  These lectures give a detailed introduction to constructing and analyzing
string vacua suitable for phenomenological model building, with particular
emphasis on F-theory flux vacua. Topics include (1) general challenges and
overview of some proposed scenarios, (2) an extensive introduction to F-theory
and its relation to M-theory and perturbative IIB string theory, (3) F-theory
flux vacua and moduli stabilization scenarios, (4) a practical geometrical
toolkit for constructing string vacua from scratch, (5) statistics of flux
vacua, and (6) explicit models.
