Prof. Zoran Hadžibabić has been awarded the Marko Jarić Prize for 2018 for his exceptional contribution to the field of physics of ultracold atoms and molecule systems.
The prize, which is sometimes dubbed “the Serbian Nobel Prize”, was awarded by the Dr. Marko Jarić Foundation at a ceremony held at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts on March 22.
Prof. Zoran Hadžibabić was born in Belgrade in 1974. After completing his elementary education and graduating from the Mathematical Grammar School in Belgrade, he continued his studies at the University of Cambridge, following which he enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his PhD in 2003 under the supervision of the Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Wolfgang Ketterle.
He completed his postdoctoral studies with Prof. Jean Dalibard (Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France) from 2003 to 2007. He has been a fellow at the University of Cambridge since 2007. In 2007, he joined the Department of Physics of the Cavendish Laboratory, where he is now full professor.
Zoran Hadžibabić’s field of study is the physics of ultracold atoms. He has achieved a number of important scientific results, including experimental observation of the Bose-Einstein condensation of molecules and the first experimental observation of the mixture of quantum degenerate Bose and Fermi gases. He has made a substantial contribution to the study of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) crossover, as well as to the study of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of many-body systems, along with the first experimental observation of homogenous ultracold systems in a box potential.
He has published 47 papers in leading international journals, which have been quoted over 4,900 times. Some of his most significant papers have been published in journals such as Nature, Science and Physics Review Letters.
On March 25, Prof. Hadžibabić gave the lecture “Quantum gas in a box” in the Zvonko Marić Hall as part of the traditional colloquium organized by the Institute of Physics, Belgrade. For more on the lecture, click HERE.
The prize awarded to Prof Hadžibabić bears the name of the American-Serbian physicist Marko Jarić. Owing to his outstanding talent, Jarić reached the very top among the physicists working in the field of condensed matter theory. For his extraordinary results, achieved during his rather short career, he was awarded the three most prestigious international fellowships: the Fulbright, Humboldt and Miller scholarships.
This year, Professor Marko Jarić Foundation has awarded its prize for the eighteenth time. The prize was established in 1998 and is intended for prominent Serbian-born physicists. Its laureates are Prof. Ivan Božović, Prof. Nikola Konjević, Prof. Miodrag Kulić, Prof. Leonard Golubović, Prof. Zoran Petrović, Prof. Nemanja Kaloper, Prof. Milan Damnjanović, Prof. Bosiljka Tadić, Prof. Ljiljana Dobrosavljević and Prof. Zoran Radović (jointly), Prof. Vladimir Dobrosavljević, Dr. Čedomir Petrović, Prof. Vlatko Vedralo, Prof. Dejan Stojković, Prof. Jelena Vučković, Prof. Vladan Vuletić, Dr. Časlav Brukner, and Prof. Igor Herbut.
PHOTOS: Bojan Džodan, IPB