ECU welcomes Majka as Fulbright Scholar in Residence

ECU welcomes Majka as Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence

Dr. Maciej Majka is making history at East Carolina University.

Majka, a native of Poland, is ECU's first-ever Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence and one of 41 nationally this year. A Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence stays at a host institution for either a semester or academic year, with Majka doing the latter. Before heading to Greenville, Majka served as a faculty member at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

"Receiving a Fulbright honor is quite prestigious," said Majka. "It is well recognized in Poland as well as here in the United States."

According to Jon Rezek, assistant vice chancellor for global affairs, having a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence highlights ECU's commitment to being an internationally engaged university.

"The Fulbright program is made up of many different types of awards, some for incoming faculty and students, others for outgoing faculty, students and administrators," said Rezek. "The Scholar-in-Residence program is the most prestigious because it is probably the most competitive. Rather than scholars putting in applications individually as with other Fulbright programs, with the SIR program U.S. universities compete for a limited number of slots each year. This award signifies to institutions around the world that ECU is an internationally relevant university that is making significant contributions to the academy through research, teaching and community engagement."

This isn't the first time that Jagiellonian and ECU have crossed paths. Jagiellonian has been a member of ECU's Global Partners in Education international virtual exchange network since 2014. The two universities have a bilateral student exchange agreement and multiple faculty members from both schools have spent time on the other's campuses, most recently in 2023 with ECU nursing professor Kim Larson spending several months at Jagiellonian focused on refugee health care as part of a Fulbright U.S. Scholar program.

From Krakow to Greenville

Majka found his way to Greenville thanks to Dr. Martin Bier, professor of physics. Bier spent 2015 at Jagiellonian and taught Majka, who was completing his doctorate.

"I had been going to Jagiellonian for meetings and conferences since the early 1990s and was there for 2015," said Bier. "When I was working there, he was finishing up his doctorate and I taught him in a small class of between five to 10 students. He was a nice, quiet guy who was a hard worker in the background."

Bier's presence at Jagiellonian University was influential. "His lectures were a valuable source of scientific outlook and experience, inspiring lots of interesting discussions," Majka said.

The two stayed in touch afterward but never worked together. That changed thanks to an email that neither of them sent.

"In the summer of 2023, the Office of Global Affairs emailed the faculty about the opportunity to apply for a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence," said Bier. "I thought Maciej would be a good candidate. It was a very detailed application and took most of the summer to complete. Rezek and his staff were very helpful with the process."

"I helped Dr. Bier with many of the supporting documents needed by the Institute for International Education, the organization that manages the program," said Rezek. "We had to show that ECU was committed to campus internationalization and specifically how our selected scholar would contribute to these efforts."

While Bier completed the application, it wasn't a sure bet that it would be successful or if Majka would be able to come.

"He (Bier) reached out to me about the opportunity and thought it might be for me," said Majka. "I told him, 'Martin, go ahead and apply,' although I had no idea if I really will be able to come. With a full year still ahead, a lot of things could happen. But as it got closer, everything looked more and more possible, and I finally decided to make the journey to ECU and Greenville with my wife."

Getting Majka from Poland to Greenville was an involved process with many steps.

"The Fulbright coordinators do a really good job. This whole process is complicated and has a lot of steps," said Majka. "At some point I made a list and there were about 50 things I needed to do. I was amazed by how coordinated things were and the amount of support I received along the way."

Upon Majka's arrival, Bier played a key role in helping him get settled by both navigating him through local institutions and arranging him a place to live.

"I feel like if you have a foreign guest, it is important to help them. You have an obligation to do so. They need to feel welcome and feel settled," said Bier.

Bier approached former physics faculty member Dr. John Kenney, who also played an important role in helping Majka find a place to live. Kenney retired this summer and moved to Wales but is allowing Majka and his wife to live in his house just blocks from campus for the academic year.

In many respects Bier is returning the favor to Majka. During his visits to Poland, Bier said he had help getting settled from Jagiellonian faculty members.

Studying science

As part of the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence program, Majka is required to teach classes. This semester, he is teaching Physics 4226 - Mechanics I, a graduate level course with two students. Majka said he is ready to teach a course in his specialty next semester and is also willing to help establish new courses if asked.

Despite both being physics professors, Bier and Majka have different methods.

"We both come from the theoretical side, but Martin is much more experiment driven. He often looks for research topics closely related to actual experiments and available data. He might prefer simpler models than I do, but he does it for a reason. He wants to explain physics to people in the simplest terms possible and he's very good at this," Majka said. "Personally, I tend to build extensive mathematical models. I like to see how advanced math explains unintuitive aspects of physics, even if it might be less appealing to the general audience. It's a bit of a clash between my and Martin's attitude, but we also complement each other's skills, which might result in some great science done together."

Research partners

Bier and Majka are partnering with Dr. Cameron Schmidt, assistant professor of biology, to model a study he is conducting about male infertility.

Schmidt and Bier first met at a local community science outreach event, Nerd Nite.

"Martin is an incredible physicist, and he is great at finding the statistical physics angle in any problem," said Schmidt. "Martin became interested in repurposing some mathematical methods from polymer science to improve quantitative descriptions of how sperm search through a process known as 'correlated diffusion.' Maciej joined Martin's lab as a visiting scholar this year, and we were very excited to get him on board because he has expertise with polymer science and other related areas of biophysics."

Bier and Majka will analyze the data from Schmidt's study. The physicists are helping improve the way that sperm motility is analyzed.

"I help Martin and Maciej by providing biological background for the problem as well as experimental data. They help me by providing a unique physical modeling approach to analyzing the data," said Schmidt. "There aren't a lot of statistical physicists working in the reproductive biology field, especially in sperm biology."

As someone who has a focus on biophysics, working on the study is something that Majka feels is a great opportunity since he has a background in both physics and biology.

"I really got interested in theoretical physics, specifically statistical physics, because it is basically the framework to understand complex biological systems," Majka said. "I'm curious how math models and equations work in the context of a biological systems, and my background helps me to talk with biologists."

According to Schmidt, the contributions of Bier and Majka will be used to help doctorate student Kylie Cashwell on her dissertation research and could eventually lead to a grant that brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers. The different perspectives that Bier and Majka bring to a biology research project are invaluable.

"Just having dialogue between researchers from different fields ensures that we challenge our assumptions and tap into theories and concepts we wouldn't have thought of," Schmidt said.

Providing a boost

Having Majka on campus for this academic year is something that Bier feels will be both beneficial to himself as well as the physics department.

"Our physics department is very small," said Bier. "There's no one else really doing theoretical or biological physics besides me. It always helps when you have people with similar interests and you work together. You do a lot of research and thinking alone, but you need other people to help brainstorm."

For his part, Majka has simple goals for what he hopes to accomplish while at ECU.

"I would like to establish interesting collaborations and expand my field of expertise," he said.

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