Rate My Professor Jacek Szczytko

Jacek Szczytko is a professor at the Institute of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw. He earned his MSc with distinction in 1996 and his PhD with distinction in 2001 from the University of Warsaw, where he received the Professor Jerzy Pniewski prize for outstanding PhD work. From 2001 to 2004, he held a postdoctoral position at the Institute of Quantum Electronics and Photonics at EPFL in Switzerland. He completed his habilitation with distinction in 2015 at the University of Warsaw.

Szczytko’s research focuses on optics, exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensates, birefringent microcavities, topological photonics, and spin-orbit coupling in photonic systems, often involving liquid crystal microcavities and organic materials. He has led or contributed to projects including the EU FET-Open H2020 TopoLight consortium and serves as representative of the Dean for Nanoengineering studies, which he helped establish in 2009. Career appointments include Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Physics (2024) and Chair of the Academic Council of Physical Sciences (2025). Notable honors include the Polish Physical Society award for popularization of physics (2013), multiple student thesis awards under his supervision, and the MEiN Premia na Horyzoncie (2021). Key publications feature works in Nature Communications (2022, 2026), Science Advances (2026), Nature Materials (2024), Physical Review Letters (2021, Editor’s Suggestion), Science (2019), and Laser & Photonics Reviews (2025, covers). He holds patents related to tunable optical microcavities and has organized symposia and delivered public lectures on quantum mechanics and nanotechnology. His professional email is Jacek.Szczytko@fuw.edu.pl.