ICTP Postgraduate Diploma Certificates Awarded

After a year packed with intensive course-work, lectures, exams, and thesis writing, 50 ICTP Postgraduate Diploma students gathered to celebrate and be celebrated at the Diploma award ceremony held in Trieste on 19 August 2011. The ceremony marks the end of the academic year and the beginning of doctoral studies for many of the students.

This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Programme, which was started in 1991 by ICTP's founder, Prof. Abdus Salam. The Programme was specifically instituted to impart advanced training to bright students from developing countries and ensure that they can compete favourably for graduate studies in any centre of learning in the world.

Speaking at the award ceremony, ICTP Director Fernando Quevedo said that the Postgraduate Diploma Programme is at the core of ICTP's training initiatives and that he hoped the students would continue to keep their contacts with the Centre and with each other.

Over the years, the Postgraduate Diploma Programme has enabled students coming from developing countries, where opportunities to learn from active researchers are rare or non-existent, to interact with and learn from some of the best minds in the fields of physics and mathematics.

Marks Ruziboev, a Mathematics Diploma student from Uzbekistan, says, "ICTP is a gate for scientists from the developing world and during the programme I was able to establish contacts and get to know mathematicians from different parts of the world." Ruziboev will go on to pursue his doctoral studies and has been accepted into the new Joint ICTP-SISSA PhD programme.

ICTP's unique role as a knowledge hub for scientists from all over the world means that the students not only have the opportunity to increase their network but also to strengthen scientific ties with their own countries. Loan Truong, a high energy physics student from Viet Nam, says that her future goal is to work efficiently in her field and contribute to the science development in her own country. "The Diploma Programme helped strengthen and enrich the knowledge in my major area of study," she says. Truong too will join the Joint ICTP-SISSA PhD programme and pursue her doctoral studies.

Some of the other institutes where the Diploma graduates have been accepted for PhD programmes include Houston University (USA), Max-Planck Institute Dusseldorf (Germany), KAUST (Saudi Arabia), Ecole Polytechnique (France), and University of Trieste (Italy).

In the 2010-2011 batch of students, 29 students were from Africa, 18 from Asia, and 3 from South America. The Diploma Programme is offered in high energy physics, condensed matter physics, earth system physics, mathematics, and basic physics.