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ZB 10 - Soft Condensed Matter (R. Holyst)

We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!
We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!
We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!
We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!
We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!
We are different, but we all do great Science; and we have a lot of fun doing it!

People

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Robert Hołyst

Head of the group, ORCID ID 0000-0002-3211-4286

Robert Hołyst born 1963, graduated from the University of Warsaw (MSc in theoretical physics) in 1986, PhD (1989) and habilitation (1992) in chemistry in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Full professor 1998 (title granted by the President of Poland).  Coauthor of 220 publications cited 3800 time, h=32, three monographs on thermodynamics (one published by Springer Verlag). He was granted 30 patents (EPO, USA, Poland, Russia etc.) and cofounded 3 spin-off companies. He was advisor to 20 PhD and 30 postdocs. 8 of them are professors in Poland, USA and China. He created two scientific contests: “Gold Medal of Chemistry” and “Dream Chemistry Award”. He gave seminars at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Broad Institute, Grande Ecole in France (ENS Lyon, Paris, l’ESPCI), 5 Max Planck Institutes, Oxford, Cambride, nanotechnology centers Beijing, Nankai and Tianjin in China. He was a postdoc at the University of Washington (1989-1991), spend 2,5 years in Ecole Normale Supeireure Lyon and nearly half a year at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz. He collaborated with Mitsui Chemicals Inc and served as as expert for 2 years, Samsung and Unilever. For 8 years he served as a vice director and later director (2007-2015) of the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS. He made a successful reform of the institute. He discovered that viscosity at the nanoscale is not a constant, but depends on the length scale of flow (JPhys.Chem. B 2006, PCCP 2009, NanoLetters 2011, Phys.Rev.Lett. 2013). He applied this concept to gene expression in crowded environment (Bioinformatics 2012, Nucleic Acid Research 2014) and to the active transport of kinesin motors (Phys.Rev.Lett. 2015). He introduced a new paradigm of space partition based on first Laplacian eigenvalues (Phys.Rev.Lett. 2005, PRE 2010). He discovered the rules governing  evaporation process (Phys.Rev.Lett. 2008, Rep.Prog.Phys. 2013, Soft Matter 2013, 2015). Liquids evaporate first at the expenses of the energy from the environment; they try to keep their temperature constant. He obtained an equation which without any fitting parameter described evaporation flux for over 12 orders of magnitude in time from ns to hours. During evaporation the evaporation flux of momentum matches the pressure difference between the liquid and the gas. He also discovered many periodic surfaces of high genus (Phys.Rev.Lett 1996, PRE 1996). His research interests evolved from purely theoretical physics, via experimental chemistry to biological experiments. He is currently involved in research describing the motion of probes in cells, aging of cells, death at the nanoscale and systems far from equilibrium making theory, computer simulations and experiments. In 1999 he sailed around Cape Horn to Antarctica on a sailing yacht “Zawisza Czarny”.