Henri Orland

The work of Henri Orland, who is based at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, has led to essential advances in our understanding of disordered systems, combinatorial optimization, and the study of soft matter, while also giving rise to original applications to the biophysics of nucleic acid and protein folding and to the problem of sequence alignment in molecular biology. A hallmark of his work is the use of theoretical concepts to provide concrete, algorithmic solutions to fundamental questions in a wide variety of fields at the intersection of physics, chemistry and biology.

He has held numerous visiting professorships, including at MIT, the Weizmann Institute, the KITP in Santa Barbara, Tel Aviv University, and the Beijing Computational Science Research Center.

Orland has written more than 200 research papers published in major journals; he holds the patent for an algorithm simulating protein folding and is the author of two books, Quantum Many-Particle Systems with John W. Negele and Molecular Kinetics in Condensed Phases: Theory, Simulation, and Analysis with Ron Elber and Dmitri Makarov.

Orland has held an array of leadership roles including serving on the CNRS commission, directing the Institute of Theoretical Physics, serving as vice president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and leading as president of the statistical physics section.