All Applicants need to provide:

• Contact
• Current Affiliation / Institution
• PhD Year (*applicants must have currently have PhD or will receive it the year of the program)
• List of three recent publications with links
• Brief description of work

Letters of Recommendation (optional)

If you think the admissions committee might be unfamiliar with your work, you may add a letter of recommendation to your application. Your recommender should email the letter to acp@aspenphys.org by January 31.

Length of Stay

Applicants will be asked to indicate a preferred length of stay, in weeks. The Aspen Center for Physics provides a unique environment for extended discussion and collaborative research of a type not generally possible at shorter workshops and conferences. The Center thus requires that participants stay at the Center for a minimum of two full working weeks, with stays of three and four weeks encouraged and stays of five weeks possible. Read more about the benefit/cost ratio of long stays here).

A limited number of one-week stays are allowed each summer to enable attendance by physicists whose work is central to a particular workshop or working group but who are not able to participate for two weeks or longer because of professional or personal commitments such as laboratory management or childcare/eldercare arrangements. Read more about applying for a one-week stay here.

Applicants requesting a one-week stay because of professional or personal commitments are encouraged to use the comments box to add any information that they want the admissions committee to take into consideration. See examples here. Before indicating your scheduling preferences and constraints, you should carefully review your other summer commitments to ensure that if admitted for the weeks you request, you can attend for the full working weeks that you are offered.

Single Workshops

If you are applying to participate in a single workshop, first double check the weeks for which the workshop is scheduled here. If you are applying to participate for the entire workshop, put the length of the workshop as your length of stay and select “P” (preferred) for each week of the workshop. If your preferred length of stay is shorter than the length of the workshop, indicate your preferred length of stay. Select “I” (impossible) for the weeks of the workshop you CANNOT attend, select “P” for all weeks of the workshop you would prefer to attend, and select “A” (acceptable) for any week of the workshop that you would be able to attend for the full working week but is not your first choice. Please keep in mind that flexibility in scheduling improves your chance of being admitted. See examples here.

Working Groups

If you are applying to participate in a working group, you should first coordinate with the other members of the working group to agree on a preferred length for the working group (minimum two weeks) and determine the length of the period in which all members of the working group can be present at the Center. Each member should indicate “P” (preferred) for the weeks in those periods. To increase scheduling flexibility, and thus the chance that the working group will be accepted, the members of the working group can indicate “A” (acceptable) weeks. Please keep in mind that the beginning and ending weeks of our summer program are the least heavily subscribed. See examples here.