Eötvös University panorama

CURRICULUM VITAE


Personal

Name: Tamás Vicsek
Place and date of birth: Budapest, 10 May 1948
Family status: Married to Mária Streho, two children (Lilla 1974, Andrew 1976)


Education

M.Sc., Lomonosov University, Moscow, 1972
Ph.D., Kossuth Lajos University, Debrecen, 1976
Candidate's degree in Physical Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Science, 1983


Positions

2018 - present, Professor emeritus of Physics, Department of Biological Physics, Eotvos University, Budapest
2017 - present, Senior associated scientist, Biological Physics Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and ELKH
2005 - 2018 Professor of Physics, Department of Biological Physics, Eotvos University, Budapest
2004 Aug-Dec, Visiting Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Notre Dame, South Bend
2003 - 2017, Head (part time), Biological Physics Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
2003 November, Visiting Scholar, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
1999 Oct. - 2000 July, Senior Fellow, Collegium Budapest/Institute for Advanced Study
1998 - 2005, Professor of Physics, Head, Department of Biological Physics, Eotvos University, Budapest
1991-97 Professor of Physics, (1992-96, Head), Department of Atomic Physics, Eotvos University, Budapest
1990 October, Visiting Scientist, Supercomputing Center, KFA Jülich
1989, Scientific advisor, RITP, Budapest
1989, Visiting Scientist, Emory University, Atlanta
1988, Visiting Scientist, Yale University, New Haven
1986, Visiting Scientist, Emory University, Atlanta
1983-85, Visiting Scientist, Emory University, Atlanta
1983-89, Senior Research Associate, RITP
1981, British Council scholarship, King's College, London
1972-83, Research Associate, (1972-75, Junior) Research Institute for Technical Physics (RITP), Hungarian Acad. Sci.


Professional activities

1999 - 2008 Head of the Statistical, Biological and Quantum Physics Graduate Program at Eotvos University, Budapest
Coorganizer, Summer School on Disordered Systems, 1982, Budapest
Coorganizer, Winter School on Fractals, 1987, Budapest
Cochairman, International Workshop on Clusters and Patterns, 1988 Budapest
Cochairman, Fractals in Natural Sciences, Intern. Conf., 1993 Budapest
Coorganizer, Models of Biological Motion, Workshop, 2000, Budapest
Chairman, 20-th Congress of the Hungarian Biophysical Society, Budapest, 2001
Codirector, Complexity from Microscopic to Macroscopic Scales, NATO Advanced Study Institute, Geilo, Norway, 2001
Coorganizer, Conference on Nanobiology, Atlanta, 2001
Coorganizer, Statistical Physics and Biology of Collective Motion, Dresden, 2010
Coorganizer, Collective motion in biological systems: from data to models, Bielefeld, 2012
Coorganizer, Workshop on Flocking, Swarming, and Control of Multi-Agent Systems, Shanghai, 2012


Editorial board and committee memberships

Member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Physica A, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1988-90; 1999 - 2007
Member of the Editorial Board of the series New developments in solid-state physics (in Hungarian), Budapest, 1987-90
Member of the board of the statistical physics section of the Eotvos Lorand Physcial Society 1991 -
Member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1990-93
Managing Editor of Fractals, World Scientific Publ., Singapore, New-York, 1992-2003
Editorial Board Member, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General, Institute of Physics, Bristol, England, 1994-95
Editorial Board Member, Central European Journal of Physics , Warsaw, 2002-2004
Member of the Editorial Board of Fizikai Szemle (in Hungarian), Budapest, 1993


Teaching:

Various courses on Fractals, Pattern Formation and Growth Phenomena, Eötvös University, 1985 -
Courses on Theoretical Mechanics and Atomic Physics, 1990
Construction of a Hele-Shaw cell for educational purposes, Eötvös University, 1987
Course on "New directions in theoretical biology", 1997 -
Lectures at various summer schools on Fractals


Students supervised:

