ARON COHEN
Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgard
Aron Cohen received his Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences (Chemistry) from the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD with Prof. Nicholas C. Handy before going to Duke University to carry out five years of postdoctoral research with Prof. Weitao Yang. In 2009 he returned to the University of Cambridge as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. He now works at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart in the electronic structure theory group. His work focuses on the fundamental development of density functional theory and wavefunctions methods.
ANDREA DROGHETTI
University of Basque Country
Dr. Andrea Droghettigraduated with a Ph.D. in Physics in 2012 in Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). His research was dedicated toelectronic structure theory applied tothemodelling of both solid state and molecular compounds relevant forspintronicsand nano-electronics. Hedeveloped a strong expertise in Density Functional Theory and Quantum Monte Carlotechniques. In the first place, his research contributed to explain the formation of polarons around point defects in oxide and nitride insulators. Then, it led to the concept of electrical control over the magnetic state of transition metal molecules for applications in spintronicdevices.
After graduating,Dr. Droghetti worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the EU-funded project “Next Generation Hybrid Interfaces for Spintronic Applications” (HINTS). This was a key experience in shaping his research activity. By collaborating with the experimental groups, he contributed to the demonstration that molecular adsorption can be used to modify both the spin-texture of materials with large spin-orbit coupling and the spin-filter effects in ferromagnetic metals.
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Just two years after his Ph.D., Dr. Droghetti became principal investigator in the EU-funded collaborative project “Electrical Spin Manipulation inElectroactive Molecules” (ACMOL). This project lasted three years (until December 2016). ACMOL proposed new routes to integrate electroactive molecules and graphene so to overcome the limitations of molecular devices in terms of mechanical and thermal stability, while attaining electrical control over the molecular spin and charge states. The results represented a key step forward in advancing molecular electronics from fundamental science toward technological applications.
When ACMOLended, Dr. Droghettiwas awardedof the Marie Curie-Skłodowska individual fellowship. The project, SpinMan, started in September 2016 and ended in August 2018. The reserach was carried out withinthe Nano-Bio Spectroscopy Group at the University of the Basque Countryand in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg (Germany). SpinManproposed a conceptually new protocol that allows to sense with unprecedented accuracy a magnetic environment by inspecting the spin-dynamics of magnetic atoms adsorbed on surfaces.
For the last severalyears Dr. Droghetti has also been one of main developer of the electronic transport software Smeagol. He has largely contributed to make Smeagol a unique software specifically tailoredfor spintronics and able totreat a variety of spin-related phenomena across very diverse systems. Thesephenomenainclude spin-charge conversion effectsin low dimensional materials, spin-transfer torque in magnetic tunnel junctions and the Kondo effect in single-molecule junctions.
MARIO ZAPATA HERRERA
Donostia International Physics Center
Mario Zapata Herrera's background includes a degree in physics (2006) from the National University of Colombia (Bogotá), a master’s degree in Physical Sciences (2008) from Instituto Balseiro (Bariloche-Argentina), and a Master’s degree (2011) and a PhD (2016) in Physical Sciences from Universidad de los Andes (also in Bogotá). He later worked in the Theory of Nanophotonics Group led by Javier Aizpurua joined (from 2016 to 2018) at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) of San Sebastian (Spain) and Currently (2018-). He is a Horizons 2020 fellow (postdoctoral researcher) at the Center for Research in Nano-Sciences CIC NANOGUNE also from San Sebastián (Spain) through an European grant and at the Francisco José de Caldas District University through the 784 call of Colciencias for postdoctoral stays. During his training as a scientist, he has worked in the area of collective excitations of nanostructured systems and currently in the quantum description of the optical response of subnanometric size metal nanoparticles, as well as in the description of classic magneto-optical systems.
ION ERREA
University of Basque Country
After Ion Errea graduated, he started a PhD project supervised by Aitor Bergara and Vyacheslav Silkin at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). After defending his thesis he moved to the group of Francesco Mauri in the Institut de Minéralogie et de Physique des Millieux Condensés (IMPMC) at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris. His main task was to develop the Stochastic Self-Consistent Harmonic Approximation (SSCHA). In January 2014, he moved to the DIPC as a postdoctoral researcher to continue developing the SSCHA and applying it to systems of interests. Since April 2015 he is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Applied Physics 1 in the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and continues as an associate researcher of the DIPC.
MIGUEL CARO
Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Aalto University
Miguel Caro is originally from a small town (Cartaya) in southwestern Spain. He graduated with a Physics degree from University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. He then moved to Cork, Ireland, where he pursued a PhD in computational condensed-matter physics under Prof. Eoin O’Reilly at the Tyndall National Institute. His thesis work, for which he was awarded his PhD in 2013, focused on theory of III-N alloys, a material system widely used for optoelectronic applications. After the PhD, he moved to Finland, where he is a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University since 2013 and Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher since 2017. Dr. Caro’s current research interests concern the atomistic simulation of real materials, especially carbon-based materials, using a battery of simulation tools and methodologies, from density functional theory to machine learning.
