Lecturer Roxana Zus, PhD, teaching staff at the Physics Faculty of the University of Bucharest and the designated representative of Romania to CERN Teacher and Student Forum, will share, in a new edition of the “microSCOPE: UB researcher at the microphone” series, insights on her passion for physics, training future physicists and Romania’s participation to CERN programs for pupils, students and professors.
Teaching staff by calling, Roxana Zus shows that, other than passing on knowledge and even her own passion for her chosen field of study, it is essential for a trainer to understand that youths need guidance, so that they can confidently chose what they want to do in the future. In this sense, what she tries to pass on to her students is that every training phase is important and that it is natural for the first years of study to be an exploration period, a testing phase of all the options they have in front of them.
Episode no. 11 of the “microSCOPE: UB researcher at the microphone” series is available here:
For Roxana Zus, the option for Physics blended naturally with her desire to become a professor and to thus contribute to the preparation of future physicists, be them researchers, teaching staff, engineers or other specialists in the field.
As such, it is unsurprising that she chose an academic and professional pathway meant to adequately prepare her for this objective, and that today she is a coordinator of CERN programs. In this quality, her mission is to contribute to education in the field of nuclear physics and high energies, and to guide interested pupils and students, ensuring them the opportunity to interact both with other colleagues, as well as with researchers who are already in the branch, in the country and at CERN.
Convinced that passion implies exploration and interaction, Roxana Zus considers that the main gain of CERN programs is the fact that participants come home eager to share their own experience and the opportunities they discovered there, thus becoming true “ambassadors” for a career in research or education. And not few are a situations when they themselves choose such a path.
At the same time, Roxana Zus is also part of the team that initiated the first Master’s program in the Physics of High energies, currently on the course of receiving credentials. The program is designed as an integrated, national program, created through a collaboration between physics faculties in the country.
Details on this Master’s program, on interacting with students and current priorities in the field of training future researchers, are shared by Roxana Zus in the 11th episode of the “microSCOPE: UB researcher at the microphone” series.
Lecturer Roxana Zus, PhD, is part of the teaching staff and Director of the Department of Theoretic Physics, Mathematics, Optics, Plasma, Lasers within the Faculty of Physics of the University of Bucharest.
Her fields of interest include theoretic physics, particularly nuclear and high energies physics, but also educational programs. In 2007, she received her PhD from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany, with a paper on the theme of high-energy physics. Since then, she continued to get involved in national and international research projects, and since 2022 she is the responsible of the University of Bucharest in the ATLAS collaboration at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research).
Between 2013-2021, she was the president of the “Physics and Education” section within the Romanian Physics Society and she got involved in various educational programs, including in the CIVIS Alliance, where she coordinated “Virtual Mobility Task Force”.
Since 2018, she is the designated representative of Romania at CERN Teacher and Student Forum and, in this quality, the national coordinator of CERN programs for pupils, students and professors.
More details on the publications of Roxana Zus are available here and here.
Part of the Science Communication program developed by the University of Bucharest, the “microSCOPE: UB researcher at the microphone” series aims to present, in a concise and dynamic manner, information on the concrete results of notable research initiatives within UB.
Through its objectives and format, microSCOPE completes UB’s Science Communication Program, which also includes the UB conferences – Science for everyone’s understanding and UB Science Dose.
The series promotes those research projects which, through the major contribution to the field they belong to, have come to benefit from international recognition, thus encouraging the connection between UB and various foreign universities and research institutions abroad.
The microSCOPE, whose guests are primarily researchers from UB awarded for their research results, aims to contribute to informing the Romanian academic milieu, but also other categories of interested public on the main research projects carried out within UB, thus stimulating the development of future collaborative initiatives.