K. Baricza, Scaling in directed percolation, 1981 (M.Sc.)
J. Cserti, Random walks on percolation clusters, 1982 (M.Sc.)
V. Horvath, Pattern formation in viscous fingering, 1986 (M.Sc.)
V. Horvath, Spatial chaos and pattern formation, 1991 (Ph. D.)
A.-L. Barabási, Growing fractal surfaces, 1989 (M.Sc.)
Z. Csahok, Kinetic roughening, 1994 (M. Sc.)
E. Somfai, Rough surfaces in geomorphology, 1994 (M. Sc.)
Sz. Kali, Simulations of acto-myosin motility assays, 1996 (M.Sc.)
I. Derenyi, Thermal rachets in physics and biology, 1997 (Ph. D)
Z. Csahok, Collective motion in self-driven systems, 1997 (Ph. D)
Zoltan Neufeld, Spatiotemporal chaos in open flows and coupled map lattices, 1997 (Ph. D)
M. Marodi, Synchronization with long range interaction, 2000 (M. Sc.)
A. Czirok, Models of collective behaviour in biology, 2000 (Ph. D)
A. Vassy, Statistical analysis of synchronized clapping, 2001 (M. Sc.)
Z. Farkas, Transport by Rathchet mechanisms (DNA, granules), 2002 (Ph.D)
P. Tegzes, Dynamics in dry and wet granular materials, 2002 (Ph.D.)
B. Hegedus, Migration of irradiated tissue cells in vitro, 2002 (Ph.D.)
B. Szabo, Nanometer scale fluctuations of cells, nuclear migration in cells on micropatterned surfaces, 2003 (Ph.D.)
I. Farkas, Networks in life (scaling, eigenvaue spectra), simulations of crowds, 2003 (Ph.D.)
B Kovács, Metabolic networks and visualization of large graphs, 2005 (M.Sc.)
M. Nagy, Transitions in models of flocking, 2005 (M.Sc.)
Zs. Ákos, Comparing the soaring strategies of birds and people, 2007 (M.Sc.)
D. Abel, Finding communities in weighted networks, 2007 (M.Sc.)
M. Nagy, Experiments on and modeling of collective motion, 2011 (Ph.D.)
B. Ferdinandy, Modeling the collective decision making by landing birds, 2012 (M.Sc.)
Zs. Ákos, Collective behaviour during group motion, 2013 (Ph.D.)
Cs. Virágh, Realistic simulation of flocking robots, 2013 (M. Sc.)
E. Mones, Hierarchical features of complex networks, 2014 (Ph.D)
B. Ferdinandy, Realistic modelling of complex systems of biological agents: epidemiology of HIV on complex sexual networks and collective motion of hierarchical herds, 2017 (PhD)
B. Balázs, Natural synergies in collective behaviour for smoothly swarming aerial robots, 2021 (PhD)


Honors

1983 Research Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1986 Novobátzky Award of the Hungarian Physical Society
1988 Award of the Institute, RITP
1988 Doctor of Physical Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1989 Adjunct Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Emory University, Atlanta
1990 Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1995 Corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
1995 Member of the Academia Europaea
1995 Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston
1997 Andras Fay Award, National Organization of Research Students
1999 Szechenyi Award
2001 Regular member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
2003 Leo Szilard Award
2006 Fellow of the American Physical Society
2015 Herman Ottó Award
2017 Prima Primissima Award
2020 Lars Onsager Prize (Americal Physical Society)


Research experience:

Numerical studies of dense liquids, percolation theory, Monte Carlo simulation of cluster models, aggregation phenomena, fractal growth, pattern formation (computer and laboratory experiments), collective phenomena in biological systems (flocking, oscillations, crowds), molecular motors, cell locomotion in vitro


Publications

6 books (on fractals, scaling, networks)
230 papers in international journals (cumulative impact factor above 750)
Several of the above publications have been reviwed in detail (among many others) in the following media (Nature, Science, New Scientist, New York Times, Scientific American, Times, Newsweek, CNN, BBC, Dutch, Belgian TV, Hung. TV)


List of invited talks (until 2016)

Invited talks, List of talks