Lecturers

Giuliano Benenti, University of Insubria, Como, Italy

Giuliano Benenti is associate professor in theoretical physics (condensed matter) at the Department of Science and High Technology, University of Insubria, Como, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in physics at University of Milan in 1998 and was a postdoctoral fellow at CEA, Saclay (1998-2000). His main research interests are in the fields of thermal and thermoelectric transport, quantum thermodynamics, open quantum systems, quantum computation and quantum information, nonlinear and complex systems. He is author of more than 130 publications, including 18 Phys. Rev. Lett. papers, review papers on thermal rectification (Lecture notes in Physics 921, 2016) and on thermoelectric energy conversion at the nanoscale (Phys. Rep., 2017) and a textbook on “Principles of Quantum Computation and Information”.

Carlo Fanciulli, CNR-ICMATE, Lecco, Italy (School Scientific Secretary)

Moving from a background on physics of superconducting materials, Carlo Fanciulli received his PhD in Materials Science in 2008 working on the synthesis and processing of thermoelectric oxides. Since 2009, he works as a researcher at the National Research Council of Italy on materials for energy. His current activity is focused on thermoelectric materials synthesis and processing (sintering and mechanical transformation processes) and characterization of basic thermoelectric parameters. His research objective is devising materials, nanostructured or composite, with enhanced features using techniques and processes borrowed from metallurgy. His main results stem from the development of original techniques to achieve optimized materials at different scales. He collaborates with several companies to support the development of technological solutions based on thermoelectricity. Fanciulli is currently an executive board member of the Italian Thermoelectric Society.

Yuri Grin, Max Planck Institute, Dresden, Germany

Yuri Grin graduated and received his PhD at the Lviv State University, Ukraine. Since 2001 he is a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at Max-Planck-Institut für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe in Dresden. Starting with 2002 he is also Faculty member and honorary professor in chemical metal science at the Dresden University of Technology, Germany. Yuri Grin has received several awards, including a Dr. philosophiae honoris causa of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is also Adjunct Professor of the University of Shanghai, China and was visiting professor at ENSICAEN, Caen, France, and of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and guest professor at the University of Rennes. Grin authored about 650 scientific publications and more than 15 patents. Yuri Grin is Board Member of the European and International Thermoelectric Societies. His scientific interests focus on chemistry and physics of intermetallic compounds, in particular on preparation and chemical bonding of thermoelectric materials.

Marisol Martin-Gonzalez, IMN-CSIC, Spain

Dr. Marisol Martin-Gonzalez is a permanent researcher at the Institute of Micro and Nanotechnology, at the National Research Center of Spain – IMN-CSIC. She was a postdoc at U.C. Berkeley in thermoelectric nanostructuration by electrochemical techniques. She is the author of more than 100 papers, of 4 patents and is the co-founder of a spin-off company. Dr. Martin-Gonzalez holds an ERC Starting Grant in nano-engineering thermoelectrics . Over the last 5 years, the group has managed 7 different projects on the effect of nanostructuration on organic and inorganic thermoelectrics. For the H2020, she is holding an ERC Proof of concept to commercialize some of the results for her ERC Starting grant. Marisol Martin-Gonzalez is an elected member of the European thermoelectrics Society. She has organized several international conferences, has supervised 6 PhD thesis and has been the director of the Sensor and Biosensor Department and Vice-director of the Institute.

Joseph Heremans, Ohio State University, USA

Joseph Heremans is an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the Ohio State University, with appointments in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the Department of Physics. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of AAAS and the American Physical Society. He joined OSU after a 21 year career in the automotive industry at the General Motors Research Laboratories, where he was the section manager for Semiconductor Physics, and at the Delphi Research Laboratories. His research interests focus on energy conservation and recovery and lie at the intersection between experimental condensed matter physics and thermodynamics. In the last decade, he worked on the transport of heat, charge, and magnetization in solids.

