Student Profiles
Mateusz Zawadzki
In the Department of Physics there are a large number of PhD students and Post-Docs, who are friendly and very supportive of each other. I have made some good friends amongst them, and it is very encouraging and helpful to be able to compare how things are going. I have also been able to teach in the Department of Physics during my PhD. This has been a great experience and has meant that I have gotten to know more members of faculty and many more undergraduates than I would have otherwise. Teaching has been invaluable experience for me. During my PhD it has also been possible to travel for conferences to a variety of countries ( France, Switzerland, Italy, USA). Glasgow is a city that is surrounded by 'dead brilliant' mountains. I have often spent weekends hiking. My most enjoyable walk was on a ridge that is called in Gaelic Aonach Eagach Ridge (you can go climb on Meall Dearg (953 m) & Sgorr nam Fiannaidh (967m)). Aline Dinkelaker
I went to travel Great Britain with friends a couple of years ago and fell in love with Scotland, so I decided I would need to live here for a while. It took me eight years. Now I am a Diplom-Physics student at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany. I started my Erasmus exchange year at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow in September 2007. Because it was my 4 th year, and thanks to the help of the student advisors, lecturers and secretaries, I was allowed to graduate with a Bachelor of Honours from Strathclyde in July 2008. The time waiting was definitely worth it: Scotland is a beautiful country and I travelled a lot with my flatmates. And Glasgow is an amazing city. Besides my studies I enjoy the diverse nightlife, vegetarian Scottish breakfast the next morning and the many fantastic -or at least interesting- live gigs. Glasgow is full of music! No wonder I quickly found lovely people to play with: It is nearly a year I started drumming in the amazing, battle winning rock band “The Heist” (http://www.myspace.com/theheistglasgow). I met lovely people here. The social events offered from the student union, the international student office and our department help getting contact to students from various countries and subjects. I spent a lot of time with my classmates as well. Studying is much easier when you do it with friends. The university itself offers an excellent education: The department of Physics provides a big variety of classes, including a lot of optics and atomic physics, which is one of my favourite topics, and interesting theoretical subjects. The lecturers are motivated and try to involve current research questions and results, which showed me new perspectives for possible later studies. And I prefer the lecture duration of 1 hour to the 1 ½ hours we have in Germany. It is hard to listen and be concentrated for 90 minutes. It will be hard to get used to that again. I appreciated the wide range of different research projects as well. I chose to do an experimental project for my Bachelor degree. I had supportive supervisors and learned a lot from doing the experiments and writing the report. When the exams were close, I spent more time in the library. It has an excellent supply of scientific literature and much space so we all can get smarter. Studying at Strathclyde was an experience I would never want to miss. I am glad that I got here doing Physics, though it took a detour first: regarding my marks in High School and because I wanted to make the world a better place I spent two years studying Politics, Social Anthropology and Literature. But during a day at the beach in sunny Italy, I realized what I should rather do: follow the fascination of Physics and understanding the world I felt since I was a child (plus I kind of missed Maths whilst studying social sciences). So I switched subject. Although it can be pretty hard sometimes, I still love it. You can be creative and spend hours solving problems, in a team or on your own. It is a subject with plenty of applications and unsolved questions. And I guess it will stay like this, because current theories predict that the universe is quite big... Iman Roqan
I am a PhD student, from Saudi Arabia, in the Semiconductor and Spectroscopy group, Department of Physics at Strathclyde University; I will graduate this summer. I came to Strathclyde after finishing my MSc in Photonics and Optoelectronics Devices at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and St Andrews University. I had heard about Glasgow since I started my Masters. Everyone told me how friendly the people in Glasgow are, and I have found this very true when I mix with Scottish people, either in the University or my neighbours and people I meet in my daily life. All the people in the physics department are very friendly, from the smiles and the “good morning” from the cleaners whose office is opposite mine, to the secretaries, technicians and academic staff. In addition, I consider the semiconductor group my family here in Scotland. They are very helpful, kind and supportive. They treat me as a one of their family not only a friend. I have had very good experience in my field during my studying and my supervisors Carol and Kevin not only support me in my work, but also gave me great opportunities to visit other international labs and helped me to present my work at conferences and publish them in journals. The other good thing about Strathclyde University is that it is in the city centre of Glasgow, near shopping centres and bus and train stations. This makes life at Strathclyde University very easy. I should also mention the Senior International Adviser, from the International and Graduate Office, who is the adviser to the international students. He looks after the international students very carefully and he is always there if any face any problems. He also arranges many trips inside and outside Glasgow. In addition, besides studying physics at Strathclyde University, I also took advantage of the free foreign language classes and I learnt Italian. Finally, I should like to say something here, although you are away from your country, when you are surrounded with good supportive people in the university, it will push you to success. Panagiotis Lepipas
