Stuff I Make
Past projects
Getting a PhD
From 2019 to 2023 I was enrolled in the "Physics and Nanosciences" PhD course of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. My work focused on improving the theoretical and computational methods for the prediction of the electronic structure of matter. That means drawing Feynman diagrams that represent what electrons do when interacting with each other, and then turn these diagrams into computer code to reproduce what experimental physicists see when running experiments (e.g. by extracting electrons from matter using light). Doing all this gives us insight on how electrons exist and arrange in matter, which is nice to know if you want to eventually engineer technological applications such as transistors, batteries and photovoltaics.
The products of my PhD work are two peer-reviewed papers, a PhD thesis, and contributions to the development of the AGWX electronic structure code.
Links:
- Going beyond the GW approximation using the time-dependent Hartree-Fock vertex
- Numerically Precise Benchmark of Many-Body Self-Energies on Spherical Atoms
- My PhD thesis
- My Master's thesis
Profiling and optimization of the Biogeochemical Flux Model
For my Bachelor's thesis at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, I
enrolled in the 25th Summer School on Parallel Computing in CINECA and acquired some parallel computing
skills, specifically the MPI and OpenMP basics. At the same time, I worked at
the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e
Geofisica Sperimentale on profiling and optimizing, aided by the profiler
Intel VTune, a scientific code that simulates the dynamics of lower trophic
levels in marine systems. The code is called the Biogeochemical Flux Model
(BFM), and by the end of my job it ran twice as fast than before. Most of the
bottleneck was due to the compile flags (notably this code ran faster with an
ifort -O1 optimization than a -O2), but I still got
the chance to approach for the first time a Fortran scientific code made for
production, get the hang of it and experiment new things with it.
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Didactic codes for uni
The Computational Phyics course of my uni gave me the chance to pick up coding after some years of plain studying and pen and paper work. Thanks to this course, I learned the basics of Fortran, a welcome addition to the C/C++ ones, and applied them to simple problems that arise in Physics, such as diagonalizations, ODE and PBE resolutions, etc... The finals required to present three projects with a classmate, two of which I extensively co-authored: the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam model and the resolution of the Schrodinger equation with a Morse potential (i.e. the anharmonic oscillator) via the shooting method.
Downloads:
An Arduino ph-meter by simpe
An award-winning high school graduation project, my Arduino pH-meter allowed me to merge my knowledge of high school chemistry, electronics and computer science. I owe a lot to Arduino, which simplifies a lot of things, but I'm still very proud of the device I engineered. It features polynomial calibration, a titration curve tool and a pH monitor, which you can use to collect data on an SD card in CVS format, ready to be taken to your copmuter: all things that should make life in the lab simpler! This project also made me pick up C++ coding after five years of not touching it.
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Art and fanart
Back when I was in high school, I got involved in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom and started drawing fanart. I always drew since I was kid, inspired by comics and video games, also coming up with simple comics myself. I would epsecially draw on my student planner and textbooks, hoping for the teachers not to notice me. When MLP:FiM became a thing, I got inspired by the show and all the people contributing to the fandom with their fanart on Deviantart, and began drawing fanart myself. I bought a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet and kind of improved my drawing skills over time. I never quite got colouring right, but I can say I did experiment with digital painting. Towards the end of my "digital painter" career, I even tried to move on to new subjects, despite most of the feedback on Deviantart being directed to MLP fanart. However, new occupations would soon walk into my life and put my "digital painter" career on hold. Sadly, it hasn't resumed ever since.
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