About IFM
Photo credit Thor BalkhedThe Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, or IFM, is one of the original departments of Linköping University and was founded in 1969 as the Department of Physics and Measurement Technology. In the beginning there were thirty employees including three professors at the department. Since then a lot has changed and IFM is now one of the biggest departments at LiU.
Current organisation
Today the department has more than 400 employees, including 50 professors and 150 PhD-students. Each year, about 20 PhD students receive their doctorates at IFM.
In addition to this, the department receives guest researchers from all over the globe.
Our yearly budget exceeds 350 million SEK, the majority of which related to research projects. However, we also offer over 200 undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate courses each year.
Funding
Photo credit Anna NilsenOur great expansion in research has been possible thanks to generous grants from external funding agencies such as the Swedish Research Council (VR), Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), VINNOVA, Formas and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Added to this is also increasing research funding from the EU Framework Programmes. Materials Research has received a number of major contributions as strategically important and excellent environment: VR Linnaeus Center LiLi-NFM, Vinnova Excellence Center
FunMat, SSF's strategic research center MS2E and the government's strategic research grants for materials research -
AFM.
