The award was presented to professor Marcin Kaminski during the Polish Science Gala, on the day celebrating the Polish scientific and scholarly community. The Gala took place in professor Kaminski's hometown of Toruń, on the 550th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus, and during the inauguration of the World Copernican Congress.
Professor Kaminski works at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environmental Engineering at Lodz University of Technology where he heads the Department of Structural Mechanics and chairs the Council for the Discipline of Civil Engineering, Geodesy and Transport. Born in Toruń (1969) to a family of scholars affiliated with the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, he studied civil engineering at Lodz University of Technology, where in 1994, following his graduation, he started his first job.
The award winner's primary research interests concentrate on stochastic mechanics, in particular on numerical methods, e.g., the Stochastic Finite Element Method, as well as the application of probabilistic entropy to structural reliability analysis.
Professor Kamiński offers the following explanation of what these difficult terms mean:
Stochastic mechanics looks at static equilibrium and dynamic equilibrium problems of materials whose selected material properties, geometry, boundary conditions, and/or their loads exhibit statistical variability. Research on probabilistic entropy, as a measure of heterogeneity and disorder, is currently conducted within the OPUS grant from the National Science Centre 2022-2025. For several years, implementation work in this field has been performed in collaboration with Commercecon, Łódź, and has so far been focused on the reliability analysis of steel structures that exhibit statistical imperfections.
The award was awarded to recognize the Professor's scholarly contribution in the year 2021: a series of publications in international research journals, conference proceedings, and chapters in monographs. The two most significant papers were published in The International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering and in Composite Structures.
On Polish Science Day, in all categories, a total of 66 distinctions were awarded by the Minister of Education and Science for outstanding scientific, organizational, implementation, and teaching achievement, as well as for lifetime achievement.