KTH homepage of Erik Aurell (August 2018)


A picture of me taken in Helsinki, June 2005.

I have been professor of Theoretical Biological Physics at KTH since 2003. I was Finland Distinguished Professor at Academy of Finland in 2008-2013 and Aalto University Adjunct Professor 2014-2018 (ending in December 2018). I have been President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences International Fellow (2016-17), working at CAS' Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP). I have spent roughly one month per year in China in most years since 2018. I have organized three large programs at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics China (now KITS), and four equally large programs at Nordita in Stockholm. I have also organized many workshops on statistical physics and its applications in Sweden and Finland and elsewhere, too many to list here.

I started my scientific career as an apprentice mathematical physicist, spending half a year in the lab of Mitchell Feigenbaum at Cornell and one and half year in the group of the late Claude Itzykson in Service de Physique Theorique at Saclay, France. I received my PhD thesis in the group of Stig Lundquist at Goteborg University in Sweden in 1989, and did a postdoc 1989-90 with Uriel Frisch at the Observatoire de Nice, France. Up to the late 90'ies I mainly worked on nonlinear dynamics, turbulence models, other issues in hydrodynamics and in mathematical finance; since then I switched fields first to biological physics/systems biology and interdisciplinary problems between physics and computer science, and then back to statistical physics but now mainly as applied to mesoscopic systems. Recently I have worked on open quantum systems. My scientific path is most easily charted by looking at my Google scholar page, or my papers on arXiv.

My major positions before joining KTH in 2003 were Swedish Science Council researcher (1992-1998), Nordita Corresponding Fellow (1998-2001) and Swedish Institute of Computer Science senior researcher (2000-2003).

My family owns a summer house which once belonged to my grandfather Tage Aurell, a Swedish writer. One of my present hobbies is reading in his considerable, if somewhat eclectic, library. Another one, sadly neglected for many years, is learning new languages.

My mother, Elisabeth Aurell, now retired, was an ophthalmologist. My father, Mattias Aurell, also now retired, was Professor of Medicine at Goteborg University, and is a leading activist in lowering salt uptake in the Swedish diet. Both are in good health and spend a good deal of their time traveling.

My immediate family consists of my wife Beata and our three children, Alexander, born 1989, Nina, born 1991, and Emilia, born 1999.