ALDO ISIDORI
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati di Trieste, SISSA
Aldo Isidori obtained his undergraduate Diploma in 2004 at the University of Rome, with a thesis on CP violation effects in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model for particle physics. He then moved to condensed matter physics during his PhD (2004-2008), also at the University of Rome, under the supervision of Profs. Massimo Capone and Claudio Castellani, working on analytical extensions of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory such as cluster and slave-particle methods. His first postdoctoral experience (2009-2013) was in Frankfurt (Germany), where he worked in the group of Prof. Peter Kopietz on functional renormalization group approaches to strongly correlated many-body systems. Later he moved to England for a second postdoc (2013-2016) at Royal Holloway, University of London, in the group of Prof. Matthias Eschrig, where he studied interface effects in superconducting heterostructures and phase transitions in graphite under strong magnetic fields. He is currently a postdoc at SISSA (Trieste, Italy), where he works with Profs. Massimo Capone and Michele Fabrizio on superconductivity and first-order Mott transitions in strongly correlated multi-orbital materials.
MANUEL DOS SANTOS
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Manuel Dos Santos did his undergraduate studies in Physics at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, from 2003 to 2007. He then moved to England, to work on his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Julie Staunton at the University of Warwick, from 2007 to 2011. Since 2011 he has been based at the Peter Grunberg Institut of the Forschungszentrum Julich, working with Prof. Samir Lounis. His field of expertise is in the theory of magnetism and its connection to the electronic structure of real materials. He has investigated the ground state properties of ferromagnets and other types of magnetic materials, both in bulk and in thin film form, and how they are influenced by the interrelation between the electronic and magnetic structures at finite temperature. More recently, he has focused on the properties of single magnetic atoms and small clusters on metallic surfaces, and on their dynamical magnetic excitation spectrum from time-dependent density functional theory. At the heart of his studies lies the relativistic spin-orbit interaction, tying the spatial spin and spatial degrees of freedom of the electrons, that leads to many interesting magnetic effects.
SARA LAPORTE
Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati di Trieste, SISSA
Sara Laporte graduated from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) with a double degree in Physics and Mathematics, before doing her Master's degree at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris, specialising in condensed matter physics. She completed her PhD in 2016 also at UPMC, in the Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux et de Cosmochimie (IMPMC), working on the properties of water at mineral surfaces and its relevance to prebiotic chemistry. Currently she is a postdoctoral researcher at SISSA (Trieste, Italy), working on the multiscale simulations of optical properties of natural pigments, using a combination of molecular dynamics (both classical and ab-initio), enhanced sampling methods, and time-dependent density functional theory to compute excited states and absorption spectra.
ELISA REBOLINI
Institut Laue–Langevin
Elisa Rebolini is originally from the west coast of France. After finishing her undergraduates studies in Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan in chemistry and computer science, she joined the Laboratoire de Chimie théorique in Paris to work on her PhD under the supervision of Andreas Savin and Julien Toulouse (2011-2014) working range-separated density functional theory for the calculation of molecular excitation energies. Later she moved to the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry in Oslo where she worked with both Trygve Helgaker and Thomas Bondo Perdersen (2014-2017). Her main subject there was the development of coupled-cluster methods for periodic systems. Since september 2017, she joined the theory group of the Institute Laue-Langevin as a postdoc. She works with Marie-Bernadette Lepetit on the ab-initio treatment of magneto-electric tensors in strongly-correlated materials.
CRISTINA MUÑOS MENÉNDEZ
Bardehle Pagenberg
Cristina Muñoz Menéndez did her undergraduate studies in Physics (2009-2013) at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, to then pursue a Master (2013-2014) and a PhD (2014-2018) in Materials science, also in Santiago de Compostela. She spent her Erasmus year (2012/2013) at the Université du Maine, France, and she spent over nine months at the University of York, U.K. (2016/2017) under the supervision of Prof. Chantrell during her PhD. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Baldomir and Dr. Serantes, consisted in performing simulations of the dissipated heat by magnetic nanoparticles in order to improve the effectiveness and the safety of magnetic fluid hyperthermia, a promising technique for cancer treatment. In November 2018 she started to work as a patent engineer at Bardehle Pagenberg’s office in Barcelona, Spain.
ASIER VICENTE ROJO
ArcelorMittal
Asier Vicente received the BEng degree on mining engineering (2002) and in 2007 he received the MEng degree on Material engineering with Honors from the School of engineering of Bilbao and the MSc degree on industrial technologies by UNED (2016). Now he is developing his PhD work “New methods for Ferrous Raw Materials Characterization in Electric Steelmaking”. In 2002 he started at ArcelorMittal Sestao as steel mill shift manager, and in 2010 he moved to ArcelorMittal Basque Country R&D center, developing his work as principal investigator in the Electric steelmaking and Raw Materials characterization areas leading numerous projects in this area. Currently he is the head of the advanced steelmaking process technologies department in the Basque Country center. He also participates as an active member in several global technical committees within ArcelorMittal such as "ArcelorMittal Global expert technical committee" in the processes of electric arc furnace and secondary metallurgy, "AM Measurement & control worldwide Cluster", Optical temperature, Ferrous Scrap material management and Raw materials and Molten phases characterization Communities of specialists (acting as global coordinator of the last two ones).