Ronald Blaak

Mathematical Olympiad alumnus (Netherlands, IMO 1988, Honourable Mention) who became a soft-matter physicist. His research spans computer simulation of complex fluids: hard-sphere and polydisperse packing, colloids, patchy particles and polymer/colloid interfaces. Currently affiliated with Universite Clermont Auvergne and the LPCA joint physics unit (UCA/CNRS).

Notes4

• Competed for the Netherlands at the 29th International Mathematical Olympiad (Canberra, July 1988), ranking 174th (35.4%) with 9 points and an Honourable Mention - P1=1, P2=7, P6=1.Jul 1988
• The rare math-olympiad-to-soft-matter-physics path: an IMO honourable-mention medallist whose later career is in condensed-matter simulation, not pure mathematics - his research line (hard-sphere packing, colloids, patchy particles) is applied statistical mechanics, the natural bridge from olympiad combinatorics/geometry into computational physics.2026
• Hold a doctorate recorded in the Mathematics Genealogy Project, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Vienna and now Universite Clermont Auvergne, placing his training in the 1990s European soft-matter school.2026
• Publishes under the science-wide author records SciProfiles 94145 and ORCID 0000-0001-7027-3555, the two self-maintained identifiers that anchor his publication trail across Scopus/Scilit, ResearchGate and publisher pages.2026