Igor Lacík elected President of the IUPAC Polymer Division and a member of the IUPAC Science Board
Since January 2024, the senior researcher of the Polymer Institute has been elected as the president of the IUPAC Polymer Division for 2024-2027 and a member of the IUPAC Science Board for 2024-2025. He was elected by the IUPAC General Assembly at the World Chemistry Congress in The Hague in August 2023.
IUPAC is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. IUPAC was founded in 1919 and is the world authority in chemistry. IUPAC has been creating the common language of chemistry through standards, standardized methods, nomenclature, terminology, which also includes the names of the chemical elements of the periodic table. IUPAC is a leader in the provision of objective scientific expertise for the resolution of critical global issues on human society. Organizationally, IUPAC has 8 divisions for various fields of chemistry and several committees that were created to deal with current and interdisciplinary topics.
Igor Lacík has been working in the IUPAC Polymer Division since 2002. Over the years, he has become an Associate and Full Member and has served as Division Vice President for the past 4 years. He works on various projects of the Subcommittee on Modeling of Polymerization Kinetics and Processes and in the IUPAC Project Committee. With almost 100 members, the IUPAC Polymer Division is the largest division within the IUPAC Divisions. Currently, the IUPAC Polymer Division has 4 committees: Subcommittee on Polymer Terminology, Subcommittee on Modeling of Polymerization Kinetics and Processes, Subcommittee on Structure and Properties of Commercial Polymers, Subcommittee on Polymer Education. The output of the division's activities are recommendations for terminology and nomenclature in polymer chemistry, standardization of methods for obtaining IUPAC-recommended constants, linking students and teachers of chemistry in educational activities, and many others.
In January 2024, the IUPAC Science Board, which was approved as a new IUPAC body at the IUPAC General Assembly in The Hague, started its activities and will be responsible for the scientific direction of IUPAC. IUPAC is currently undergoing restructuring, the aim of which is to make IUPAC work more efficient. In this process, the IUPAC Science Board is one of the principle articles for proposing key IUPAC activities for the coming years, based on which changes in the IUPAC structure will be proposed. Igor Lacík was elected as one of the 10 members of the IUPAC Science Board consisting of 5 internal and 5 external members.
IUPAC is connected to chemists in Slovakia through the Slovak Chemical Society.
Edited by: Igor Lacík
Photo: IUPAC