Curriculum
The IMPRS is integrated both into the regular university curriculum of its participating universities and also offers its own courses and activities. A reader's digest of this semester's university lecture courses can be found here and a more general description of the IMPRS activities is below. You can also follow the links to current IMPRS activities using the left navigation.
Lecture Courses
Typical topics of lecture courses, not necessarily offered every year, include:
- General relativity
- Cosmology
- Differenential geometry
- Group theory and representation theory
- Nonlinear partial differential equations
- Quantum field theory
- Supersymmetry and supergravity
- String theory
- Black holes and quantum gravity
- AdS/CFT correspondence
- Advanced quantum field theory
- Advanced differential geometry
- Initial value problem for the Einstein equations
- Conformal field theory
- Number theory in quantum field theory
- Infinite-dimensional Lie algebras
- String theory and automorphic forms
Seminars and Colloquia
The AEI and the participating universities offer regular research seminars and colloquia, in which the students are expected to participate. The executive committee organises joint seminars, colloquia and small symposia to create close contacts and interactions between all graduate students and research groups in the program.
IMPRS Lecture Days
The IMPRS organises dedicated specialised lecture days on current research topics. These are held by international experts and take place roughly every two months. Recent topics include CFT in various dimensions, Systematics of scattering amplitudes, automorphic forms in string theory and Hawking radiation.
Transferable Skill Seminars
Students of the IMPRS can benefit from professional training through additional courses held by external instructors. These include presentation skills, scientific writing, work organisation and proposal writing seminars.
IMPRS excursion
Once a year, all the IMPRS students and their supervisors go on a short scientific retreat where they present their research and attend small lecture courses. The format allows for open discussions and feedback on the students' work and presentations.
Mentoring and Career Events
IMPRS students have the opportunity of selecting a mentor (typically a former IMPRS member) with whom they can talk about career possibilities inside and outside of academia. There will also be regular career information events.