Educational Background

Ph.D., Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, October 1997. Thesis: Study of Production and Properties of Neutron Deficient Heavy Nuclei
in the Vicinity of Neutron Shell Closure N=126.

M.S., Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, June 1989. Employment and Research/Teaching Experience
Sept 1989 - Aug 1990 - military service (mandatory)

Sept 1990 - Sept 1991 - Research Assistant, Dept. of Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. Reactions induced by fast neutrons. Multi-parametric ionization chambers.

Oct 1991 - Sept 1992 - Visiting scientist, Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, JINR Dubna, Russia. Nuclear reaction studies with heavy ions. Kinematic separators. Detection and identification of heavy nuclei. Alpha spectroscopy. Production cross sections and fission barriers. New neutron-deficient isotopes in U-Pu region.

Oct 1992 - Dec 1992 - Research Assistant, Dept. of Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.

Jan 1993 - Dec 1993 - Visiting scientist, GSI Darmstadt, Germany. Production of heavy nuclei at energies from Coulomb barrier to 15 AMeV. Kinematic separator SHIP. Evaporation residue velocity distributions. Reaction mechanisms.

Jan 1994 - Sept 1996 - Research/Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Nuclear Physics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. Graduate lecture course "Nuclear reaction models". Production mechanisms and properties of neutron deficient heavy nuclei close to N=126. Systematics of fission barriers from model calculations of evaporation residue cross sections. Production of evaporation residues at high excitation energies. Complete fusion, incomplete fusion, pre-equilibrium emission.

Oct 1996 - March 1999 - Research Associate, Dept. of Nuclear Physics, Institute of Physics of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. Gamma-spectroscopy of fission fragments. Yields of correlated fission fragment pairs in spontaneous fission, neutron multiplicities. Development of methods for processing of multi- dimensional spectra, peak search, background subtraction, de-convolution. Methods for calculation of nuclear matrix elements for double-beta decay. Renormalized QRPA, Operator expansion method, schematic models. Synthesis of superheavy nuclei, model description of fusion process.

Apr 1999 - March 2002 - Research Associate, Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Influence of isospin asymmetry on projectile multifragmentation. Influence of isospin asymmetry on thermodynamics of hot nuclei. Isospin asymmetry of emitted fragments. Extraction of nuclear temperature at freeze-out. Methods for energy calibration and particle identification for state-of-art particle detector arrays (FAUST, NIMROD). Interplay of isospin degree of freedom with reaction dynamics. Production of rare isotopes in the Fermi energy domain. Model description of production mechanism of hot nuclei in violent collisions in the Fermi energy domain. Model description of production of superheavy nuclei.

Apr 2002 – Dec 2018 - Research Scientist, Dept. of Nuclear Physics, Institute of Physics of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. From 2008 to 2013 Head of the Dept. of Nuclear Physics. From 2009 to 2010 Scientific Secretary of the Institute of Physics of Slovak Academy of Sciences. During 2010-2018 member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Physics of Slovak Academy of Sciences, during 2014-2018 Head of the Scientific Council. Multifragmentation, liquid-gas phase transition, criticality, symmetry energy, dynamical emission of neutrons. Nuclear equation of state at sub- and super-saturation densities. Isoscaling in multifragmentation, production of heavy residues and fission. Production of rare isotopes in the Fermi energy domain, effect of target neutron skin. Calculation of secondary beam intensities of EURISOL RIB facility. Model description of production of heavy and superheavy nuclei. Density-dependence of the symmetry energy, simulations of nucleus-nucleus collisions using Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck equation. Quantitative biology, age and order of precedence of DNA mutations.

2014-2018 - Head of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Physics of Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. Coordinator of collaboration with ISOLDE/CERN, experiments with RIBs, spectroscopy, beta-delayed fission, BUU and CoMD simulation of reactions leading to super-heavy elements, spallation, production of neutron-rich isotopes, extraction of parameters of nuclear equation of state. Experimental study of nuclear reactions induced by high-power laser at SIOM/SINAP Shanghai.

Since Jan 2019 – Research Scientist at Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Nuclear reactions with high-power lasers, pixel detectors

Project leadership experience: principal investigator of several projects of the VEGA grant agency (Slovakia), speaker/principal investigator of the collaboration of Institute of Physics of SASc with ISOLDE/CERN, subtask leader of the EU Eurisol Design Study project, author and speaker of experiment IS581 "(d,p)-transfer induced fission of heavy radioactive beams" accepted and performed at ISOLDE/CERN, principal investigator of GAČR project 21-24281S “Experiment IS581 (d,p)-transfer induced fission of heavy radioactive beams”.

Nuclear astrophysics (since 2018): hyper-heavy nuclei in neutron stars environment, equation of state and properties of neutron stars with hypothetical X17 boson, dark matter admixed neutron stars, neutron stars with kaonic condensate as a new branch of compact objects.

Journal publications: 141 Citations: 2710 (WoS) H-index: 26 (WoS)