HISTORY

A Brief History of NanoLab

In 1977, Dr Fedor Herbut, nowadays member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and late Dr Milan Vujicic (1931-2008), both Senior Researchers at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences Vinca at the time, have been appointed Professors at the Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade and together with their younger collaborators Ivan Bozovic and Igor Ivanovic started research in the fields of foundations of quantum mechanics and symmetry of polymers, within Chair for Quantum and Mathematical Physics. Soon after that, in 1979, Milan Damnjanovic has become the member of the group. During the 1980s Maja Buric, Ivanka Milosevic and Mico Djurdjevic joined the team, while in 1990s the number of the group members further increased by appointing Tatjana Vukovic, Dragan Stojkovic, Bozidar Nikolic and Irena Knezevic.

In the late 1990s the research was oriented toward nanotubes and other quasi-one-dimensional crystals, and the group has become recognized for the original line group symmetry based approach. In 2000, with the aim to strengthen the commitment and to facilitate access to the resources allocated to the nanoscience, the research group members, lead by Prof. Damnjanovic, founded NanoLab (Nanostructures Laboratory) formally. In the first decade of the 2000s, new members of NanoLab have became E. Dobardzic, Sasa Dmitrovic, Borivoje Dakic, Vladan Stevanovic and Zoran Popovic. Since then many national and bilateral, and international joint research projects and collaborations have been established. In 2006 NanoLab was recognized by EU as the European Centre of Excellence, while in 2014 together with two other research groups, NanoLab has co-founded Center for Quantum Theoretical Physics, which in 2015 has become recognized by the Ministry for Science as the Centre of Excellence of Republic of Serbia. Finally, during the 2010s Natasa Lazic and Aleksandra Dimic have become members of the NanoLab group.

Some of the NanoLab members continued their careers abroad, and nowadays most of them are eminent scientists and professors, still keeping up the connection with the group. Besides, numerous students have done their B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses under the supervision of the NanoLab researches.

Following forty years long tradition, twenty years after its formal foundation, NanoLab team continues research in the fields of symmetry of low-dimensional crystals, as well as in quantum theory of measurement and quantum information, for which it is recognized as the Belgrade School of Quantum Mechanics.