On Thursday, the leadership of the Senate of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, on the proposal of the leadership of the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics, awarded the honorary title of Doctor Honoris Causa (DHC) to university professor Dr. Marcel Auslos, Faculty of Business, University of Leicester, UK.

Marcel Auslos is in the top 1% of researchers in his field.

The decision of the Council of the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Economic Informatics, positively approved by the Administrative Council to submit this proposal to the University Senate, was based on such arguments as: reference contributions to the field of mechanical statistics theory through the study of various chaotic systems that can be described using fractal and multifractal ideas ; widespread problems in the field of nonlinear systems and phenomena in a state of non-equilibrium with the help of mathematical formalization and modeling in an area that can be called exotic physics; innovative research in the field of econophysics and sociophysics; supporting a structured partnership with members of our academic community, which has resulted in the affiliation of valuable members of our university community to scientific works published in internationally prestigious journals and in the implementation of two research projects with a consolidated budget of more than 2 million euros.

Professor Marcel Auslos recently celebrated his 80th birthday.

When he was invited a few years ago to share his experiences and knowledge about how to succeed in an academic environment, he cited the two “W’s” as key factors in such an endeavor: work and wife and wife).

With exemplary humility and a very well-honed sense of humor, the octogenarian teacher thanked everyone who came to ASE to celebrate him, chatting at the end with all the ASE teachers who asked for his opinion on various topics.

In the “Laudatio” (speech motivating the conferment of a high academic title), Professor Claudio Herceliou added a third “W” to the other two previously mentioned: WISDOM.

Marcel Raymond Hubert Léopold Ghislain Auslos was born on October 19, 1943 in Charleroi (Belgium). His father did not have a primary school certificate. Mom was a primary school teacher. They lived in Ransart (Charleroi), their house was at the end of the runway for those flying to and from Brussels-South-Charleroi. That’s how Marcel became interested in airplanes. He dreamed and wanted to build the first Belgian satellite since the days of Sputnik (at the age of 14). He was educated in Catholic schools before the university was founded and may have developed a research interest in the study of religions later, Claudio Herceliou said in his speech.

Marcel received an engineering degree from the University of Space Technology in Liege (Belgium) in 1967. After graduation, he decided to continue developing his knowledge and skills in the theoretical study of materials and condensed matter. He studied superconductivity with Leon N. Cooper (Nobel Prize in Physics 1972), Anthony Houghton, Alexis Baratoff, and received a master’s degree from Brown University (USA) in 1970.

After receiving his doctoral education, Marcel decided to leave the United States and returned to Europe. He first held a visiting professorship at the Free University of Berlin before returning to the University of Liège, Belgium (ULG), where he spent most of his career focusing on research, teaching materials, and statistical physics. He created SUPRAS, a “horizontal” group of scientists (chemists, physicists, engineers – at its peak the group had more than 33 members) belonging to different ULG laboratories with fundamental or applied research interests in ceramic superconductors and magnetic materials. He later initiated GRASP, which evolved into GRAPES (Research Group on Applications of Physics in Economics and Sociology). He was nominated to the Commission on Low Temperature Physics of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Physics (IUPAP). He coordinated the implementation of many national and international scientific grants. From November 2014, he received the position of full-time professor (part-time) of the affiliated School of Business of the University of Leicester (Great Britain).

He has published more than 700 articles in peer-reviewed journals or at scientific conferences either independently or in collaboration with more than a thousand distinguished co-authors. Published nine books, organized numerous international scientific conferences. He has been and continues to be a PhD or supervisor for many students and has taught at many summer/winter schools. He is or has been on the advisory/editorial boards of over a dozen academic journals (eg, Superconductor Science and Technology, IOP; Physica A, Elsevier; Int. J. Mod. Phys. C,. World Sci.; Advances in Materials Science and Engineering; Advances in Scientific Letters; International Journal of Management and Information Technology (IJMSIT), IUPAP C5 Commission on Low Temperature Physics) and acts as special reviewer on dozens of occasions each year. As can be seen from data taken from Web of Science (WoS), the number of articles in such journals is more than 650, and the total number of citations is currently almost 35,000.

A recent article published in the Journal of Informetrics (considered by many to be the best scientometrics journal) dedicated to Eugene Stanley (who, along with a small group of physicists – along with Marcel Auslos – can be considered to have coined the term Econophysics) analyzes the academic networks of Marcel’s research. There are too many details to list here, but I’ll just give you a small selection:

“Other nodes quite peripheral to this network are clearly indicated, as their own scientific collaboration networks also represent a diverse organization. Four such cases, including Marcel Ausloos (MA), Albert-László Barabási (AB), Constantino Tsallis (CT), and Tamáš Viček (TV), are shown in Fig. 5, fig. 6.” (Drozdz et al., 2017, p. 1120)

The importance of Marcel as a pillar in the introduction of econophysics as an important academic subfield can be further argued by the fact that a Google Academic Engine query for the terms “Marcel Ausloas Econophysics” returns 257 results! Also worth mentioning is his involvement in the creation of the APFA (Applications of Physics in Financial Analysis) conference series, which still exists under a different name.

In 2014, he was a keynote speaker at IE 2014 – the 13th International Conference on Informatics in Economics, an event organized by the Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics of the Faculty of Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Informatics. He continued to maintain close cooperation with researchers at our university and with scientific journals edited by BUES faculty. He returned during the IE 2015 conference. He participated in the uninterrupted work of the same projects dedicated to doctoral students and postdoctoral students of BEU. He became a supporter of the journals edited by BUES, either through peer review; or by publishing your own articles in them; or adopting valuable ideas in other magazines from the international circle (citation).

Also, in the summer of 2016 in Bucharest, he took an active part in the organization and holding of the first bilateral conference on applied statistics: Bilateral Conference on Statistical Methods of Service Evaluation.

In addition, within the framework of the Complex Frontier Research Projects (PCCF 2016) competition, Prof. M. Auslos agreed to participate in the development of two programs, one as a project leader and the other as a BUES research group leader. These two grants were developed together with researchers from the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and have a total value of 3.6 million euros. One of these two projects was declared the winner and successfully implemented between October 2018 and October 2022. The second one is implemented after the modernization and recognition of the winner of the last competition i8-PNRR (National Plan for Recovery and Resilience of Romania) a mixed team from two universities.