Innovative teaching award

Overview

Every year, the Bavarian Ministry of Science awards a "Prize for Good Teaching" at Bavarian state universities. Now the ministry has announced the 15 award winners for 2022. Among the award winners is Dr. Simon Moser, member of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat - Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg. His selling point according to Minister Markus Blume: With innovative and creative teaching, he awakens the students' thirst for knowledge and encourages them to learn. The award ceremony for the winners of the years 2021 and 2022 with Minister Blume will take place on April 28th, 2023 in Bayreuth.

Simon Moser: an enthusiastic lecturer
Dr. Simon Moser is one of the lecturers who have achieved excellent results in the evaluation of their courses. Both in his undergraduate lectures, such as "Physics for Medical Students", and in more specialized lectures and seminars, such as "Nanoanalytics", his ratings are "far above average, even compared to far more experienced colleagues," writes Friedrich Reinert, dean of studies at the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy. He adds: "The students’ feedback often testifies a great enthusiasm for Dr. Moser’s teaching".

These good ratings are "not negligible", especially in minor lectures, writes the physics student council in its nomination of Simon Moser for the good teaching prize. After all, such events are "didactically a great challenge".

According to the student council, Moser's teaching commitment beyond the mandatory curriculum, as e.g., in organizing the Summer School of Physics 2022, for whose success Moser was "largely responsible", was also taken into positive consideration.

Dean of Studies Reinert, too, praises this commitment beyond the usual curriculum. For example, Moser contributed creatively  and with great enthusiasm to the lecture series "Phenomena of Physics". Moser also took part in the science festival "Highlights of Physics", where he contributed an "interesting popular science lecture" on "Waves in Nature". All this shows that Moser is "an enthusiastic and inspiring university lecturer whose 'good teaching' is, in our opinion, unquestionably worthy of an award," said the Dean of Studies.

Moser studied physics at JMU from 2004 to 2010 and graduated with a diploma; He also holds a master’s degree from Stony Brook University’s (New York, USA) Department of Physics and Astronomy. After completing his doctorate at EPFL in Lausanne and a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he has been a research associate and group leader at the Chair of Experimental Physics IV for about four years; his habilitation procedure started in summer 2019.