Minister of Science and Higher Education Jarosław Gowin awarded representatives of academic society for outstanding scientific achievements, individual and group pedagogical achievements and organizational success. The ceremony was held on December 3rd in the Old Orangery of Łazienki Park in Warsaw.
Among the winners there were our colleagues from Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science: prof. Maciej Andrzej Nowak (professor, head of the Mark Kac Centre and the Department of Theory of Complex Systems, awarded in the field of basic research), prof. Franciszek Krok (awarded for outstanding scientific achievements of global importance included in the proceedings for conferring the title of professor) and prof. Stanisław Kistryn (awarded for organizational achievements).
Application of the idea of complexity has led professor Nowak to series of spectacular discoveries in the field of elementary particles (consequences of chiral symmetry breaking) and random matrices (theory of free non-hermitian operators, theory of spectral shock waves). Since the formalism of large random matrices can be treated as a specific study of probability for very large data sets, the obtained results have fundamental interdisciplinary applications in the modern digital world of the mass flow of biological, technological and economic information.
Professor Krok is an expert in the analysis of processes of self-organization on the solid surfaces as well as in the description of characteristic features and various physicochemical properties of these surfaces and emerging nanostructures, with the use of techniques based on scanning imaging methods. Research team led by prof. Krok in the Department of Solid State Physics deals among others with nanostructuring the surface of AIII-BV compound semiconductors with the use of FIB technique and developing methods for fabricating nanoalloys of immiscible metals.
The award for outstanding organizational achievements was granted to professor Kistryn, expert in nuclear physics of few-nucleon systems, Vice-Rector of Jagiellonian University for Research and Structural Funds since 2012. Vice-Rector is or was a member of several expert teams and committees at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, industry committees, expert groups assessing applications for EU funding and editorial boards of scientific journals. For many years prof. Kistryn has been involved in building European network for scientific collaboration.