Jon Otto Fossum

Professor PhD, Department of Physics, NTNU

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Professor Fossum graduated with MSc in physics from NTH (presently NTNU) in 1978, and PhD in physics from NTH in 1983, followed by postdocoral appointments at Universite de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada (1984-85) and MIT- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chemistry and Physics Departments, USA (1985- 89). Since 2003 Fossum has been Full Professor at the Department of Physics, NTNU, including a number of sabattical stays: ESPCI-ParisTech, France partly invited to the Joliot Chair (2004 and 2016), UFPE-Recife, Brazil (2008), Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (2011-12), and at PUC-Rio de Janeiro (2012-15) as part time visiting scientist under a Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico Ciência sem Fronteiras project.

Research activites:

Earlier interests are in the areas of non-linear acoustics, low-temperature physics, phase transitions, glassy systems, and liquid crystals. Now for a number of years, the general activities are in studies of soft and complex condensed matter systems, i.e. in matter which is easily deformable by external stresses or flows, electric or magnetic fields, or sometimes by thermal agitations. We have since the late 1990s studied clays (i.e. nano-layered silicates) as physical model system representative for many properties of soft and complex matter.Clays are soft because they are built from complex self-assembled structures of anisotropic colloidal nanoparticles. In interlinked projects, we focus on, and study thoroughly, this one physical system, clay, from different points of view, using different experimental techniques: We use (synchrotron) X-ray and neutron scattering, rheometry, MR, table-top experiments, etc, thus studying interconnected complex physical phenomena as they manifest themselves in clays and other soft and complex materials.

The activities involve active collaborations with researchers and labs in Norway located at Institute for Energy Technology at Kjeller, NORCE-Stavanger and University of Oslo. International collaborations include: Bayreuth University Germany, ESPCI-ParisTech/IPGG France, Univ. Amsterdam Netherlands, Univ.Rennes1 France, UFPE-Recife Brazil, UnB-Brasilia Brazil, UFABC-Sao Paulo Brazil, PUC-Rio de Janeiro Brazil, USP-Sao Paulo Brazil, Niels Bohr Institute at Univ. Copenhagen Denmark, MaxIVlab Lund Sweden, Univ. Havana Cuba, Univ. Manchester UK, Chalmers Univ. Sweden, Aalto Univ. Finland, NOVA Univ. Lisboa Portugal and others

For detailed information about the (100+) publications, (100+) talks, (~300) conference contributions, (50+) highlights and popular science contributions, (30+) conferences organized, membership of (~20) professional committees/panels, coordination of (~20) funded projects, supervision for graduation of (~40) MSc students and (~10) PhD students, supervision of (~8) postdocs, etc., see these webpages and the extended CV:

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