SWOT analysis Department of Theoretical Physicshome.thep.lu.se/~leif/misc/teor fys.pdf · SWOT Department of Theoretical Physics Threats-The number of undergraduate students has decreased

SWOT analysis

Department of Theoretical Physics

Mölle

Feb. 2007

Department of Theoretical Physics - Overview

~40 employees

Turnover 2006: 25.5 MSEK (14.3 external, 11.2 LU)Balance 2006: +0.5 MSEK Accumulated balance (“myndighetskapital”): +4.1 MSEK

Research divisions - High Energy Physics (head Gösta Gustafson)- Computational Biology & Biological Physics (Complex Systems; head Carsten Peterson)

Undergraduate teaching in physics and bioinformatics.

All faculty take active interest and participate in undergraduateteaching.

Decision-making easy thanks to frequent, informal discussions.

High Energy Physics

Faculty

Gösta Gustafson Professor (Head)Johan Bijnens ProfessorTorbjörn Sjöstrand ProfessorLeif Lönnblad Associate Professor

Postdocs

(MCnet vacant)

PhD Students

Emil AvsarLisa Carloni (Lund EST)Richard Corke (Lund EST)Christoffer FlensburgKarim GhorbaniLu Jie (Lund EST)Nils Lavesson(FLAVIANET vacant)


High Energy Physics

External funding Swedish Research Council EU (MCnet, FLAVIANET, Lund EST) STINT

~4 MSEK 2006

Teaching

Physics courses: Statistical Mechanics, Numerical Methods, General Relativity,Theoretical Particle Physics.

Also some involvement in: The Scientific Method, Programming in Bioinformatics.


High Energy Physics

The Theoretical High Energy Physics group has gained a solidinternational reputation for its phenomenological studies of thestrong nuclear force.

The so-called Lund model describing the transition of quarks andgluons into hadrons and approximative methods for quark-gluoncascades have been very successful.

The computer implementations of models developed in Lund are usedby all high energy physics collider experiments.

The group is also active in several areas of low-energy particlephysics, ranging from flavour physics and CP violation to purelystrong interaction physics. In all these areas effective field theorymethods, such as Chiral Perturbation Theory, have turned out to bevery useful.


High Energy Physics


The group is very well connected internationally, with strong links to both experimental and theoretical groups at the largest laboratoriessuch as CERN, DESY and Fermilab.

The group is currently active in two EU-funded networks, FLAVIANET and MCnet, and is currently running an EU-funded graduate school,Lund EST, together with the division for experimental high energyphysics in Lund.

Computational Biology & Biological Physics

Faculty

Carsten Peterson Professor (Head)Anders Irbäck ProfessorBo Söderberg Associate ProfessorPatrik Edén Assistant ProfessorHenrik Jönsson Assistant ProfessorMattias Ohlsson ResearcherJari Häkkinen Researcher

Postdocs

Michael BachmannFederico ColecchiaMorten Krogh

PhD Students

Michael GreenYingchun LiuPontus MelkeSimon MitternachtCecilia RitzPatrik SahlinCarl TroeinLiwen You+ 4 students co-supervisedwith Department of Oncology

Software Engineers

Olle MånssonNicklas NordborgMartin SvenssonGregory Vincic



External funding

Genomics and Bioinformatics Research School Human Frontier Science Program Swedish Research Council SSF - Lund Stem Cell Center SSF - Create Health SSF - Carsten Peterson KAW Foundation - Swegene EU Swedish Cancer SocietyMrs Berta Kamprad Foundation

~10 MSEK 2006

Teaching

Physics courses like Theoretical Biophysics, Artificial Neural Networks, Systems Theory.

Responsible for ~75% of teaching in Bioinformatics Master Program.



-Systems biology, interactions inside and between cells;stem cell transcriptional switches, TGF-beta pathway,Arabidopsis meristem development.

-Ab initio protein modeling; protein structures, protein folding/misfolding, aggregation of amyloid-forming proteins, protein-solid surface interactions.

-Machine interpretation of SPECT (single photon emissioncomputed tomography); heart blood flow images www-server(WeAidU) currently serving several European hospitals.

-Mining high throughput biomedical data, e.g. microarrays;relating gene expression and protein levels to phenotypes,mapping expressions onto ontologies and pathways.

-The Lund Swegene Bioinformatics Platform; develops tools like BioArray Software Environment (BASE) and Proteios,and provides local access and tools to standard databases.


Computational Biologyand Biological Physics

OncologySCIBLU &

Create Health

Stem Cell Center

Stem Cell Biology

Clinical Genetics

Restorative Neurology

Clinical Physiology

Gene Therapy

Immunotechnology

Proteomics Center

Bioinformatics Master Program

BiochemistryMicrobial Ecology

Science Faculty Medical Faculty Technical Faculty



Undergraduate education

Physics

Physics 2, general course (30 ECTS)Mathematical Methods of Physics (7.5 ECTS)Artificial Neural Networks (7.5 ECTS)General Relativity (7.5 ECTS)Computational Physics (7.5 ECTS)Systems Theory (7.5 ECTS)The Scientific Method (7.5 ECTS)Statistical Mechanics (7.5 ECTS)Theoretical Particle Physics (7.5 ECTS)Theoretical Biophysics (7.5 ECTS)

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics (15 ECTS)Programming in Bioinformatics (7.5 ECTS)Programming in Bioinformatics II (7.5 ECTS)Expression Analysis (7.5 ECTS)Systems Biology (4.5 ECTS)

Physics 2, # students


Undergraduate education


Starting 2007:

A novel high-profile mentor-guided undergraduate program, TheoreticalPhysics, aimed at students with a deep and sincere interest in mathematics,physics and the natural sciences; students with their aim set at a PhD (notnecessarily in theoretical physics). The education is designed to give thestudents a generous exposure to science applications and a well-equippedtool-box of mathematics and programming useful on the job market.

SWOT


Strengths

-Decision-making easy thanks to frequent,informal discussions; good atmospherebetween the two divisions & budget inbalance.-The size (~40) promotes solidarity.-All faculty share a common interest andactively participate in undergraduateteaching.-Very tight bonds exist with otherdepartments (faculties) in Lund, and theresearch groups are well connectedinternationally.-High profile in outreach activities.

Weaknesses

-Inability to recruit female faculty.-HEP is understaffed with respect to teaching and PhD supervision (EU-fundedgraduate school has doubled the number of PhD students). -CBBP: Lack of well defined career paths in the new and cross-disciplinary field of computational biology. Integrating the engineering-oriented bioinformatics program with research activities remains difficult.

SWOT


Threats

-The number of undergraduate students hasdecreased. This trend must be reversed. -Finding local candidates with the back-ground and quality required for PhD studies has become more difficult.-A forced merger with the Physics Dept.-HEP: The problem that the group is under-staffed will be accentuated when GöstaGustafson retires in 2008.-CBBP: Recruiting scientists, junior or senior, in the internationally expandingfield of computational biology is a challenge.

Opportunities

-A new undergraduate program, Theoretical Physics, and a new under-graduate course, The Scientific Method,are being developed. -Closer ties with Astronomy andMathematical Physics (Physics Dept.)are being developed.-HEP: Upcoming experiments at the LHC accelerator will increase the demandfor models and programs developed bythe group, and may open up new areasof particle physics research. -CBBP: The field of computational biology is growing and the group is well positioned with intense interactions with many biomedical and biology groups.

Documents

SWOT analysis Department of Theoretical Physicshome.thep.lu.se/~leif/misc/teor fys.pdf · SWOT Department of Theoretical Physics Threats-The number of undergraduate students has decreased