Becoming Chartered by the Institute
Chartered Physicist (CPhys)
The title Chartered Physicist is exclusive to the Institute of Physics. It represents the highest standards of professionalism, up-to-date expertise, quality and safety, and for capacity to undertake independent practice and exercise leadership. As well as competence, the title denotes commitment to keep pace with advancing knowledge and with the increasing expectations and requirements for which any profession must take responsibility.
Chartered status is the aspiration of members engaged at the leading edge of all fields of physics and its applications.
Navigate to the information you require below:
- What are the requirements for CPhys?
- Application form and guidelines.
- Guidance on supporters.
- Professional standards procedures
- Contact the Professional Development Team.
- Frequently Asked Questions
What are the requirements for CPhys?
The benchmark for CPhys is an accredited master's degree (MPhys/MSci) coupled with 4-5 years work experience, 2 years of which should demonstrate responsible experience. If you do not hold an accredited integrated masters degree but do have an accredited Physics degree, then we ask that you demonstrate the missing parts of your degree through an MPhys equivalence report, this includes the Core of Physics topics which make up the criteria for the accreditation of a Physics degree and also a technical project which is undertaken in the fourth year of an integrated masters degree.
To check whether your degree is accredited please look at Section 7 - Is your degree accredited? below.
Application form and guidelines
The Institute requires all CPhys candidates to use this Professional Review Report template and MPhys equivalence template (where applicable). Candidates not wishing to use Microsoft Word to write their report should use the same section headings and include all the information requested. Reports not in this format will be returned to the candidate for rewriting. There will be no exceptions to this rule.
Guidance on supporters
It is mandatory that at least one supporter must be a Chartered Physicist. This document gives guidance on choosing your supporters.
All applicants are advised to search amongst their network of contacts and/or to attend local Group and Branch meetings in order to nurture suitable relationships. You could also find yourself a mentor, who, over time, may get to know you well enough to be able to provide support - we provide a mentor/mentee matching service to help with this. If you genuinely can not locate a Chartered Physicist in your network the Professional Development team can nominate a supporter for you. However, this option is always closely scrutinised and queried by the assessing panel.
1 supporter must be from an organisation other than your own. This is to ensure independence of opinion. You must not be related to either of your supporters.
Professional standards procedures
Click here to access the procedures for the professional standards activities. These include interview proformas and guidance for interviewers and panel members.
Contact the Professional Development Team
Please e-mail cpd@iop.org or call 020 7470 4800 for further guidance or to talk to somebody about getting chartered.
Frequently Asked Questions (pdf 35 KB)
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