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Dvorak Lectures

Vladimír Dvořák

Vladimír Dvořák (1934–2007)

Solid state physicist, the most prominent Czech scientist in the theory of ferroelectricity and structural phase transitions, for the whole productive life affiliated with the Institute of Physics, its director in 1993-2001, member of the Learned Society since 1995. The main protagonist of the revolutionary reforms in the Institute of Physics after 1989. To commemorate his work and personality, the Institute of Physics decided to organize an annual festive Dvořák lecture, given by prominent internationally renowned scientists in the field related to the research pursued at the Institute of Physics.

Friday, 21.06.2019 14:00 to 16:00

prof. Ramamoorthy Ramesh (Department of Physics and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA)

The 11th Dvořák Lecture

The emergence of the “Internet of Things” and the explosion of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning applications are likely to push up significantly the market for microelectronics. The related energy consumption could increase by 20–25%. Thus, looking for a new generation of ultralow power memories and switches is an area of significant current research. Perovskite oxides exhibit a rich spectrum of functional responses, including magnetism, ferroelectricity, highly correlated electron behavior, superconductivity, etc. Over the past...

Wednesday, 13.06.2018 15:00

Professor Shaoyi Jiang (Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, USA)

The 10th Dvořák Lecture

An important challenge in many applications, ranging from biosensors to drug delivery, is the prevention of nonspecific protein adsorption on surfaces. To address this challenge, our goals are twofold. First, we strive to provide a fundamental understanding of nonfouling mechanisms at the molecular level using an integrated experimental and simulation approach.

Tuesday, 13.06.2017 15:00 to 17:00

Prof. Paul Lecoq (CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)

The 9th Dvořák Lecture

The future generation of radiation detectors is more and more demanding on timing performance for a wide range of applications, such as time of flight (TOF) techniques for PET cameras in medical imaging and particle identification in nuclear physics and high energy physics detectors, precise event time tagging in high luminosity accelerators and a number of photonic applications based on single photon detection.

Wednesday, 15.06.2016 16:00 to 18:00

Prof. Marco Cavaglià (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Mississippi, USA)

The 8th Dvořák Lecture

In 1916 Albert Einstein demonstrated that the theory of General Relativity allows for wave-like, space time perturbations propagating with the speed of light. Two years later, he calculated his famous quadrupole formula, describing how these “gravitational” waves can be generated. However, due to the extreme weakness of gravity, detecting gravitational waves seemed an impossible task. They even became a matter of controversy with Einstein himself becoming convinced they did not exist.

Wednesday, 27.05.2015 15:00 to 17:00

Prof. Janos Hajdu (Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Uppsala University, Sweden & the European XFEL GmbH, Hamburg, Germany)

The 7th Dvořák Lecture

Theory predicts that with an ultra-short and extremely bright coherent X-ray pulse, a single diffraction pattern may be recorded from a large macromolecule, a virus, or a cell before the sample explodes and turns into a plasma. The over-sampled diffraction pattern permits phase retrieval and hence structure determination. X-ray lasers capable to deliver ultra bright and very short X-ray pulses for such experiments have recently started operations.

Wednesday, 04.06.2014 15:00

Orazio Svelto (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

The 6th Dvořák Lecture

From the race to make the first laser to early developments in laser science, a description will be made of the most important achievements. Likewise, the birth of nonlinear optics and the ad- vent of ultrafast laser science will also be considered. In any case, a very coarse review of some of most important achievements will be presented, with the addition of a few anecdotes and cu- riosities as derived by the personal reminiscence of the author.

Wednesday, 12.06.2013 15:00 to 16:00

Peter Jenni (University of Freiburg, Germany and CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)

The 5th Dvořák Lecture

Since three years the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in particular ATLAS, investigate particle physics at the highest collision energies ever achieved in a laboratory. Following a rich harvest of results for Standard Model (SM) Physics came in 2012 the first spectacular discovery of a new, heavy particle, most likely the long-awaited Higgs boson.

Wednesday, 06.06.2012 15:00 to 16:30

Prof. Allan H. MacDonald (University of Texas at Austin, USA)

The 4th Dvořák Lecture

Graphene is an atomically two-dimensional material which was first isolated for electronic property studies by Novoselov, Geim and collaborators from the University of Manchester about ten years ago. It is a gapless semiconductor formed entirely from carbon atoms and can be viewed as a giant aromatic molecule. Graphene’s honeycomb lattice structure is bipartite; atoms on one sublattice have three nearest neighbors all on the other sublattice.

Wednesday, 08.06.2011 15:00 to 17:00

Prof. Dieter Vollhardt (University of Augsburg, Germany)

The 3rd Dvořák Lecture

Since their discovery in 1971 the superfluid phases of Helium-3 have proved to be the ideal testing ground for many fundamental concepts of modern physics. Phenomena such as Cooper pairing, macroscopic quantum coherence, spontaneous breaking of high symmetries, and the formation of exotic topological defects are not only an important enrichment of the physics of condensed matter,

Wednesday, 23.06.2010 15:00 to 17:00

Prof. Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna, Austria)

The 2nd Dvořák Lecture

Research on the foundations of quantum mechanics has given rise to the field of quantum information science. It should be stressed that this research beginning around the 1970s was not motivated by search for applications but rather by pure fundamental curiosity.

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