News & Events

 

He has been working in the Department of Fundamental Research at FTMC for the last few years.

 

We express our deepest sympathy to Audrius' relatives, friends, colleagues and all those who knew him.

 

The visitation in memory of Dr. Audrius Alkauskas will take place at the Vilnius Funeral Home, 22 Olandų St., Hall 6:

17 May (Wednesday) 4:30-9:00 PM;

18 May (Thursday) 8:00-11:00 AM.

The procession to Anykščiai will take place on 18 May (Thursday) at 11:00 AM.

We will announce the place and time of the visitation and the funeral in Anykščiai later.

 

 

"It is difficult to find words to express this loss...

 

Audrius Alkauskas, head of the Electronic Structure Theory Laboratory in the Department of Fundamental Research and the leader and founder of the informal theoretical group "Puntukas", one of the most prominent theoretical physicists of the middle generation, has left Center for Physical Sciences and Technology.

 

Not only an exceptional talent in physics, but also a multifaceted personality, able to mobilise like-minded people, to spark curiosity, to inspire Creativity and scientific enquiry... He had the incredible erudition of a physicist and a subtle flair, a penchant for music and creative writing...

 

Audrius' scientific ideas shone through in a very productive, colourful and inventive way. Working with Love and Imagination, which has led to many cornerstone articles and reports on electronic structure semiconductors, to international projects and to the future directions of the continuously intensifying activities of the research group...

 

The vocation of physics, the inner blessing of the Creative Impulse and ... a patient encounter with oneself... It was all so vivid, but it was so brief. Too brief."

 

A.Alkauskas has been an active and productive researcher throughout his life, and has successfully tested himself in fields ranging from optoelectronics to quantum physics. He was interested in literature, philosophy, popular and classical music; he wrote short stories and songs, sang in a choir, was active in sports, and spoke out on public issues. He was fluent in English, Russian, French and German.

 

Audrius was well-known in the public sphere and appreciated for his knowledge and his ability to explain complex issues in simple, beautiful language.

 

He has been interviewed by the media several times, and was nominated for the Lithuanian Public Broadcaster LRT Award for his global scientific discovery of the nature of quantum emitters in two-dimensional semiconductors.

 

 A. Alkauskas was born on 8 February 1978 in Anykščiai, in the family of agronomists Antanas and Vida Alkauskai. His twin brother is Giedrius Alkauskas, a mathematician.

 

Audrius attended Anykščiai Jonas Biliūnas Secondary School from 1985 to 1993, and graduated from Kaunas University of Technology Gymnasium from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, Alkauskas was selected as the winner of the February 16th Prize, awarded to the best gymnasium student. In 1995 and 1996 he became the winner of the Lithuanian School Physics Olympiads, and in 1996 he was awarded a letter of commendation at the International Physics Olympiad in Oslo (Norway). He was twice a laureate of the Lithuanian Young Philologists Competition.

 

 

From 1996 to 2002, he studied at the Faculty of Physics at Vilnius University, obtaining a Bachelor's and Master's degree in physics, and completed part of his studies at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). During his studies he sang in the Vilnius University student choir and wrote short stories.

 

From 2002 to 2006, Alkauskas was a PhD student at the Institute of Physics at the University of Basel (Switzerland).  In 2006 he defended his PhD thesis "Energy level alignment and site-selective adsorption of large organic molecules on noble metal surfaces".

 

He lived and worked in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 2006 to 2010 and was a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) for almost five years. He was a researcher at the Institutes of Theoretical Physics and Solid State Physics.

 

From 2011 to 2014, Alkauskas was a Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA).

 

Since 2014, Audrius has lived and worked in Vilnius. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Senior Researcher at the Terahertz photonics laboratory in the Department of Optoelectronics at FTMC, and since 2016, he has been a Senior Researcher and Head of the research group "Puntukas" on electronic structure theory.

 

Since 2015, he has been a lecturer at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Kaunas University of Technology, Professor of the Department of Physics, teaching a course on solid-state physics.

 

Alkauskas' research interests included materials science; physics of surfaces, interfaces and defects; density functional theory; solid state physics; physics of renewable energy sources and theoretical solid-state spectroscopy.

 

 

Audrius has presented papers at international scientific conferences and, together with his co-authors, has authored and published more than 40 publications in the international scientific journals, including scientific publications in the physics journal Physical Review Letters.

 

Since 2011, Alkauskas has been a member of the American Physical Society.

 

While living in Switzerland, he was a member of the Board of the Swiss Lithuanian Community, coordinator of the activities of the French part of Switzerland and organiser of cultural events.

 

He was a contributor to the newspaper "Swiss Lithuanian News" and prepared a study on the life and work of the writer Jonas Biliūnas in Switzerland for the collection of essays in Lithuanian and German "Trails of Lithuanian Writers in Switzerland. Auf den Spuren litauischer Schriftsteller in der Schweiz" (2009).