Institution: NUI Maynooth

Course duration: one year, full-time

Number admitted to course: up to 34

Entry requirements: science graduates who have spent at least one university year studying physics. "We do take students who have majored in biology, chemistry or maths and have a small physics background," notes course director Dr Ray O'Neill. "We interview all applicants and if they are not physics graduates we grill them hard to see if they have the technical background to benefit from the course."

How long has the course been running? since 1995

Why was it introduced? postgraduate diplomas in IT are often geared towards people with non-scientific backgrounds. "We felt that physicists had a lot to contribute to the IT industry," O'Neill says. "We saw a need for a top-up course, concentrating on IT skills and computer applications in physics."

Course content: software development skills, electronics, microprocessing, instrumentation, communication skills and teamwork. Students learn programming from scratch using the C programme language. C is used to teach computational modelling of complex physical systems. Students are also taught statistics and data analysis.

Main benefits of the course? You get your own workstation, computer hardware and diagnostic instrumentation for the year. Great team spirit. Practically everybody gets jobs in the IT industry.

Cost: £650 (It's partly ESF funded.)

Contact: Department of experimental physics, NUI Maynooth Tel: (01) 708 3641, e-mail: physics.department@may.ie