Damià Gomila wins the Best Teacher Award of the 2025–2026 master course
Sept. 14, 2026
- Damià Gomila is recognized for his engaging instruction, clarity, and ability to connect fundamental nonlinear phenomena with the physics of emergence in the Master's program.
- His lecture on solitons and collective dynamics highlights an approach that bridges frontline research with classroom pedagogy.
Damià Gomila, researcher at IFISC (UIB-CSIC), has been awarded the Best Teacher Prize for the 2025–2026 Master's program in Physics of Complex Systems at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). This award recognizes teaching excellence and dedication to student formation in complexity science.
Gomila has been a core contributor to the master’s curriculum, teaching the subjects "Spatiotemporal Dynamics" and "Dynamical Systems, Chaos and Patterns". His teaching style stands out for translating complex spatiotemporal dynamics, localized structures, and out-of-equilibrium behavior into intuitive physical principles for students entering the field.
Marking the award ceremony, Gomila delivered a lecture titled From Waves to Particles: Solitons as a Paradigm of Emergence in Nonlinear Systems. Using solitons as a guiding thread, the talk explored how conservative and dissipative structures emerge from nonlinear spatial systems through pattern-forming instabilities, bistability, and front interactions. The final part ventured into conservative solitons in nonlinear field theories, examining how mass, momentum, and effective Newtonian motion emerge from field equations, and how ensembles on fluctuating backgrounds statistically give rise to Schrödinger-like dynamics.
This award highlights Damià Gomila's commitment to pedagogical clarity at the intersection of pattern formation and collective dynamics.
