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Andro Mikelic 1956-2020 distinguished Croatian mathematician in France
http://www.croatia.org/crown/articles/11283/1/Andro-Mikelic-1956-2020-distinguished-Croatian-mathematician-in-France.html
By Nenad N. Bach and Darko Žubrinić
Published on 01/31/2021
 

Andro Mikelić's very great scientific talent earned him deserved awards: he was a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2014, he received the InterPore Procter and Gamble Award for Porous Media Research in 2012, after being awarded the W. Romberg Guest Professorship of the University of Heidelberg in 2011. He had collaborations with researchers from all over the world: from France, from the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and of course, from his native Croatia.

Full distinguished professor at the Claude Bernard University of Lyon in France


Professor Andro Mikelić, distinguished Croatian expert in Mathematical Physics,
Claude Bernard University of Lyon, France


Professor Andro Mikelic

The announcement of the passing of Professor Andro Mikelic aroused a lot of emotion and sadness among us, his colleagues at the Camille Jordan Institute and the Department of Mathematics of the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1.

We were very keen to pay tribute to him because he was extremely appreciated and esteemed.

After his PhD in Mathematics obtained in Zagreb, Andro Mikelic has held temporary research positions first in Zagreb and then at Imperial College London and Oakland in the United States. He was recruited in 1992 at University Lyon 1 as an associate professor, promoted to Full Professor in 2000, and then to Full Distinguished Professor in 2011.

Professor Andro Mikelic has been throughout his career an outstanding mathematical researcher, an excellent teacher and a wonderful colleague.

He was an exceptional researcher because he embodied an absolutely unique combination:
  • on the one hand, he was a world-renowned specialist in the mathematical theory of homogenization (or how to model and study mixtures);
  • on the other hand, he knew perfectly well all the models of flow and transport of chemical species in porous media.
This remarkable combination allowed him to be recognized by both the mathematical community and the petroleum engineering (or more generally geoscience) community. He was a unique bridge between these two communities and one of the world's top researchers in this multidisciplinary research field.

His very great scientific talent earned him deserved awards: he was a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 2014, he received the InterPore Procter and Gamble Award for Porous Media Research in 2012, after being awarded the W. Romberg Guest Professorship of the University of Heidelberg in 2011.

Professor Andro Mikelić with his colleagues professors Christoph Schwab and Willy Jaeger
in Oberwolfach, Germany 2003

Professor Andro Mikelić with his colleagues professors Christoph Schwab
and Cornelius J. van Duijn in Oberwolfach, Germany 2005

He had collaborations with researchers from all over the world: from France of course, but also from the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and of course Croatia.

He was very independent-minded and elitist in the good sense of the word: he attached great importance to scientific quality and success based on merit.

Andro Mikelic was also an outstanding teacher. He was very demanding but passionate and very communicative in his enthusiasm. He gave the impression of physically feeling certain notions he was teaching, which allowed him to pass them on very well. He knew how to marvelously combine humor and a strong pedagogical expectation, he really impressed generations of students by the very high quality of his teachings.

He was also committed to international educational cooperation: he regularly participated in the Erasmus program in Florence, Italy, and was at the origin of an Erasmus agreement with Split in mathematics and medicine.

In addition to his activities as a researcher and teacher, he also held administrative responsibilities as deputy director of the mathematics department or as head of curricula. These responsibilities involved sometimes difficult interactions with colleagues and staff. His kindness, which was not devoid of a certain authority, really worked wonders.

An outstanding researcher and excellent teacher, Andro Mikelic was also very much appreciated by his colleagues. He was extremely warm and very funny. It was a unique experience to have lunch or dinner with him as he was so epicurean with a very sure taste for very good wine. He could speak with passion and talent about mathematics but also about history and politics. In particular, he had an excellent knowledge of ancient history. He was, for example, unbeatable on the Emperor Diocletian, but it is a fact that the latter was his childhood neighbor!

Andro Mikelic marked us by his exceptional contributions to mathematical research and teaching, he also marked us a lot by his fantastic human qualities.

He will be sorely missed.

Our thoughts are with his family and friends

Many thanks to the family of late Professor Andro Mikelić, for sending us this very nice presentation
written by his colleagues at the Camille Jordan Institute and the Department of Mathematics
of the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1, France


In Memoriam Andro Mikelic (1956-2020)

It is with deep sadness that we learnt about the death of our friend and collaborator Professor Andro Mikelic. He was an outstanding and prolific mathematician. He was a world-renowned specialist in multiscale analysis, homogenization and porous media flow. Andro was our dear friend, mentor, and bright example of scientific curiosity and passion for knowledge.

Andro was born in Split, and studied mathematics at the University of Zagreb where he completed his PhD in 1983. After nearly 10 years of work at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, Andro moved to Claude Bernard University (Lyon 1), where he became a professor in 2000 and a distinguished professor in 2011.

Being a devoted research collaborator, Andro built a very strong network of international collaborations, in France, Croatia and almost anywhere in the world. Research visits to the Darcy Center which is part of the Eindhoven-Utrecht University Alliance, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, University of Firenze, Mathematical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Fraunhofer Institute in Kaiserslautern and Heidelberg University, resulted in a long series of innovative research papers and international and national projects. Examples include the recent IDEX Breakthrough project at Universite de Lyon on 'Particles drifting in turbulent flows' and the French-German Carnot-Fraunhofer project FPSI-Filt on "Modeling of fluid interaction with deformable porous media with application to simulation of processes in industrial filters". In 2014 he became a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2012 he was awarded the Interpore Procter and Gamble Award for Porous Media Research.

In 2011 he was awarded the Romberg Guest Professorship at the Interdisciplinary Center of Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University. His research visits in Heidelberg resulted in multiple collaborations in modeling, analysis and simulation of multiscale models of physical and biological processes. Andro was especially passionate about rigorous mathematical derivation of fundamental macroscopic models such as BIOT equations for poro-elastic materials and its reductions to describe thin poro-elastic plates and shells and effective boundary conditions for incompressible viscous flow, and development of mathematical methods for model upscaling and reduction. He deemed it important to develop models that may be useful for applications. He was as enthusiastic of involved technical computations equally as of rigorous analytical proofs.

Andro was a joyful and erudite companion and a generous human. He was a connoisseur of gourmet food and classy wines, and expert in choosing the best eating dens in Lyon. He will be deeply and bitterly missed. We express our deepest condolences to the family of Andro and wish them strength and consolation at this difficult time of loss.

For the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR): Anna Marciniak-Czochra, Guido Kanschat, Michael J. Winckler, Peter Bastian, Willi Jaeger

Source typo.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/newsroom/andro-mikelic