FACULTY OF PHYSICS

Brief Description of The Faculty of Physics

Mission and vision

Provides highly qualified undergraduate and graduate education in Physics to meet the demand of national development and international integration; Conducts fundamental and applied cutting-edge research.

Becoming a prestigious training and research institution in Physics in South East Asia by 2035.

Educational philosophy

The VNU University of Science has stated the educational philosophy through the core values of “excellent quality, innovation, creation, social responsibility, cooperation, and friendliness”. At the FoP, our undergraduate programmes educate students according to the philosophy: “active learning, learning by doing”.

Active learning implies that students actively select their specialty/major based on their needs, individual abilities and interests. Under continuous support of the FoP, student are active in designing their own schedule, choosing courses, research fields, research groups, supervisors and self-studying. Since the FoP determines that the best way to a better learning quality is to teach students how to learn, we provide students with academic freedom, research skills, team works, and confidence to promote life-long learning.

Learning by doing philosophy is effectively applied for teaching students and active learning. The FoP focuses on strengthening students’ experimental skills by the increase of the amount of experimental courses and the credit hours of each course for hands-on practice. Practicing courses, group projects, doing research, going internships and exchange programs, and undergraduate thesis help students to discover their own potential, independence and creativity to be a productive member of the society, to develop capacities for life-long learning.

History of development:

The FoP of the VNU-HUS (formerly the University of Hanoi), was established in 1956, with the task of training Physics researchers and lecturers. Throughout 67 years of establishment and development, the FoP has always been the leading national institution in training highly skilled professionals in Physics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in terms of both quality and quantity. Besides, the FoP members conduct various specialized physics researches in many modern physics sub-disciplines such as Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Solid State Physics, Radiophysics and Electronics, Nuclear Physics, Low Temperature Physics, Geophysics, Quantum Optics, Biophysics and soft matters, Computational Physics, High Energy Physics and Cosmology.

During 67 years of history, the FoP is the first and leading national institution in training scientists working in Physics or Physics related areas with more than 6,000 Bachelor students, more than 900 M.Sc. students, more than 200 Ph.D. students graduated. Generations of graduated Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. students have contributed and are contributing effectively in building, modernizing the nation. Many alumni and members of the Faculty have become leading physicists of Vietnam, playing leading roles in the Physics Society of Vietnam and other national education and research institutions such as Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and Humanity, VNU, and VNU HCMC, the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Materials Science, the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, Hue University,…

Staff

Currently, with a total number of 72 members, the FoP has lecturers and researchers of excellent professional knowledge and skills, enthusiastic and dedicated to physics education and research. The number of permanent lecturers/principal lecturers/senior lecturers of the FoP is 47 lecturers, 87.5% of them holding Ph.D. degrees. Especially, there are 3 professors and 17 associate professors, which accounts for about 20% of the total number of professors of the VNU-HUS.

The generation of lecturers born before 1970 is mostly trained and educated at leading education and research institutions of the former Soviet Union and in East Europe block. Many younger lecturers were educated at various leading education and research institutions in the USA, France, Germany, Netherland, Canada, Japan, and Korea. The quality and the quantity of the lecturers and researchers of the FoP are the strongest advantages in teaching and researching in physics that no other undergraduate programme in the nation can match.

Organization

The FoP has 13 members units (09 departments with many modern laboratories for teaching and researching, 02 Laboratories at Faculty level, 01 Key Laboratory at VNU level and 01 Center for Materials Science, headed by the Science and Education Council and the Faculty Dean’s Board. In detail:

• Department of Theoretical Physics
• Department of Solid-State Physics
• Department of Quantum Optics
• Department of Nuclear Physics
• Department of Radio Physics
• Department of Cryo-Physics
• Department of Computational Physics and Informatics
• Department of General Physics
• Department of Geophysics
• Laboratory for Computational Materials Science
• Laboratory for High Energy Physics and Cosmology
• (VNU) Key Laboratory for Multiscale Simulation of Complex Systems
• Center for Materials Science (CMS)

Other organizations such as: Faculty Committee for Educational Quality Assurance, the Labor Union, the Youth Union, the Students Association, the Faculty Alumni Association, the Association of former employees… actively participate in many activities of the Faculty.

