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University of Silesia in Katowice
The University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland) (Polish: Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach, US) is one of the largest and most dynamically developing public universities in Poland. Founded in 1968, the University of Silesia quickly established a reputation as a vibrant academic institution and an important interdisciplinary research hub. With a tradition of launching new programmes to best meet the needs of rapidly changing labour markets, the University of Silesia offers students a variety of programs and specialized fields of study. With outstanding research teams and well-equipped laboratories, we are an important player in the global research arena. We actively participate in European Commission initiatives focused both on educational and scientific development, and realize projects within the Horizon 2020, Creative Europe, Erasmus +, Interreg, Structural Funds and other. Currently, the University of Silesia is running 1,200 of its own projects, in addition to almost 600 research projects carried out in conjunction with various outside institutions, both domestic and foreign, including business organizations. A substantial part of our research prioritizes innovation and practical applications for the economy. Internationalisation of research and education is one of the priority directions of development of the USF.
BIOPHAM Key Staff
The University of Silesia in Katowice will provide a scientific background from various areas of physics, biophysics, materials engineering and pharmacy. The proposed courses dedicated to the track 1 “soft-matter and biopharmaceuticals” that will be offered in the 3rd semester of the BIOPHAM Master. They will be thus multidisciplinary in nature and jointly delivered by physicists, biophysicists, materials engineers and pharmacists. From over 10 years scientists from the August Chełkowski Institute of Physics (Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Silesia) led by Prof. Marian Paluch work on the improvement of a drug's efficacy by changing their physical form well in line with BIOPHAM Master topics. The results of their work are of great interest of physics, pharmacists, and technologists, what is proven by a large number of the highly cited papers published in the most prestigious scientific journals such as PRL, ADDR, JACS, Mol. Pharm., Eur. J. Pharm. Biopharm., Pharmaceutics. The proposed ideas have also an important practical meaning. Some of them have been successfully implemented in pharmaceutical technology. In addition to a well-qualified academic staff, the University of Silesia has a multitude of brilliantly equipped laboratories (DSC, Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy, High Pressure Dielectric laboratory, UV-vis, FTIR and Raman laboratory) well adapted for the practical training of the BIOPHAM Master students.
Prof. Marian Paluch gained his Ph.D. with a study on the effect of pressure on the molecular dynamics of glass-forming liquids at the University of Silesia in 1998. He spent two years at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. Later he was appointed as a visiting scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, the University of Akron, the Hebrew University, the University of Pisa and the University of Tennessee. Currently, Marian Paluch is Director of Silesian Center of Education and Interdisciplinary Research and Head of the Biophysics and Molecular Physics Department. Within the last 10 years, he has incorporated all his expertise in studying the dynamics of various glass-forming liquids to understand the tendency of the amorphous pharmaceuticals to recrystallization, being one of the key issues in pharmaceutical sciences.
ORCID: 0000-0002-7280-8557
Dr. Justyna Knapik-Kowalczuk gained Ph.D. at the University of Silesia in 2016. Currently, she works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biophysics and Molecular Physics, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, University of Silesia. She is a young, talented and extremely ambitious researcher. The issue of her scientific research focuses on physical stability improvement of amorphous pharmaceuticals. These studies are highly interdisciplinary – they cross many disciplines such as molecular physics, solid state physics, physical chemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology. The number of her scientific papers testifies how important her scientific work really is.
Joanna Stelmaszak completed post-graduate studies in project management. She has several years of experience in the implementation of co-financed projects, including innovative, educational, didactic and infrastructural ones. Author of numerous reports on project evolutions. She has also several years of academic experience in didactics of subjects related to project management. Joanna Stelmaszak is a projects coordinator in Development office in Silesian Center of Education and Interdisciplinary Research (Silesian University).
Dr. Marzena Rams-Baron is an assistant professor at the Institute of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Silesia in Katowice. She is a specialist in the field of dielectric research of glass-forming systems aimed at deepening the knowledge of structure-dynamics relationships. She obtained her Ph.D. in physics in 2013 for interdisciplinary research on new photosensitizing agents for photodynamic therapy. In 2015, she began post-doctoral research as part of the project concerning amorphous pharmaceuticals in the group of Prof. Marian Paluch, focusing on molecular mechanisms of amorphous drugs stabilization and the role of tautomerization. Currently, she continues her research in the field of experimental dielectric research as principal investigator (PI) in a project funded by the National Science Center devoted to the dynamics of sizable molecular rotors.
