Company Description

At CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Using the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments, they study the basic constituents of matter - fundamental particles that are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives physicists clues about how particles interact and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. Find out more at https://home.cern.

Diversity has been an integral part of CERN's mission since its foundation and is an established value of the Organization.

Team Description

CERN has an opening for a Doctoral Student position in the Education (EDU) Section of the Education, Communication and Outreach (ECO) group within the Stakeholder Relations (SR) sector. This Doctoral Student will be part of the Teacher Programmes team and will be actively involved in the management and delivery of CERN’s national and international teacher programmes (teachers.cern).

Research Topic Introduction

Education research shows that visual illustrations are essential to communicating scientific ideas in the classroom (Carney & Levin, 2002; Cook, 2006). How to design such illustrations in a meaningful way that fosters students’ learning, however, can sometimes be a challenge. This is especially true in the case of particle physics, which features abstract concepts and deals with objects that are inaccessible to humans. Here, special care needs to be taken in how particles, particle systems, and transformation processes are represented to learners.

At CERN, the physics education research team has developed teaching resources using typographic representations of particles, for example, a particle physics online course for high-school students (http://cern.ch/ppc). Instead of using spheres or any other misleading symbols, particles and particle systems are represented by using their respective letters. This approach has been empirically validated with high school students in the context of elementary particles (Wiener et al., 2017a; Wiener et al., 2017b) and molecules (Budimaier & Hopf, 2023; Budimaier & Hopf, 2024), and it is a well-suited and promising approach.

Research Focus

The aim of this doctoral research project is to advance research on typographic representations by iteratively developing them in different contexts, investigating how teachers engage with, adapt, and implement such representations in their instructional practice, or empirically validating them with high-school students.

This project will allow the successful candidate to improve their skills in qualitative and quantitative physics education research and to contribute to CERN’s efforts in providing suitable teaching resources to support teachers.

References 

1. Budimaier, F., & Hopf, M. (2023). Development of a new teaching-learning sequence on the particulate nature of matter using crystal structures. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 19(2), 020169. 
2. Budimaier, F., & Hopf, M. (2024). Evaluation of a new teaching-learning sequence on the particulate nature of matter using crystal structures. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 20(2), 020104.
3. Carney, R. N., & Levin, J. R. (2002). Pictorial illustrations still improve students' learning from text. Educational psychology review, 14, 5-26.
4. Cook, M. P. (2006). Visual representations in science education: The influence of prior knowledge and cognitive load theory on instructional design principles. Science education, 90(6), 1073-1091.
5. Wiener, J., Schmeling, S. M., & Hopf, M. (2017a). Introducing 12-year-olds to elementary particles. Physics Education, 52(4), 044001.
6. Wiener, J., Schmeling, S. M., & Hopf, M. (2017b). An alternative proposal for the graphical representation of anti-color charge. The Physics Teacher, 55(8), 472-474.

Apply now! … by 23 February 2026

All information about CERN’s Doctoral Student Programme can be found here:
https://careers.cern/jobs/tsc-doct/

Please mention the code “SR-ECO-EDU-Typographic-Illustrations” in your application. The ideal starting date for this project is 1 October 2026.