Josef Jancár's Biography

Josef Jancár, Director Institute of Materials Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Program Coordinator Advanced Materials, Central European Institute of Technology, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic

Prof. Josef Jancar is the Head of the Institute of Materials Chemistry, Group Leader Advanced Polymers and Composites and Program Coordinator at CEITEC, Brno University of Technology and Adjunct Professor University of Connecticut Graduate School. He was a Vice-rector for research and Technology transfer between 2000 and 2006 and member of the Czech Government Committee on Science and Innovation from 2003 to 2011. He obtained his M.S. in solid state physics from the Faculty of Sciences, Masaryk University in 1983 with Thesis on the self-assembly of bases of nucleic acids in electric field and his Ph.D. in macromolecular chemistry from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Prague in 1988 for his work on the effect of interfacial interactions on the deformation response of particle filled semicrystalline polymers. He spent almost 5 years in Professor DiBenedetto group at the University of Connecticut as a Visiting Scientist and from 1992 as an Associate Professor and Director of a multimillion NIH funded project on biomedical applications of polymer composites. After returning to the Czech Republic, he was promoted to full professorship in 1997. In the last 6 years, he published over 40 papers in ISI journals (total over 200), wrote 6 book chapters in monographs and papers published over the last 6 years obtained over 1200 WoS citations (total over 4 000 citations, h = 32). In 2000, he received the highest Czech scientific award, Czech Society for Sciences 2000 Senior Award for discoveries and achievements in research of heterogeneous polymers and the 2012 Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sports Price for Extraordinary Achievements in Science. He assembled young, dynamic, self-motivated, multidisciplinary research team obtaining internationally recognized achievements in the interdisciplinary research of advanced polymer, copolymer and hydrogel syntheses, in formulating molecular mechanisms controlling viscoelastic and non-linear deformation response of heterogeneous polymers and composites, in research of interface/interphase phenomena in polymer composites from nano- to micro-scale, spatial distribution of chain dynamics in heterogeneous systems, size effects in nanocomposites and in design and biomechanics of collagen/hydroxyapatite scaffolds for hard tissue engineering. His group generated fundamental interdisciplinary „core knowledge“bridging the physics and chemistry of nanostructured heterogeneous polymer systems with their macro scale mechanics. We have developed algorithms capable of encoding the desired mechanical response of heterogeneous polymers in their discovered syntheses, including effects of particle-chain and particle-particle interactions, particle shape and size, chain size and rigidity on the multi-chain dynamics in the randomly arranged multiparticle assemblies and the reflection of these effects into macroscopic properties of micro- and nano-heterogeneous structural and biomedical materials. He obtained multiple patents and, over the past 12 months and during his tenure as the Vice Rector for Research at BUT, he have founded the most successful University Technology Incubator in Central Europe including its support infrastructure. Over 90 start-ups have been successfully incubated to date. He founded and serves as Chairman of the Board of ADM, a.s., to commercialize his discoveries in using fiber composites in dentistry. Recently, he founded Sciteg, a.s., a research company transforming unfunded university research into marketable products in biomedical sector.