Katalin Balázsi
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Katalin Balázsi (née Sedláčková; born 1978) is a Slovakia-born Hungarian material scientist. She is the head of the Thin Film Physics department in the Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science, a component of the Centre for Energy Research, Eötvös Lóránd Research Network. She has also served as the President of the Association of Hungarian Women in Science (2018-2021).
Balázsi was born in Šahy (Ipolyság), Slovakia in 1978.[1] While in elementary school, she represented her school in mathematics competitions. For high school, her father enrolled her in an electrician high school: there were four other girls in her class, and thirty-two boys. She graduated with the top ranking in her class.[2]
Balázsi completed her university degrees at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (STU). In 2000, she received a bachelor's degree in Electromaterials Engineering; she received a master's degree in materials science in 2002 from the same.[3] During her master's degree, Balázsi worked as a technician at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She then became a researcher at the Academy,[2] using transmission electron microscopy to characterise the structures of nanomaterials; she received her doctorate in materials science from the STU in 2005.[4] The Institute of Electrical Engineering at the Academy named her the "Young Researcher".[3]
Career
In 2006, Balázsi became a research fellow at the Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science, part of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She was appointed as a senior scientist at the Institute's Centre for Energy Research in 2012.[3] Besides her work with electron microscopy, Balázsi has also studied the development of different ceramic materials.[5]
Balázsi and nine other female scientists founded the Association of Hungarian Women in Science in 2008 to address the national gender imbalance in Hungary's science sector; this Association won the first Nature Research Innovating Science Award in 2018.[6][7] She has served as the Association's president from 2018 to 2021.[8] She also received the 2021 Acta Materialia Mary Fortune Global Diversity Medal.[3]
In 2021, she became the second Hungarian fellow of the European Ceramic Society (ECerS).[9] She is a board member of the European Platform of Women Scientists (EPWS).[10] She has also been secretary of the Hungarian Society for Material Sciences (2013-2020), as well as secretary and treasurer of the Hungarian Microscopic Society (2018-2022).[8]
