Personal Data
Name: Szilard Fejer
Born: 1982, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Citizenship: Romanian
Current positions
Senior researcher at Provitam Foundation, Romania
PhD adviser at the Doctoral School of Chemistry, University of Pécs, Hungary
Senior researcher, head of laboratory at Pro-Vitam Ltd.
CEO of Promedical Center, Romania
CEO of Proel Biotech, Romania
Past positions
2017-2019: senior researcher at Ab Initio Research Services Ltd., Romania
2013 – 2014: John von Neumann Young Research Fellow at the University of Szeged, Hungary
2011 – 2013: Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Szeged, Hungary
April 2010 – April 2011: Zoltán Magyary Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Szeged, Hungary
University Education
October 2005 – September 2009: University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
PhD course in computational chemistry under the supervision of Prof. David J. Wales, topic: molecular self-assembling systems. Title of PhD thesis: “Self-assembly in complex systems”.
2000 – 2005: University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary
MSc degree in Chemical Sciences and a 4-year English-Hungarian Chemistry Translator course (2001-2005)
· overall degree classification: First Class, position in course: 1/24
· final grade of the diploma: 5.0 (summa cum laude)
Pre-University Education
1996 – 2000: Nagy Mózes High School (Tg. Secuiesc, Romania), special class in mathematics and physics
Most outstanding student in years 1997 – 1999
Baccalaureate diploma: A-level (9.63 on a 10-grade scale)
Most important pre-university awards: Romanian National Chemistry Olympiads: 1996: 2nd prize, 1997: 1st prize, 1998: 4th prize, 1999: 3rd prize
Research Experience
Research projects I was involved in during my PhD:
· self-assembly of mesoscopic building blocks into complex structures
· developing coarse-grained models for viral capsid assembly
· kinetics and mechanisms of RNA hairpin interconversions
· calculating binding free energies for ligand-receptor systems using global optimisation
Major research projects undertaken during my undergraduate studies:
· interactions of bis-phenantroline-copper(II) complexes with serum proteins (EPR studies)
· effects of sidechain rotation on the backbone conformation of model dipeptides
· kinetic studies on atmospheric decomposition of pivalaldehyde using infrared spectroscopy (University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, France, June-July 2004)
· Final Year Individual Project (Diploma thesis): “Thermodynamics of oligopeptide folding”, project supervisor: Dr. Bela Viskolcz
Teaching Experience
2006 – 2009 Part 1A Chemistry supervisor for Downing College students
2008 Demonstrated the blueprinting technique to visitors of the Chemistry Department Open Day
2001 – 2004 Private tutor for math, physics and chemistry for high school and university students
Further Skills
Spoken languages: Hungarian (native), Romanian (excellent), English (excellent), German (used to be fluent)
Language certificates: English intermediate level Hungarian state language exam; Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache (Goethe Institut), Deutsches Sprachdiplom der Kultusministerkonferenz (Zweite Stufe). With the Chemistry Translator Diploma an advanced level English technical language certificate was acquired as well.
Computing: Fortran, Linux, Windows, Visual Basic, Ms Access and Ms SQL databases, Perl, HTML, Mathematica, AMBER, Gaussian, Pov-Ray
Awards and grants
2020 Young Research Teams grant, Romanian National Autority for Scientific Research and Innovation
2018 Young Research Teams grant, Romanian National Autority for Scientific Research and Innovation
2015 Young Research Teams grant, Romanian National Autority for Scientific Research and Innovation
2013 John von Neumann Young Research Fellowship
2010 Zoltán Magyary Postdoctoral Fellowship
2005 Awarding prize of the Hungarian Chemical Society for outstanding diploma thesis
Overseas Research Studentship Award Scheme Scholarship
Gates Cambridge Trusts PhD Scholarship (2005 – 2009)
Outstanding student of the Faculty of Sciences (University of Szeged)
2004 Research award by the Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
2001 “Talent Scholarship” offered by the Hungarian Ministry of Education
Other activities & interests
Hiking, guitar, piano
Computer graphics
Virtual machines
Database development and web server maintenance for the Pro-Vitam Diagnostic and Treatment Centre (Romania)