96566 - Professional Skills

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Astrophysics and Cosmology (cod. 5828)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the activity, the student acquires familiarity with the professional techniques of presentation and critical discussion of scientific problems. The student understands how to organize a multi-media presentation of a research topic in Astrophysics and Cosmology, how to present and discuss the physical basis of a problem, the state-of-the-art of the research in that sector, the novelty of the results, their impact on that specific problem and the possible weaknesses.

Course contents

This course is meant to provide a solid basis for presentation of scientific results. To this goal, students will decide a subject of interest (possibly unrelated to the main topic of their master thesis), and the professor will provide a list of papers/review articles on that topic, besides the scientific support for a better understanding of the articles. The student will then choose one of the proposed articles and present (a) the scientific rationale/background (i.e., open questions in that field) and (b) the main outcomes (and how they were obtained) using a powerpoint presentation.

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliography will be suggested once the main topic for the professional skills is defined.

Teaching methods

Teaching will be focused on specific topics (related to the subject chosen by the student) which are not sufficiently clear (or appaer too challenging) on the basis of the academic courses of the Laurea Magistrale in Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Assessment methods

Students' knowledge in the chosen field will be evaluated through a powerpoint presentation. Relevance in the final evaluation will be given to the capability of presenting the scientific background, data/simulations of the chosen article, results and, possibly, future perspectives, with a critical and scientific attitude.

Teaching tools

Powerpoint presentations and dashboard.

Office hours

See the website of Cristian Vignali