Studying at Strathclyde is a choice I'm glad that I made. The department is friendly and they really love what they're doing. This has led to high quality teaching methods, which make difficult subjects look easier than they really are and lectures very interesting and illuminating. Besides learning physics, studying here gives me the opportunity to meet new people from other countries and cultures. I also have the chance to live in Glasgow, which is a nice city, great for someone who likes shopping, nightlife and live concerts. Living abroad is a great experience, but sometimes you can't avoid unexpected problems. Fortunately at Strathclyde I feel I have the university by my side with its people who really care about their students and are familiar with their needs. Panagiotis is a full-time undergraduate student from Greece. Nazrin Zaid
I am Nazrin Zaid, one of the international students who is currently studying physics in Strathclyde. My first academic year could only be described by two words, a blast. Coming from Malaysia which is very far away from the UK, I thought it would be hard for me to adapt to my new surroundings but the staff of the physics department made me feel right at home. They answered all my questions and kept asking me for feedback on how I was coping not only with studies, but with everything else as well. Any problems I had were dealt with instantly which made my studies and stay even more enjoyable. The physics department has the best lecturers I ever worked with. I find their teaching methods very effective. Physics is not that easy to understand at the first glance but the lecturers explained everything clearly and made things simple. Besides that, the physics department also has a great first year laboratory complete with all the necessary equipment to carry out experiments. You'd think carrying out first year physics experiments would be boring but it wasn't, it was very enjoyable and very necessary as we learnt the correct methods on carrying out experiments and how to use the diverse equipments provided in the laboratory correctly. These experimental skills are the stepping stones when it comes to carrying out bigger experiments in further years to come. Since it was my first year in university, I decided to stay in the student accommodation provided by the university. My flat was only 3 minutes from the department and 15 minutes from the city centre which made it perfect. I made friends instantly with my flat mates and this made me feel even more at home. As I am a Muslim, I can only eat halal food which wasn't a problem at all because halal food is very easy to come by in Glasgow. It was a good experience as I have never lived so far from home before. Making friends was a breeze as the university has a very active student union which holds many social activities. There is even an international student's association which really helped me find my group of friends of whom I clicked with. To me, having a group of friends who can keep stress away and help when help is needed is very important. I am just glad I got to make many new friends from across the globe. All in all, I am very happy I chose to study in Strathclyde. It is all I ever wanted of an institution to further my studies. I am only looking forward to more years to come with the department. Maria
If you have the chance to study abroad, take it! At least that's probably what the majority of international students I met during the last year would agree on. I am a physics student at Strathclyde University and I just finished my first year. Originally I come from the southwest of Germany, but I wanted to use my studies to see the world instead of staying at home and so I ended up in Glasgow. It was a good decision, though. Strathclyde's physics department has a very good reputation which the welcoming atmosphere as well as the friendly staff will immediately help you to understand. With feedback sessions, sometimes in the form of a lunch, now and then they constantly try to improve and make you feel even more comfortable. My course needed getting used to as I was prepared to jump into theory and derive every formula that would come my way while I ended up with a far more practical approach finding a use for my formulas rather than developing them. Yet this structure has its own advantages, such as the integration of lab work instead of endless lectures from semester 1. No matter how good a university might be to make you go to another country, the best thing about studying abroad is still the "abroad part": You meet a lot of people, make new friends and learn about a different culture. It probably even works in your neighbour country as it worked for me. Although it's all Western Europe and all the same lifestyle as I thought, I was still surprised by the Scottish love for fatty food and short skirts in winter times. Strathclyde offers a lot to facilitate all of this and integrate international students into the uni's everyday life. There are International student societies which organize trips, pub crawls and other nights out. The Strathclyde International office is another body that will help international students in whatever question and problem they have. They also organize a pub night every Wednesday which, if you want to meet people from at least a dozen different countries in one night, is exactly the place for you to be. What else could you wish for than to get a good uni education, find out what cultural exchange and tolerance can mean and at the same time learn to say bad words in five different languages? Read more about Maria's experiences of study in Scotland on the International Students blog. |
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Prior to coming to Strathclyde, I completed two years in Physics at the University of Gdansk in Poland. After two years at Strathclyde I graduated with BSc in Physics and then decided to stay longer, undertaking an MPhil in the Photonics Group at Strathclyde. I enjoyed this research so much that I didn't want to leave my lab in the Photonics Group where I could achieve the coldest temperatures in the Universe due to the nature of my studies: Atomic Optics - Bose-Einstein condensation. 
