Physics Research and Teaching at TUT
Department of Physics was founded 1970 and it is one of the oldest departments in the Tampere University of Technology. We are around 120 persons: 10 professors, 9 lecturers and around 60 researcher. The rest are assisting research staff, assisting teachers and administrative staff. Research work and teaching are roughly balanced and both count about 50% of our total activities. We operate in an international level and around 30% of our research active staff comes from outside of Finland.
Our research is organized in three laboratories, having a total of 10 research groups and a workshop. Our research portfolio starts from basic research and ends to industrial applications. At the year 2012 we worked in 60 research projects with a total budget of 4 million euros. More than 95% of the research budget comes from outside funding. The main sources for research funding are the Academy of Finland and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, Tekes. We also co-operate with several companies. During the years 2005-2011 we have had research funding from over 50 companies. In the year 2010 we used our funding, among other things, to produce 82 referee articles in international papers, including Nature, Nature Chemistry, Nature Physics, Chemical Reviews, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Physical Review Letters, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Environmental Science and Technology. As a teaching unit, our “products” also include in average 4 new doctors and 20 masters of science yearly.
As a side effect of our applied research we have 6 high tech spin off companies: Tutcore Oy (1991, now Coherent Finland Oy), Dekati Oy (1995), Oseir Oy (1999), Liekki Oy (2000, now nLight Oy), Cavitar Oy (2005), and Tassu ESP Oy (2008).
Department gives the basic physics education to all engineering students at the TUT. Over one thousand students go through the one year courses that cover the most fundamental aspects of classical and modern physics. We also give in depth courses to the students of the Faculty of Science and Environmental Engineering. Our teacher have twice been nominated as a “Lecturer of the Year” by the Student Union of TUT.
