The Graduate Program in Physics of Trieste is integrated in a research and higher education system which is probably unique in Italy. The physics research activities spectrum at the Trieste University is infact very broad.

Besides a relevant theoretical and computational research activity, there is a wide community of experimental physicists belonging both to the university and to public and private research bodies who are actively engaged in fields ranging from fundamental nuclear and subnuclear physics to the physics of electronic devices and new materials, from the development of new machines (see e.g. the free electron laser source Fermi at Elettra) to medical physics, from nanotechnology to astroparticle physics and astronomy (both theoretical and experimental).

The synergy between the experimental activities and the theoretical and computational ones at the University, as well as with those in the laboratories present in town and at the Area di Ricerca (Area Science Park) and the ongoing collaboration with SISSA (International School for Avdanced Studies) and the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) offer the students of the PhD School of Physics of Trieste a very rich and stimulating environvent which is full of opportunities and with a range of possible research activities to join which is rare to find elsewhere.

An incomplete list can mention the local Syncrothron (Elettra), the free electron laser source (Fermi), the Trieste laboratories of the National Nuclear Physics Institute, the local section of the National Astrophysics Institute and the Observatory, the research and development lab "Istituto officina dei materiali" (CNR). In addition one has to consider the access to national and international laboratories where our reserch groups work, often with coordination responsibilities. Among these there is CERN (Geneva, CH) laboratory, the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Chile),the Fermilab laboratory (Illinois, USA).