SESSION IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR KAREL AIM
Session in Honor of Professor Karel Aim
This session is dedicated to honoring the memory of Professor Karel Aim (16 October 1947 – 27 December 2025), an esteemed colleague of the ESAT community and a member of its International Steering Committee.
Professor Aim graduated with honors from the Faculty of Chemical Technology at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. He subsequently joined the Institute of Theoretical Foundations of Chemical Engineering of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences—now the Institute of Chemical Processes of the Czech Academy of Sciences—for a postgraduate research traineeship. He dedicated his entire scientific career to this institution, ultimately becoming a Senior Research Scientist. Over the years, he served as Deputy Head of the E. Hála Thermodynamics Laboratory, as a member and later Chair of the Institute’s Scientific Council. After the establishment of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1993, he has been an elected member of the Academic Assembly and has fulfilled brilliantly his position on the Academic Council since 1997. In January 2017, he was appointed Emeritus Research Scientist of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Throughout his career, he undertook several research stays abroad, notably at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and at the University of Trieste. He played an active role in the organization of numerous international scientific meetings, coordinated a section of an international IUPAC project, and was a dedicated contributor to the European Federation of Chemical Engineering, serving as the Czech Republic’s delegate to the Working Party on Thermodynamics and Transport Properties.
After chairing the organization of the 18th European Symposium on Applied Thermodynamics in Kutná Hora (Czech Republic, 8–11 June 2000), he was appointed a member of the ESAT International Steering Committee, a role in which he served with distinction for over two decades.
At ESAT 2026, the session in honor of Professor Karel Aim will feature plenary lectures by Professor Catinca Secuianu and Professor Luís Mercier Franco.