Undergraduate Education

The FoP directly offers 04 undergraduate programmes of Bachelor of Science:the Physics programme since 1956, the Materials Science programme since 1995, Nuclear Technology and Engineering programme since 1998, and Electronic Engineering and Informatics programme since 2020. The Nuclear Technology and Engineering programme is one of the main and traditional programmes of FoP. The curriculum is developed based on traditional strengths in scientific research and teaching activities of the Faculty, with references to the curricula of various reputable institutions in the world such as the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia), and the Brown University (USA), University of Wisconsin – Madison (USA). Since 2012, all the programmes are developed based on Expected Learning Outcomes (ELOs). The educational programmes at the Faculty are regularly adjusted, updated and improved once every three to four years.

Post-graduate Education

The FoP was one of the first institutions of Vietnam to offer post-graduate programmes in Physics (the MSc. in Physics programme was established in the 90s, the PhD. in Physics programme was established in the 80s). At present, the FoP offers post-graduate programmes in 07 specialized physics subdisciplines: Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, Solid State Physics, Nuclear and Atomic Physics, Thermophysics, Radiophysics and Electronics, Geophysics, and Quantum Optics. Each sub-discipline offers MSc. and PhD. programmes as well as undergraduate sub-disciplines so that they have a high level of vertical consistency. Students can follow one specific sub-discipline from undergraduate to Ph.D. levels.

The post-graduate programmes, MSc. and PhD., are both developed based on the traditional strength of research and teaching activities with highly qualified lecturers educated in countries with developed science foundation such as Russia (or the former Soviet Union), European nations, USA, Japan, Korea… Many outstanding physicists nationally (VAST, the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, etc.) and internationally (the Dubna Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, the Brown University, Neel Institute, the Osaka University, the University of Paris, etc.) have given lectures and supervised undergraduate theses at the FoP.

The Ph.D. programme is a prominent strength and achievement of the FoP. It can be said that the FoP is the leading institution in training PhD. in Physics of the entire nation by both quantity and quality.

Scientific Research

The FoP of the VNU-HUS has a tradition of scientific research since its beginning. The FoP members have obtained many outstanding achievements in scientific research during its 67-year history. With many outstanding researchers and a system of modern laboratories, the FoP members have conducted many scientific research projects and grants and collaborations with many national and international research institutions. The main directions of research are as following:

• Theoretical Physics: Field Theory and Particle Physics; Low Dimensional Nanoscale Quantum Physics; XAFS Theory and Solid Structure; Nuclear Scattering Theory; Mathematical and Theoretical Physics studies in biophysics.
• High Energy Physics and Cosmology: Standard Model and its extensions; CP Symmetry Violation; Super Symmetry; Physics of Higgs Boson; Neutrino Physics; Applications in Astronomy and Cosmology; Various model of the universe; problems in the expansion and inflation of the universe; gravitational wave; cosmic microwave background; dark energy and dark matter.
• Computational Physics: Simulation and Modeling: Computer simulations in high energy physics (Lattice QCD); Computer simulation of economic and social problems; Computer Algorithms, parallelism. Study of ferroelectric, ferromagnetic perovskite materials; Applications of oxide materials in energy conversion; Theory of strongly correlated electron systems; Theory of Low dimensional spin systems.
• Nuclear Technology and Engineering: Environment Analysis and Radiation safety, Accelerator application, Nuclear nonproliferation, Nuclear reactor safety analysis, Nuclear reaction, Nuclear astrophysics, Particle physics, Nuclear structure, Medical Physics.
• Solid State Physics and Materials Science: Nanomaterials and Electronic devices; Research of properties and applications of 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 small signal amplification; Physical properties of nanomaterials, applications of nanomaterials in biology, medical, medicine, 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; Optical bistable effect in quantum optics, Random laser.
• Thermophysics: 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.
• Geophysics: 2 and 3 dimensional magnetic and gravitational methods in exploring deep structure of Vietnam continental shelf; Analyze and forecast earthquakes; Developing computer software for analyzing and processing geophysics data; Research on advance technology to gather geophysical data.
• Radiophysics: Physics of oscillation; Super high frequency electronics; Measurement and signal processing; Supersonics and applications; Applied electronics; Constructing systems for control, measurement, digital signal analysis, embedded systems.

The strong connection between high level education and research missions has facilitated the scientific research activities of the FoP, resulting in the FoP being the leading research institution nationally. With about 90 scientific publications in ISI/SCOPUS international journals annually, the FoP is a pillar of the VNU-HUS in education and research, contributing an important part to the success of the VNU.

Vietnam was one of the first countries to sign the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Nuclear Safety Convention in 1980 and all of NTE’s activities comply with the nuclear safety regulations of Vietnam and IAEA. “Nuclear power for peace purpose” is a phrase that is often repeated in the courses of the NTE.