Leiden Institute of Physics

PhD Programme

LION offers a PhD program in which candidates carry out independent research on a specific topic, culminating in a PhD thesis.

If you are a prospective PhD student, click here. All of our PhD projects are 4-year fully paid positions, usually consisting of a 1-year+3-year contract. Apart from working on their research project, the PhD student contributes to the teaching at the institute (as a teaching assistant, and as a supervisor a few BSc or MSc students). You will also be asked to take part in courses and workshops suitable for your scientific and personal development.

Research Schools

Once you have started your PhD project at LION, you will automatically become part of the Faculty of Science Graduate School (click here for more information). Together with Leiden University, the Graduate School offers transferable skills courses. At the same time, you will also become part of the Casimir Research School and, if you are a PhD student at the Lorentz Institute, of the Dutch Research School of Theoretical Physics.

The research schools offer a diverse program of research related courses, seminars, workshops and conferences. All of this – the research plan and the teaching and education requirements – will be documented in a personal education and supervision plan, that is drawn up by the supervisor and the PhD student within three months after the contract starts.

Wellbeing and Counseling

At LION, we value the wellbeing of our PhD students – like every other employee PhD students have the right to work in a safe and stimulating environment. In order to be able to adapt to the PhD student’s needs, LION has several formal and informal structures in place. For example, apart from your promotor and daily supervisor, we assign a second supervisor to each PhD student.

Both of them have a say at the PhD student’s go/no-go meeting in their tenth month of their contract. Furthermore, the Casimir Research School offers each PhD student the opportunity to have an informal meet-up with a more senior PhD student from outside the PhD student’s research group, so any problems or challenges can be discussed in a relaxed atmosphere.

However, problems may arise that you don’t know how to solve by yourself or with the help of your (second) supervisor. In such cases, it’s good to know that you can always can turn to one of our confidential counselors.

PhD platform

All PhD candidates can call on the LION PhD platform for support or questions. The goals of the platform are to:

• Create a cohesive and lively culture among the PhD candidates through annual meetings.
• Maintain a mentoring programme between new and more senior PhD candidates.
• Form a committee of trust in the case of problems between a PhD candidate and their principal investigator. The committee also aims to signal problems among the PhD candidates and take action if needed.

Contact the committee: PhDplatform@physics.leidenuniv.nl