Science is around us all the time
Pain in the neck – sounds familiar? At first, it annoys us, and then we are getting used to it and even beginning to accept it. And now imagine that this pain is PHYSICS. About his journey with physics tells us Armand Cholewka, PhD, MD, DSc, Assoc. Prof.
Have a nice read.
SCIENCE | MY PASSION
According to the definition taken from the Polish Language Dictionary, science is complete human knowledge arranged into a system of problems, but also a set of ideas that constitute a systematic whole and comprise a specific research field.
Science is also activity: learning and teaching.
Please read the “Science | My Passion” series, where our researchers present their work and show that science and research process can really draw us in.
Armand Cholewka, PhD in Physics, MD, DSc, Assoc. Prof.
Institute of Biomedical Engeeniring
archive UŚ
Currently, I am an employee of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Silesia. I conduct classes for students in Medical Physics.
When I was a child and teenager, I loved sports. I was even practising in a school club called MKS Tempo Kęty. It was an amazing time, and some friendships I made have lasted ever since. When I was in secondary school, I wanted to become a doctor and was not really fond of physics. I always found medicine interesting, and even now I think that I would make a great doctor, but things did not turn out this way and will not either. Interestingly, I believe it is for the best.
Why?
While not being fond of physics, I have graduated in medical physics and become a medical physicist. I have been conducting research for 20 years, using the latest technologies in medicine and the latest medical imaging methods in medical diagnostics as well as learning about the latest therapeutic techniques. I have the chance to learn about and even see some of them before they enter the market. Of course, my major research interests revolve around the broadly understood medical physics; however, in my research, I mostly use thermal imaging, the usefulness of which I am trying to show in various fields of medicine, e.g. physical medicine, oncology, dentistry or diseases of the musculoskeletal system. Therefore, although I have not become a doctor, I have been working within medicine and discovering various specialities, which I consider to be interesting and forcing me to constant learning. Thanks to that, I am in touch with doctors of various specialities, and in these specialities, I try to find a place for diagnostic and therapeutic physical methods. It gives me the satisfaction of doing things that are useful not only for me but for all of us in the future as we are, or will be, patients.
As for sport, it is something I have not quit and I believe I will not quit as I am not able to function without a daily ‘dose’ of physical activity. I exercise as a hobby almost every day; with my son, whenever possible, we ‘shoot some hoops’, and I go hiking with my friends…
Such activity is also reflected in science… Currently, at the campus in Chorzów, we are close to finishing the laboratory of sports medicine where everyone might test one’s fitness level and progress with standard techniques used in medical tests for sportspeople around the world and with the use of the latest solutions such as thermal imaging – its usefulness in these tests have been presented in many scientific papers by the research group of medical physics at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.
I am also into cars, which in my opinion is pure mathematics and physics… and so that physics again, which I did not like that much and which most young people say is difficult. Well, today I look at science differently and I try to explain it not only to my children but also to many young people with whom I meet because for years I have had the pleasure of visiting schools and talking about the fact that science is around us all the time, you just have to be able to see it. Or maybe you just need to meet someone who will help you see it, and then even that physics will turn out to be interesting and not that difficult.
I still watch cartoons with my children and collect car models and Star Wars action figures. I rest by training at home, in the park and on the pitch, sometimes with my children with me.
Currently, I serve as the Deputy Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Silesia, the President of the Polish Society of Thermovision Diagnostics in Medicine and the Vice-Chairman of the Polish Society of Medical Physics.
And so it happens when in your young years you are trying to run away from exact sciences and… physics.