Graduate programs in instrumentation
Note: applications and admissions procedures to graduate school/PhD programs vary a lot between coutries and even within institutes in a country. Always research the procedures specific to your country.
When looking for a graduate program (Masters or PhD), there are several dedicated Astronomical Instrumentation programs and Optics programs that have astronomy-focused projects. However many astrophysics programs may not advertise instrumentation but have an instrumentation group or project. You may need to do some additional research to see if a program has any instrumentation projects, or if you can work with engineering departments. Projects listed on websites may be out of date so it’s best to email the PI directly (especially for smaller departments). In the email you should ask not only the status of the project you are interested in working on but also if they are currently taking students. Keep in mind that projects in astronomy can sometimes take 10+ years so it is unlikely you will experience every stage of an instrument project from design to commissioning.
Things to ask graduate programs/potential advisors:
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How will you be supported? - teaching assistant work, graduate research assistant work, a government stipend or doctoral fellowship? If you want to instrumentation on top of astrophysics research it will be very hard if you have to TA many semesters. Many astrophysics programs will not allow you to only do instrumentation. They will usually require a least a fraction of your dissertation work to be astronomy research. Think about what balance of instrumentation and astronomy research you want to do and if that fits into the program you are interested in.
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If you are applying to an astrophysics program ask how that department values/sees instrumentation work. Publishing in instrumentation is not necessarily the same as publishing in astronomy. The timeline for having instrumentation work ready for a peer-reviewed journal is generally longer than it can be for astronomical research. Some programs will have a minimum required number of publications for graduation. Make sure to understand how your program may accommodate the different publication timescales for instrumentation and if the program considers SPIE conference proceedings as publications.
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If you graduate work is being funded through a company make sure you understand if there are intellectual property limitations in publishing/sharing your work as this could cause issues if you want to continue on in academia after you graduate.
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Make sure you understand the status of the project you want to work on and ask specifically what you would get to work on in your time as a student there.
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Ask how involved students are in instrument projects in the group you are interested in working with. Not every program/advisor is going to trust students with the same amount of responsibility. Some advisors will trust students to lead large parts of a project and others may hardly let student touch the instrument. It may be hard to get a direct and honest answer to this question from your potential advisor. You could approach this topic by asking them to describe previous student projects or asking their current students.
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Ask what the timeline is for the project you want to work on. Most masters programs are 2 years and PhD programs can be 3-7 years. You should make sure there is going to be instrumentation work for the extent of your stay.
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Make sure to ask your potential advisor how supportive they are of jobs outside of academia. There are a lot of opportunities for astronomical instrumentation in both industry and academia. It helps if your advisor is supportive of you exploring all of the opportunities available to you. This may be another instance where you might get a more honest answer from that advisor’s current or previous students.
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Ask how hands on your potential advisor and what style of advising works best for you. Also get an idea of how many students and postdocs your advisor has at a time. If your advisor has a large group they may not have as much time for just you but those people may be additional resources for help and mentorship - especially if they are older graduate students or postdocs.
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Ask where their previous students ended up after graduation and how long it took them to graduate. This will give you an idea of what your path and future could look like.
Institutions with known instrumentation programs
Note that this list is most likely not complete….
North America
University of Arizona
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Texas at Austin (do not need physics GRE)
University of Florida
Texas A&M University
Johns Hopkins University
University of Hawaii
University of Wisconsin-Madison
University of Washington
University of Colorado - Boulder
University of Virginia
Penn State University (no application fee)
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ohio State University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
UCLA
University of Rochester
Arizona State University
Caltech
University of Toronto/Dunlap Institute
University of Victoria
Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics
University of Montréal
Australia
Sydney University
Australian National University, Canberra
Swinburne
Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO)
South Africa
South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO)
Japan
China
India
IUCAA
Europe
For a list of institutions in Europe see the NYRIA website’s link called Related Groups. In addition:
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), Ireland
Maynooth University, Ireland
NUI Galway, Ireland
University of Glasgow, UK
University of Manchester, UK
Durham University, UK
Imperial College, UK
Chalmers University, Göteborg, Sweden
Lund University, Sweden
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Geneva Observatory, Switzerland
University of Porto, Portugal