The Faculty of Physics and Mathematics collaborates with other universities and scientific centres on various levels.

FPM collaborates with the UL Institute of Polymer Mechanics, the UL Institute of Solid State Physics, the UL Institute of Physics and the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science on the level of study and scientific work.

The Faculty carries out in-depth international cooperation based on both the participation of the UL or its faculties in internationally funded educational or science projects, including student exchange projects, as well as personal scientific contacts and collaboration of the professors which also involve students.

The local and international cooperation of the faculty departments in recent years is illustrated by the following examples which are far from covering all possible contacts.

Department of Physics

• The Department of Physics participates in the student exchange with partner universities funded by ERASMUS;
• The Department of Physics participates in the project STEPS TWO (www.stepstwo.eu). By taking part in the academic network which develops guidelines for the physics study programmes at universities, the experience of the Bologna process has been gathered, modern teaching methods have been studied and the training of physics teachers has been supported with the aim of encouraging learning of physics at schools;
• The Department of Physics as a unit of the UL also takes part in the initiative of Campus Europea. The purpose of this initiative is to highlight the European dimension of university studies by creating a one-year exchange studies of the first level higher education students at the partner universities;
• The Department of Physics regularly participates in the work of the World Federation of Physics Competitions by coordinating the proceedings of the Latvian State Physics Olympiads and Open Physics Olympiads in form and content, as elsewhere in the world.

The professors of the Department of Physics take part in joint projects with the foreign partners: the Universities of Oklahoma and Connecticut – the USA; the University of Hannover, the Technical University of Berlin – Germany; Paris Diderot University, Pierre and Marie Curie University, the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis – France; the Institute of Physics at Polish Academy of Sciences; the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Warsaw.

In recent years, they have also intensified the cooperation between the Department of Physics and high-tech companies, including Sidrabe, Inc. and GroGlass, Ltd.

The Department of Mathematics closely cooperates with the UL agency – the UL Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science on the level of study and scientific work. The international cooperation of the Department mostly covers the University of Kaiserslautern and Bundeswehr University Munich in Germany, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the University of Tartu in Estonia and takes place within the framework of the projects supported by the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry (ECMI). The cooperation within ERASMUS covers the Universities of Kaiserslautern and Bremen in Germany. The Department also collaborates with the International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications (ICDEA) and a regular conference is scheduled in Riga in 2010.

Individual academic staff members have collaboration partners at Charles University in the Czech Republic; the Universities of Southampton and Bradford in England; the University of Helsinki in Finland, Umea University in Sweden, the University of Tartu in Estonia, Vilnius University and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania, a.o.

The internationally recognized MMA (Mathematical Modelling and Analysis) series conferences as well as Baltic universities joint scientifically methodological conferences on didactics of mathematics regularly take place in the Baltic States.

The academic staff of the Department of Optometry and Optical Science collaborates with colleagues from different European universities and other institutions in Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Norway, Holland, Germany, Denmark as well as the USA. The main collaboration forms include mutual staff exchange visits, PhD internships and participation in the international conferences.