Category: News

Andrea Cepellotti Wins 2018 Nicholas Metropolis Award

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Andrea Cepellotti, C2SEPEM postdoctoral scholar, is the 2018 Nicholas Metropolis Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Work in Computational Physics Recipient.

“For the introduction and development of novel ideas in the theory of Boltzmann transport, including the concepts of relaxons, transport waves, and friction in nanostructures, and their application to the case of hydrodynamic transport of heat.”

Background:

Andrea Cepellotti earned a B.S and a M.S. in Physics from University of Trieste (Italy) in 2011. After moving to Switzerland, he received a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering at the École Polytechinque Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2016. He is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests in computational condensed matter physics include electronic and thermal transport, surface adsorption and optical properties of solids from first principles. His Ph.D. Thesis focused on the study of collective phonon excitations and phonon hydroynamics. He’s a founding developer of AiiDA (www.aiida.net), an open source software infrastructure for computational science. Recently, he received the IBM Research Award, the Young Research Award of the Francophone Carbon Society (SFEC) and the Early Postdoc Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF).

2018 Selection Committee Members: Michelle Johannes (Chair), Duncan Brow, Aurora Clark, Angel Garcia, Shi Liu

Felipe H. da Jornada Wins Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute Prize

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The Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute Thesis Prize Selection Committee selected C2SEPEM postdoctoral scholar, Felipe H. da Jornada, to receive the 2016-2017 Best Thesis Prize.

The prize is given to the student with the outstanding thesis, publication status, strength of supporting letters and relevance of the thesis to the Kavli ENSI mission. The award provides a $2,000 stipend and an award certificate. Congratulations!

Learn more: kavli.berkeley.edu/student-thesis-prize-awards

Quasiparticle and Optical Properties of Quasi-Two-Dimensional Systems

Advisor: Professor Steven G. Louie, UC Berkeley Department of Physics

Since the experimental isolation of graphene in 2004, there has been tremendous interest in studying quasi-2D systems. These materials are atomically thin, and display many fascinating properties not found in regular bulk materials. Their high carrier mobility, high optical absorption, and tunable electronic properties make these quasi-2D materials ideal building blocks for next-generation chips and solar-cell devices. My dissertation seeks to explain, from a fundamental physics perspective, why these quasi-2D materials behave like this. In order to give unbiased predictions of how these systems behave, we use theoretical frameworks that do not rely on experimental fitting parameters, and use supercomputers to perform calculations. We show that many of these interesting electronic and optical properties stem from the weak electronic screening in these materials, which a result of their reduced dimensionality and which often cannot be accounted for with simpler models. We also introduce new computational approaches to make these calculations much faster and more realistic, and we show, for instance, that even the substrate that holds these materials in experiments can dramatically influence the measured properties.

Steven G. Louie selected as H. C. Ørsted Lecturer

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The aim of the lecture series is to stimulate new thoughts and new scientific approaches by presenting topics that will change our future. The choice of lecturer is based on a stringent scientific evaluation ensuring the communication of the most advanced and frontier breaking research to a Danish audience. The assignment of the invited lecturer is to formulate and deliver a discourse that has a firm foundation in scientific excellence, will appeal to scientists from many research areas, and has the potential to move the listener from his or her known territory to new lands of thinking. Learn more

 

Diana Y. Qiu awarded the Jackson C. Koo Award of the Physics Department, UC Berkeley

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Professor Steven G. Louie and Diana Y. Qiu,
UC Berkeley Physics Commencement 2017

On May 8, 2017, it was announced that Diana Y. Qiu, was the recipient of the Jackson C. Koo Award 2016-2017. This UC Berkeley Physics Department award is given annually to a high achieving physics graduate student in condensed matter who has advanced to candidacy. The award comes with a gift of $2,000.

The Jackson C. Koo Award was established in 2008 with gifts from Mrs. Jackson C. Koo. Dr. Jackson C. Koo received his B.S. in EECS in 1961; he received his M. Eng. in EECS in 1963; and he received his Ph.D. in Physics in September 1969, all from U.C. Berkeley. Dr. Koo’s thesis advisor was Professor Erwin Hahn. Dr. Koo was a member of the Honor Students Society of UC Berkeley and Phi Beta Kappa. After graduating, he worked at Bell Labs before joining the staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. During his career he published numerous papers and was listed as an inventor on eight patents.

While all of the candidates are excellent scientists, Diana’s nomination was the strongest. Congratulations!

Center for Computational Study of Excited-State Phenomena in Energy Materials

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DOE award of 8 million dollars ($2M/yr for four years) to establish a “Center for Computational Study of Excited-State Phenomena in Energy Materials” (C2SEPEM) at LBNL/UC Berkeley. Prof. Steven G. Louie is the Founding Director and PI, with eight other co-PIs from UC Berkeley/LBNL and from two other partner institutions – U of Texas at Austin and UCLA.