CURRICULUM VITAE SCIENTARIAE

 

ZAPATRIN Romàn

Born 5 October 1958, Leningrad, USSR
Nationality: Russian

Graduated 1981 from the Leningrad State University, Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics, Department of Geometry

Comment: During my last year of studies, my supervisor suddenly died in the very beginning of my diploma work and I completed by myself. Since then I have never been supervised.

Employment

1981-1982 State service Research institute, programming engineer.

Comment: It was a typical for those times – closed research institute, with the only duties to stay at the working place in due time. It gave me a good opportunity to start my own research in physics and mathematics, providing me a lot of free time.

1982 - 1988 Leningrad Polytech, Department of Computer Science, Research Associate.

Comment: My duties were to provide occasional and urgent mathematical support for several colleagues. The tasks were small, but unexpectable. Though having enough time for my own research, I have learnt many useful things there, in particular, to communicate with people, to suggest mathematical formulations for vaguely understood problems.

1988 - 1995 St.Petersburg EF University, Department of Mathematics, Assistant Professor.

Comment: After seven years of teaching, I realized that this kind of job is not for me: I can at most supervise individual students, rather than teach those who are not willing to study.

1995 - 2000 The State Russian Museum (St.Petersburg), Informatics Department, Senior Research Associate, then the Head of the Internet Center.

Comment: The salaries in Universities became are below all reasonable levels, and instead of lamentations I decided to find a position where I could be both better paid, and have an interesting job (The Russian Museum is the world's greatest collection of Russian art!) and the opportunity to continue my research in mathematics and physics.

2000 - 2001 I.S.I. Foundation (Torino), Quantum Information Group, Researcher

Comment: My junior children grew up and did not any longer have the need to see their papa every day, so I decided to start working abroad. I was involved in the EC-funded project Q-ACTA, Quantum computation: novel algorithms and their many-body implementations).

2001 Starlab (Brussels), Physics Division, Chief Scientist

Comment: I was invited to Starlab to head the Quantum Topology project. Unfortunately, after a month of my stay there Starlab went bankrupt (there was an article in Nature describing these dramatic events).

2001 - 2002 I.S.I. Foundation (Torino), Quantum Information Group, Researcher

Comment: After the bankruptcy of Starlab I resumed my research within the Q-ACTA project until it was successfully completed.

The State Russian Museum (St.Petersburg), Informatics Department, Senior Research Associate, then the Head of the Networking Center.

Comment: I am now working in the world's greatest collection of Russian art. In the meantime I have opportunities to carry out our independent research.

Participation in Funded Projects

1991 - 1999 RFFI (Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research) grants.

1995 - 1999 Research program "Universities of Russia".

1994 - 2000 Joint Greek-Russian Research program in mathematics — collaboration with the Department of Mathematics of the University of Athens.

1997, 1998, 1999 Recipient of personal George Soros grants for advanced researchers in developing countries.

2000 - 2002 Participation in the European project Q-ACTA which unites The University of Karlsruhe, ISI Foundation in Torino and the Royal Holloway University of London.

Research

I am a mathematician and I prefer to provide mathematical machinery for those who might need it rather than make mathematics for itself.

In 1980s - 1990s I was involved in research in quantum logic and the foundations of quantum mechanics. The main results I obtained are representation theorems for various classes of quantum logics. The physical meaning of these results was a kind of `tomography' of properties of a system when we have limited possibilities to measure it.

From the beginning of 1990s I started to elaborate models of varying spacetime topology. Starting from attempts to apply discrete dynamical systems, I have moved to algebraic models. Main results obtained: now I have at disposal an algebraic formalism which makes it possible to describe continuous evolution of discrete structures. The primary physical application of this results was an algebraic model of spacetime foam. However, this mathematical formalism is also being developed for the needs of artificial intelligence, in particular, efficient training of Artificial Neural Networks.

From year 2000 I also became involved in Quantum Information activities. The focus of my research was the quantification of multipartite entanglement (which is a crucial resource for effective quantum computing) and new applications of quantum computers. Main results obtained are geometrical characterization of both pure and mixed entangled states. Besides that, a new model of quantum-based fuzzy processor was suggested.

As it often happens, my research yielded some mathematical byproduct results related to semigroups, lattices and graphs.

The list of my publications is available online. For most of them both the abstract and the full text are available.

Collaboration and Working Standards

I have many co-authors, mostly physicists. See my list of publications. I have visited many conferences and other meetings, my contributions are published. Besides that, starting from 1991 I have many times shortly (up to 2 months) visited the universities where my colleagues and coauthors work in Russia, Poland, Chech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Mexico ...

My basic principle is transparency of my research. That is why I always keep the track of my recent scientific activities. 

Academic Degrees

I do not recognize the notion of academic degree and do not collaborate with institutions discriminating people by this formal criterion.

Comment: I am always open to challenges. I do not enjoy the idea that someone can once carry out a research work and then relax. I prefer to permanently prove my competitive ability. In fact, I have a sheet of paper called the diploma of candidate of physico-mathematical sciences obtained officially without a supervisor, which is usually treated to be equivalent to PhD. However, I use it only in Russia, and exclusively for non-scientific purposes.

Other

Good language abilities. I am pangloss. Spoken Russian, English, French, Italian, Polish, Lettonian. Funcional and reactivable Spanish, German, Greek, Estonian, Turkish, Armenian etc. I do not mention here my musical, cultural and other activities as being irrelevant.