Physical science is a fundamental discipline, and the achievements of physics can be found everywhere in modern civilization - from electricity, an inevitable component of our everyday lives, to computers, cell phones, and TVs - all of which were enabled by developments in physics. The Department of Physics at Pusan University welcomes students with a strong curiosity and a challenging spirit. Its active students, outstanding faculty, and employees have come together to make Pusan University the best college for basic sciences in Korea.

Physics requires creativity and an intense spirit of inquiry. For this reason, the Department of Physics at Pusan University makes ceaseless efforts to produce the outstanding experts that are demanded by today’s society, by providing high-quality education to students on the strength of its top-tier faculty and research facilities. As a part of these efforts, we have greatly increased scholarships to undergraduates as well as to graduate school students to induce outstanding students to join our college. Furthermore, we have arranged a variety of programs, such as an academic advisor system and internship program for undergraduates, so that they can receive closer instruction from professors and experience research activities in cutting-edge areas at professor\\'s labs, things that cannot be learned in classrooms. As a result, a large percentage of students of the department continue on to graduate schools and eventually become researchers or professors at collegesand research institutes, contributing enormously to the development of basic sciences. Graduates also become valuable employees at companies, or?teachers at secondary schools.

As of 2008, the Department of Physics has 21 of the best full-time professors. Prevailing amidst fierce competition, the department was chosen by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to take part in the Brain Korea 21(BK21) project in 2006. Pusan University is proud to boast a strong faculty and research capacity, as evidenced by the following cases. In the project assessment for the first year of the BK21 project in 2007, Pusan University took first place among the regional project teams. In addition, in the evaluation of physics departments in Korean universities conducted by Joongang Daily, Pusan University ranked 7th in terms of faculty research capacity. Moreover, the Physics Department was chosen as a strategic field of specialization

at Pusan University, which is only the second time that a physics department has been chosen as a field of specialization of a university. The department is the only department of Pusan University to successfully establish a MEST (Ministry of Education, Science and Technology) -Designated Outstanding Research Center. The department is also contributing to the vitalization of research that makes use of proton beams, and has been producing isotopes for PET/CT by establishing the Cyclotron Research Center in 2007. The budgets for the research projects won by the faculty are worth an annual average of 3 billion won, for which close to 100 SCI-level dissertations are published every year in renowned international scientific journals, including Nature and Physical Review Letters.