Natalia Sobczak
Natalia Sobczak is a professor of materials engineering at the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the 2023–2026 term. She specializes in the physicochemistry of metals and alloys, physical metallurgy and heat treatment, foundry engineering, and the practice and theory of metal composites.
Education
She earned her master's degree from the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University in 1984, followed by her doctorate from the same university in 1984. She earned her higher doctorate degree in 2005 from the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Science, Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2012, she received the title of Full Professor from the President of Poland.Professional career
Since 2019, Sobczak has been working at the Institute of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she is head of the Laboratory of Theory of Metallurgical Processes.She has been professionally affiliated with the Foundry Institute in Kraków from 2002 to 2007, with the Motor Transport Institute in Warsaw from 2007 to 2010, with the Foundry Institute in Kraków from 2007 to 2020, and with the Institute of Precision Mechanics in Warsaw.
The positions, functions, and memberships she holds include the following:
- Corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences,
- Chair of the Cast Metal Matrix Composites Working Group of the World Foundry Organization,
- Member of the International Committees on High Temperature Capillarity and on Subsecond Thermophysics,
- Polish representative on the executive committee of the Federation of European Materials Societies,
- Member of the Evaluation Team affiliated with the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education,
- Chair of the Disciplinary Committee affiliated with the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education,
- Deputy Chairman of the Working Group on National Smart Specializations KIS8 "Multifunctional materials and composites with advanced properties, including nanoprocesses and nanoproducts" at the Ministry of Development and Technology.
On 22 November 2022 she was proposed by Marek Konarzewski, President-Elect of the Polish Academy of Sciences, as a candidate to become one of the academy's Vice Presidents. On 8 December, at a session of the General Assembly of the academy, she was elected to the office of Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (together with three other Vice Presidents: Mirosława Ostrowska, Aleksander Welfe, and Dariusz Jemielniak.