The department of Physics, Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) will be launching a new Master’s program in Physics.
The Department of Physics currently oversees three programs, Physics Bachelor’s Program, Biomedical Engineering Bachelor’s Program, and Biomedical Engineering Master’s Program.
Head of the Physics Department, Dr Herri Trilaksana said that the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, is a department that manages programs teaching the basics of engineering and several medical technologies.
For Herri, the establishment of the Physics Masters’s Program indicates the prominence of the physics department and it can strengthen the academic and professional climate, expand academic and research networks internationally, and improve the quality of graduates.
Herri said, since 2008, the Physics Department has had a bi-annual national conference which has been upgraded to become Two-yearly International Conference ICPIAM. In 2021, the 3 rd ICPIAM will be held. The international conference became an event to present international colleagues and academic peers of the Department of Physics.
The Department of Physics, he continued, also actively participates in other international conferences, including ICOWOBAS with partners in Malaysia, as well as the ISSIMM international conference which is run with several universities in Indonesia, including Gadjah Mada University (UGM), University of Indonesia (UI), Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB), Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), Brawijaya University (UB), and Padang State University (UNP).
Apart from being active in participating in international conferences, community service is one of the annual programs that are continuously being carried out.
Herri also said that this long-established department internally had to compete with the new engineering program at UNAIR. This is because engineering programs are usually more marketable in the industrial sector. In addition, in terms of the productivity of scientific publications, they have the same opportunity as other programs in FST.
“So far, UNAIR’s management of basic science, especially physics, has not been optimal because UNAIR still views that the physics department has not been too productive in producing attractive technological innovations as other engineering sciences in general,” he explained.
From the external side, he continued, the physics department must be able to organize local, national, and international collaborative programs with all the limitations of infrastructure and facilities of the Faculty of Science and Technology.
“With the internationalization effort made by the physics department, we hope that it can increase the confidence of students and alumni of physics UNAIR, including being able to present international students in programs under the physics department,” Herri said.
“We hope that in the future the Department of Physics will become a department that can position itself adjacent to other physics departments and even lead in several innovations and achievements,” said Herri.