alexandra.csavdari@ubbcluj.ro
Alexandra Ana Csavdári is a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Since her graduation in 1990 as a chemical engineer, she has been working in higher education and research.
At her Alma Mater she carried out her teaching duties in four languages (Romanian, English, Hungarian and German), by embracing both under- and postgraduate programs. Her courses covered a wide range of topics, such as: physical chemistry (thermodynamics, kinetics, electrochemistry), dynamics and energetics of metabolic processes, reaction engineering and design, optimization techniques in chemical related processes, statistical analysis and interpretation of experimental data, as well as qualitative risk assessment techniques.
Since 2019 she is affiliated to the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Almaty, Kazakhstan, where, as an international lecturer she tutors master students in process control, introduces doctoral students to emerging trends in chemical engineering, and engages in applied chemistry summer schools. As a recurring visitor to the Botswana International University of Science and Technology of Palapye, Botswana, she offered extended workshops in many of the subjects listed above.
At the Babeş-Bolyai University she has contributed to the introduction of the didactic master studies. For a few years she has been the vice-president of this university’s didactic council, and as such has yearly organized at least two workshops/ webinars for the academic staff. Since 2017, she has been awarded four times the didactic excellency award by her home institution and has received in 2019 the annual award of the Romanian Chemistry Society. She is socially active in the more than 165-year-old Transylvanian Museum Society, an institution striving to preserve and grow the Hungarian language scientific heritage of Transylvania. Within this context, she presides the Natural Sciences Section, organizes the latter’s annual conference, and works in the advisory and editing boards of two of the society’s prestigious scientific journals. She is also listed at the European Commission as expert in chemical terminology.
Her interest in arts was awakened in her childhood when she started playing the blockflute. More than thirty years ago, she succeeded in also attending formal Modern Art History classes during the academic year of 1992-93, when the renowned visual art historian Erika Wolf, a guest lecturer at that time at the University of Arts and Design of Cluj-Napoca, opened her class to broader audiences. Since then, she is interested in recognizing and exploring the common ground between science and art.
Alexandra Csavdári’s research interests lay in the description and modelling of process dynamics, from homogeneous chemical reactions, over complex pharmacokinetics and phytoremediation to heterogeneous non-reactive phenomena, such as adsorption and extraction. She has also investigated the potential of chemical kinetics in analytical chemistry and water quality monitoring. She has won four national research grants and was member in many others, both at Romanian and international level. Her array of scientific publications presents the results of her work.