Open lectures for PhD students and young scientists -- every year

The following lectures are primarily intended for PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.

Guests are welcome. Colleagues, practitioners, high school instructors, PhD student from other Countries, and hobbyists with personal or professional motivations may like to learn these things.

Time zone. All schedules refer to Central Eurpoean Time (paris/Berlin/Madrid/Rome). This is UT+1 in Winter, and UT+2 with daylight saving time. Beware that not all Countries switch at the same time.

Language. All lectures are in English, and all the learning material is in English as well.

Hybrid in-person and online lectures.
 • Online access (Zoom) is reserved to participants not based in Besançon and surroundings.
 • Local folks have to attend classes in person.
 • All classes are kindly hosted for free by Supmicrotech, 26 Chemin de l'Epitaphe, 25000 Besançon, France.

Restrictions. Sadly, new collaborations with some Countries are forbidden. The list, not disclosed here, is tiny. Residents in one of such Countries, or affiliated to a Company/University located there, are not allowed to attend class/online lectures. In case of doubt, a proof may be required.

Registration is required.
 • Local PhD students (Bourgogne Franche Comté), please register via ADUM, email me if you need help. The Doctoral School requires that you attend ≥80% of the lectures for the course to be validated.
 • Other PhD Students (elsewhere in France, and abroad), you probably care about the course to be validated by your Doctoral School. If so, (i) check with the Doctoral School about requirements, and (ii) use your university email address, it serves as a decent proof of ID. Then, do the same as guests, see below.
 • Guests, please email me at enrico [dot] rubiola [at] femto-st [dot] fr. Confirmation comes quite soon. A few days before the first lecture you have to provide a small amount of information about you, mainly for monitoring purposes, and you receive the web link.
Albeit everything is free of charge, minimal monitoring is important to me. Besides, registration implies some kind of motivation and commitment, at least you have some awareness of the contents, and you checked that the schedule matches your availability.

Time and Frequency, Instrumentation, and Metrology (3×7.5 hours)

Option A (recommended): The full package (Part 1, 2 and 3, 21.5 hours)

Take Part 1, 2 and 3 (lectures 1-15) to get the secrets of oscillators, together with the foundations of the science of measurement.

Option B: Oscillators, frequency stability and noise (Part 1-2, 15 hours)

Take Part 1 and 2 (lectures 1-10) if you need to know the secrets of stable and low-noise oscillators, how they can be measured, and the systems they belong to. These lectures derive from seminars given at the Tutorial Session of international conferences of time and frequency, and from invited seminars. This option is a must for all the PhD students and young research fellows working on a topic broadly related to time and frequency, including optics and astronomy.

Option C: Scientific instruments (Part 1 and 3, 15 hours)

Take Part 1 and 3 (lectures 1-5 and 11-15) if you are interested in precision measurements, in the subtle meaning of uncertainty, and in the nature of the measurement units we use in all domains of science. This option is a must for young experimentalists (PhD students and postdoctoral fellows) in engineering and physics. The first part is about experimental methods of general interest. The second part is on the new International System, of Units (SI), in force since May 20, 2019.

Registration is required. See above in this page

Most recent learning material

Schedule of the next or most recent lectures (Central European Time)

Preliminary program

The Scientific Publication (10 hours)

The scientific publication is truly at the hearth of spreading scientific discoveries and technological innovation. Inevitably, it is also an important force driving careers, opportunities and grants, and a force impacting the rise and the fall of research teams. This is summarized in the dictum “publish or perish.” On the other hand, people obsessed with the success often do mediocre science and have unpleasant life. A wise publication strategy is therefore essential.

This course falls in the category of "humanities." It focuses on the logic of the publication, as a necessary part of the scientific protocol. It is also about ethics, and the skill of reading between the lines. The course covers the peer-review process, how to choose a journal or a conference, bibliometrics, predatory (scam/fraud) publishers, repositories (arXiv, Zenodo, ResearchGate, etc.), the organization of an article and the role of authors, copyright, open licenses, plagiarism, and much more. Such concepts are quite general, and surprisingly similar in different domains. They are presented with numerous anecdotes and examples.

Some former students initially hoped to learn a step-by-step method to write their own article. Instead, they got everything else, ultimately agreeing that it was much more than expected.

Registration is required. See above in this page

Most recent learning material

Schedule of the next or most recent lectures (Central European Time)