TALENT: Training in Advanced Low Energy Nuclear Theory

Structure

The courses will be offered at different institutions in Europe and Northern America, with teachers coming from adhering laboratories and University groups. A possible format for the courses is that every course lasts three weeks, with two hours of lectures and two hours of exercise session per day. The students are expected to work independently and/or with supervision from the teachers for the remaining parts of the day. In total a course consists of 30 research based lectures, 30 exercise sessions plus the course preparation and the development of an individual project related both to the research project of each trainee (e.g. the subject of his/her PhD, or the research subject of young researchers) and the content of the course. The latter part is scaled to 60 hours of work.

Every course is followed by a one week workshop/school with lectures given by invited specialists. These specialists cover research topics addressed by the lectures given the previous three weeks. The aim of the workshop/school is to present to the students the present status of a given field. The individual research projects of trainees will be presented to invited specialist, who will help to focus their projects, expose to young researchers premises and weak points of their projects, and through intensive discussions with students suggest possible new research and/or collaboration directions. At the end of each course and its one week workshop/school, each student has to present a written scientific document on selected aspects of his/her project discussed with specialists, collected questions/problems from specialists and projected possible future collaborations and applications. This document, prepared according to standards of a scientific publication, is given at the end of the course and has to be approved in order to get the relevant credits. In Europe we assume that every course will correspond to approximately 10 credits (to be negotiated), which means roughly one third of a semester of study. In total a course is composed of three weeks with regular lectures and exercises and assignments plus a one-week workshop/school with specialized talks on current research topics.

Each course could be organized by two experienced teachers for lecture and exercise sessions and a visitor scientist at the postdoctoral level to accompany students in preparation of their individual projects and/or exercises associated with the course. Lectures and discussions during the fourth week will be organized by 4-6 specialists, the teachers of each course and the visitor scientist which was accompanying trainees during precedent three weeks of lectures and exercises. The proposed size of the training program is adequate both to a number of young researchers participating in each course and capacities of host institutions to provide good training conditions.

To strengthen and foster the scientific collaborations in nuclear physics, the network aims at developing a tutelage system for graduate students between the institute of origin and one of the network partners or one of the other associated partners. In Europe joined tutelage agreements at the graduate level have been developed over the last years. The initiative should explore similar possibilities between European and Northern American institutions. As an example, a co-tutelage agreement has recently been developed between the University of California at San Diego and the University of Oslo in the field of Computational Science. The joined tutelage results in PhD degrees awarded from both Universities. The network as such will therefore increase student mobility in Europe and Northern America, in addition to foster new scientific collaborations.

Although this initiative focuses on theoretical methods, it is obvious that experimentalist should be able to attend since many of the theoretical approaches to be taught are essential for a physics analysis of experimental data.