Alex Zakhidov
June, 2021
San Marcos, Texas
It is with profound sadness that we inform you of the sudden loss of our friend and colleague, Dr. Alexander "Alex" Zakhidov.
Alex arrived at Texas State University in 2014 as an Assistant Professor working in the area of organic semiconductors with applications in photonics. From the beginning, Alex had a major impact on the department and university. He enthusiastically mentored many undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, in research that bridged experimental and theoretical physics. His work attracted external funding from diverse sources and his group was prolific in publishing their research. Alex instructed optics, quantum mechanics, and his innovative thin-films laboratory course. His contributions were recognized through awards from the university along with promotion to Associate Professor in 2020. More information is available by clicking this link to the Zakhidov group website.
Prior to arriving at Texas State University, Alex completed his undergraduate and doctoral work at Moscow State University. He carried out research at Cornell University, as a Humboldt Fellow at Technische Universität in Dresden, and was a group leader at the Fraunhofer Institute in Dresden. To hear Alex talk about his work in Germany, click to watch his video.
Alex shared, with his loving wife and their young daughter, the joys of live music and concerts, travel, books, dry humor, skiing, biking around Austin, barbeque and tacos, the discovery of new micro-breweries, and relaxing to movies.
Alex will be missed for his good nature and enthusiasm for everything he did. At the same time, we are grateful for the few years we enjoyed together as colleagues. The department celebrated Alex with a memorial on Friday, September 3rd in RFM 3241. Please e-mail photos you have to physics@txstate.edu.
The family has a posted message in honor of Alex.
Mark Holtz
Department Chair