Petr Šittner is the head of the Department of Functional Materials at Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Czech Republic since 2009 and the head of Division of Condensed Matter Physics since 2016. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University in 1995, received his Ph.D. in Condensed Matter Physics in 1991 from Czech Academy of Sciences, worked for 5 years as Research Associate at Faculty of Engineering Mie University in Japan and, since 2000 he has been working as senior scientist at the Institute of Physics of the CAS (2012-16 as vice director).

Petr Šittner has been active in the research of martensitic transformations, shape memory alloys and smart engineering materials and composites for over 30 years, published over 250 scientific articles in impacted scientific journals, 5 patents, organized two major international conferences in the SMA field ESOMAT 2009 and SMST 2013 in Prague, served as member of the Board of directors of the SMST ASM International society and currently serves as associate editor of the journal Shape Memory and Superelasticity.

His current research in the field of martensitic transformations focuses on the investigation of deformation processes responsible activated during functional thermomechanical behavior of NiTi based shape memory alloys using thermomechanical testing supported by application of various in-situ methods such as in-situ synchrotron and neutron diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, DIC and EBSD methods in SEM [1-5].

Petr Šittner has been actively involved in designing and building engineering diffractometer BEER at European spallation source currently under construction in Lund Sweden. He serves as a representative of the Czech Republic in the In Kind Review Committee of ESS.