RSC Soft Matter looks at the IRTG / Soft Matter Science
In his editorial on graduate education in soft matter, Tom C. Lubensky from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, regards the IRTG / Soft Matter Science and the SoMaS Summer School.
"There are an increasing number of regional organizations, including ... the International Research Training Group (IRTG) “Soft Matter Science: Concepts for the Design of Functional Materials” of the Universities of Freiburg and Strasbourg, that hold regular meetings in which faculty, postdocs, and graduate students present and share their work and that run other programs like summer schools and seminar series. These meetings not only provide students with opportunities to practice making presentations to a less-than-familiar, but generally friendly, audience but also to network with other students who share their interest. ... Regular meeting, preferably under the umbrella of the kind of centers discussed above, in which experiments, theorists, and simulators present their work to the others, is a good way to foster this kind of education."[1]
[1] "Reflections on graduate education in soft matter" Tom C. Lubensky, Soft Matter, 2013, 9, 4948-4950. http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2013/SM/c3sm90027d#!divAbstract