Rudolf Podgornik


Rudolf Podgornik is a physicist. His fields of research are: physics of soft matter, physics of coulomb fluids and macromolecular interactions, the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals dispersion interaction and the Casimir effect, physics of membranes, polymers and polyelectrolytes and especially the physics of DNA and viruses.

Career

Podgornik and coworkers discovered the line hexatic phase in the phase diagram of the concentrated long fragment DNA solutions . The line hexatic mesophase appears to be the preferred packing form of long DNA in bacteriophages. He is the author of more than two hundred scientific papers and a coeditor of books: "Electrostatic Effects in Soft Matter" , together with Christian Holm and Patrick Kekicheff and "Electrostatics of Soft and Disordered Matter" with
David S. Dean, Jure Dobnikar and Ali Naji. Together with D. Harries, J. DeRouchey, H. H. Strey, and V. A. Parsegian, he coauthored the chapter "Interactions in Macromolecular Complexes Used as Nonviral Vectors for Gene Delivery", in the leading textbook of gene therapy: "Gene Therapy: Therapeutic Mechanisms and Strategies" , N. Smyth – Templeton, Marcel Dekker, New York, Third Edition.
Rudolf Podgornik is a Chair professor at the School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing and an Adjunct professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing . He is also Professor emeritus at the Physics Department , Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana and professor of biophysics at the , University of Ljubljana. He is a former head of the research program Biophysics of polymers, membranes, gels, colloids and cells, financially supported by the Slovene Agency for Research and Development and a Scientist emeritus at the Theoretical Physics Department of the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. Until 2010 he was an Adjunct researcher at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. From 2011 to 2016 he was also adjunct professor at the , University of Massachusetts, Amherst and from 2013 to 2017 an Adjunct professor at the Materials Science & Engineering Department at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland . He is a former coeditor-in-chief of the , published by Springer, a former member of the Editorial board of the journal published by Nature-Springer and a former Advisory Editor of the European Biophysics Journal published by Springer Nature on behalf of the European Biophysical Societies Association .

Selected publications

In 1986-1989 he was awarded the Fogarty fellowship, at the Laboratory of Structural Biology, Division of Computer Research and Technology, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. In 1992 he received a postdoctoral fellowship of the at Physical Chemistry 2 of the Chemical Center at Lund University. In 1995 he was the recipient of the Division of computer research and technology Director's award for "recognition and appreciation of special achievement". In 1999 he was the recipient of the , which is the highest prize for scientific excellence in Slovenia . In 2002 he was awarded the CNRS Chercheur Associe fellowship at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides - UMR 8502 Universite Paris Sud 11. In 2008 he was a co-recipient of the , made possible by the generosity of Martin Hirschorn, given once every two years and funded by the INCE Foundation. In 2015 he was awarded the fellowship of the Ecole supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris. In 2016-2017 he was awarded the and became a Nirit and Michael Shaoul Fellow, within the framework of the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel. In 2017 he became a Foreign expert in the program of the Chinese government at the in Beijing.