The active fields of research are biophysics, medical physics, condensed-matter physics, materials physics, nanotechnology, nuclear physics, neutrino physics and nuclear astrophysics, quantum field theory, theoretical particle physics, general relativity and gravitation, extragalactic and stellar astronomy, and astrophysics. Students can also work in the UNC–Chapel Hill biophysics program, or they can study under any advisor so long as the research project is supervised by a committee that contains a majority of UNC–Chapel Hill Department of Physics and Astronomy faculty members. The graduate courses are designed to give students a broad foundation and to introduce them to the special fields in which the research interests of the department lie.