Netherlands - Leiden Local Name:

The Casimir Research School is a graduate school for interdisciplinary physics of the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) at Leiden University and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology. It started formally on September 15, 2004 as the logical outcome of developments in the years before. The core of the research-programme is in the area of physics, with a focus on research-themes which interact strongly with developments and skills in other disciplines (interdisciplinary physics). Casimir offers courses and workshops and coordinates the PhD training of students working with research groups in the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft and the Leiden Institute of Physics. About 120 Ph.D. students, 50 post-docs and 50 senior researchers participate in the school's programme.

The Casimir Research School (Casimir), aims for an improved education of young researchers towards a PhD degree. A major attraction of academic institutions is the interplay between young creative and ambitious students with experienced researchers and educators. It leads to a variety of hopefully ground-breaking new research results and to highly educated people who will find their way in various jobs in industry, institutions and academia. Hence, PhD students need to focus but should not become narrow-minded and should also be skilled communicators and project-planners. Leiden and Delft have decided to take on this demanding task jointly, which creates the opportunity for students to be exposed to a larger variety of research-fields and international experts, as well as to organize jointly advanced courses and workshops.