News

From September 14 to Septemebr 16, 2016, the ‘Jožef Stefan’ Institute hosted the 6th Workshop on Liquid Crystals for Photonics, which brought together world first class scientists, in particular physicists, chemists and engineers, involved in photonic applications of liquid crystals. The workshop was co-organised by the ‘Jožef Stefan’ Institute and by the Group for Physics of Soft and Partially Ordered Matter from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Ljubljana.

Matjaž Humar from Condensed Matter Physics department at Jožef Stefan Institute won 1st Place Poster Prize at prestigious Nobel Laureate Meeting 2016. The meeting has taken place in Lindau, Germany from 26. June to 1. July. There were 400 invited young scientists from 80 countries and 29 Nobel laureates attending the 66. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The attendees of the meeting are carefully selected by a committee giving priority to young scientists who are strongly committed to science and research. This year meeting was focused on physics. Matjaž presented a poster about lasers embedded into single live cells. His poster got the most votes given by the young scientists and Nobel laureates.

Director’s Council reached an unanimous decision to finance the Live and Edible Photonics Project, proposed by dr. Matjaž Humar form the Departement for condensed matter physics. The goal of the project is to build a leading bio-integrated photonics laboratory in the ‘Jožef stefan’ Institue. The laboratory will be located in the former library rooms, which will be renovated and adapted to form the

 perfect environment for the proposed studies. The laboratory will develop photonic components, such as laser,  made entirely of biocompatible and living materials, which will be suitable for consumption or for insertion into a human body. Biodegradable photon sensors will also be used in combination with optically coherent tomography (OCT) and will enable the use of sensors deeper inside the body than before and with greater resolution. OCT will be used to study live active self-organising systems and their interaction with light. The methods developed as part of the Project will allow a new level of manipulation of biological systems, biosensing and new human-machine interfaces.

The journal Scientific Reports published on May 20, 2016 the article entitled “Points, skyrmions and torons in chiral nematic droplets”, by Gregor Posnjak, Simon Čopar and Igor Muševič, members of the Solid State Department (F5) of JSI and Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana. They discovered a new method of reconstructing 3D orientational field of a liquid crystal, labelled with fluorescent molecules and imaged with a confocal optical microscope. Using this method they were able for the first time to determine unambigously the topological properties of a chiral liquid crystal, captured in a micro-droplet, as tiny as a hair. They could see singular point-like topological defects, separated by 3D topological objects, which are known in physics as skyrmions and torons.

Dr. Matjaž Humar: 1st Place Poster Prize at prestigious Nobel Laureate Meeting 2016, Lindau, Germany. Matjaž presented a poster about lasers embedded into single live cells for the first time. He has also demonstrated that fat cells already present in the human body already contain tiny lasers, which only need to be activated.

Dr. Matjaž Humar: Bronze Award from community Šempeter-Vrtojba for 2016, Šempeter-Vrtojba. The prize for the high successes in the world scale in recent years and as a stimulation for further scientific work.

dr. Janez Pirc: Hononrary distinction of “Jožef Stefan” Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Honorary distinction for his successful contribution tor developing new high-tech products based on scientific and technological achievements of the “Jožef Stefan” Institute.