms, parallelism; Simulation of ferroelectric, ferromagnetic perovskite materials, oxide materials in energy conversion, strongly correlated electron systems, low dimensional spin systems; Computational studies in biophysics, biomaterials and biomedicine;
• Solid State Physics: Nanomaterials and electronic devices; Thin film and nanostructure of oxide semiconductors materials in advanced electronic devices; Synthesis and investigation of magnetic materials, of ferroelectric, ferromagnetic multilayer perovskite materials; Exotic magnetic materials; sensors and signal amplification; Properties and applications of nanomaterials in energy, biology, medical, medicine, agriculture and environment.
• Quantum Optics: Laser Spectroscopy on optical properties of metal and semiconductor nanomaterial; Ultrashort-pulse laser and applications in fiber optic communications; Nonlinear Optics; Sum Frequency Generation Spectroscopy on monolayer, surface and interface; Random laser and micro-biolaser.
• Thermal physics: properties of magnetic materials at low temperature, superconducting materials, thermomagnetic materials and phenomena, magnetic cooling, magnetic nanowire, computer simulation and design of exotic magnetic materials at nanoscale.

The strong connection between high level education and research missions has facilitated scientific research activities of the FoP, resulting in the FoP being also the leading research institution nationally. Many research results are transferred to various companies and organizations in areas of energy, environment, agriculture, health, national security and military for mass commercial productions, addressing urgent and topical needs of the society. With about 120 publications in ISI/SCOPUS journals and 30 publications in prestigious national journals annually (about 30% of them in the field of Materials Science), the FoP contributes about one third of the total ISI/SCOPUS publications of the VNU-HUS.

These education and research outputs make the FoP being a pillar of the VNU-HUS in education and research, contributes an important part to the success of the VNU. The Physics subject of the VNU, where the Faculty of Physics is the core unit for education and research, has been highly ranked by various organizations: 472^nd by US News & World Report’s 2019 Best Global Universities Rankings for Physics, 401^st-500^th by Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2020; 551^st-600^th by QS World Universities Rankings by Subjects in 2020 (in Physics & Astronomy subject).