Sixth International Conference onMATERIALS STRUCTURE & MICROMECHANICS OF FRACTURE | ||||||
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MSMF6 in Brno, Czech Republic June 28 - 30, 2010 |
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Sixth International Conference on |
| Materials Structure & Micromechanics of Fracture | |
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MSMF6,
in Brno, Czech Republic, June 28 - 30, 2010 |
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Vaclav Vitek Professor |
Materials Science Engineering University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science |
Vaclav Vitek, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was born in Olomouc in 1940. He studied physics and mathematics
at the Charles University in Prague where he graduated in 1962. In 1966 he received his Ph.D.
(at this time called Candidate of Sciences) at the Institute of Physics of the
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences under a supervision of Dr. František Kroupa.
In 1967 he went as a post-doctoral Fellow to the Department of Materials at Oxford
University, England and stayed until 1975 at Oxford as a Research Associate
at the Department of Materials and Research Fellow of the Wolfson College. In 1975 he became
the Research Officer at the Central Electricity Research Laboratories, Leatherhead, England.
During this time he became a British citizen by naturalization.
In 1978 he was invited to become a Full Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he
remains until today. During this time he also held several visiting research positions and
professorships: Theoretical Physics Division, AERE, Harwell, U. K. (1985); Department of
Applied Physics, University of Groningen, Netherlands (1985/86); Department of Physics, Ecole
Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland (1989); Max-Planck-Institut für
Metallforschung, Stuttgart, Germany (1992/93); Korean Institute of Science and Technology,
Taejon, Korea (2003); Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (2004). He became a naturalized
US citizen in 1984. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (London), the ASM
International and The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. At the same time he is a member
of the American Physical Society and Materials Research Society.
He presented numerous invited lectures at international conferences, universities and
research establishments, published over two hundred original papers in peer reviewed
journals, more than fifty invited papers and reviews and more than hundred papers in various
conference proceedings. He also edited three books dealing with atomic level studies of
defects in materials and is a member of editorial boards of several international journals in
the field of Materials Science.
For his contributions to the science of materials he was honored by the following awards:
Pfeil Medal of The Metals Society (London) in 1982, Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist
Award (Germany) in 1991, NEDO Research Award (Japan) in 1992, Acta Metallurgica Gold
Medal in 1996, Honorary Doctorate of the Brno University of Technology in 1999, Ernst Mach
Medal in Physical Sciences awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1999. In 2006 he was
elected to the American National Academy of Engineering (Election to the Academy is
considered one of the highest professional distinctions accorded American engineers. Vitek
was recognized for “work in the development of the atomistic modeling of crystalline solids
and their application to materials engineering."). This year (2009), the Japan Institute of Metals has selected V. Vitek as its Honorary Member.