Kunihito Koumoto, Nagoya University, Japan

Kunihito Koumoto received a Ph.D. in industrial chemistry and his Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Tokyo. In 1986 he became Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of Tokyo University, being called in 1992 as Professor at Nagoya University. In 2002 he was nominated as Professor at the Akita University. In 2011 Koumoto became director of the Research Center for Materials Backcasting Technology at Nagoya University. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Nagoya University. Koumoto is a noted researcher. He involved in research and education in university and research site settings for roughly four decades. He continues to provide research guidance for an overseas university and promoting research and engaging in personnel development with the aim of achieving a solar energy-powered society. In this view, he is a Fellow at Toyota Physical and Chemical Research Institute since April 2015 and Outside Director at Toyota Tsusho Corp. since June 21, 2018. He also received many awards and honours, including the Award for Outstanding Service to the Tokai Chemical Industry Association, the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Emperor of Japan, the Thermoelectrics Society of Japan Award and the Outstanding Achievement Award by the International Thermoelectric Society.

Bruno Lorenzi, University of Milano Bicocca, Italy

Bruno Lorenzi received his PhD in Materials Science in 2015 at University of Milano Bicocca with a thesis intitled “Polycrystalline Silicon as Thermoelectric Material - Bringing the nanotechnological advantage to the bulk”. He was a research associate at the University of Milano Bicocca until September 2017 when he obtained a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship for a project focused on the thermoelectric hybridization of solar cells. He is currently a post-doctoral associate in the framework of the mentioned project in the group of Prof. Gang Chen at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His principal interests are the combination of thermoelectric and photovoltaic effects, and the implementation of bulk photovoltaic effects for heat recovery applications.

Dario Narducci, University of Milano Bicocca (School Co-Director)

Dario Narducci received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1988. From 1988 to 1990 he was Post-Doctoral Fellow at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In 1990 he re-joined the University of Milan as an Assistant Professor, moving in 1997 to the University of Milano Bicocca, where he became Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry in 2000. His research interests have focused on the physical chemistry of solids and on transport properties of disordered materials. Since 2008 he has developed an intense research activity on thermoelectricity. Since 2010 he is Chief Technical Officer and Board Member of a start-up aimed at the development of silicon-based thermoelectric generators. He is also currently involved in the ERC NanoThermMA project, led by the University of Warwick; and is coordinating a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship in collaboration with the MIT. Narducci is currently serving as the president of the Italian Thermoelectric Society and is board member of the European Thermoelectric Society.

Neophytos Neophytou, University of Warwick, UK

Neophytos Neophytou received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA in 2008. He worked as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Microelectronics at the Technical University of Vienna in Austria until 2013. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick in the UK. He was awarded the 2015 ERC Starting Grant from the European Commission. His area of specialisation is theory, computational modeling and simulation of transport in nanoelectronic devices. He has worked extensively on theoretical modeling of atomistic and quantum effects on the electronic properties of nanoscale devices, nanowires, ultra thin-body devices, carbon nanotubes, graphene nanoribbon devices and III-V HEMT devices. His current research interests include thermoelectric transport in nanostructured devices, and in particular superlattices and nanowires, for energy conversion and generation applications.

Riccardo Rurali, ICMAB, Spain

Riccardo Rurali received his PhD in Materials Science in 2003 from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a staff scientist since 2010 at Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), where he currently serves as Deputy Director. His work focuses on the atomistic modeling of nanostructures and he has extensive experience of collaboration with experimental groups. Landmarks of his prominent role within the nanowire community are the authorship of four review papers and his permanent seat in the board of the largest conference on nanowires worldwide. He has published over 110 articles in international peer-reviewed journals. He maintains several national and international collaborations with theoretical and experimental groups. Currently, his research interests focus on nanoscale thermal transport and on the use of phonons for information technology.

Henning Sirringhaus, University of Cambridge, UK

Professor Henning Sirringhaus holds the Hitachi Professorship of Electron Device Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. He has been working in the field of charge transport in organic semiconductors and their application in field-effect transistors since 1997. He has an undergraduate and PhD degree in physics from ETH Zürich (CH). From 1995-1996 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University (USA). He was awarded the Mullard award of the Royal Society in 2003. His scientific interests include the charge transport physics of molecular, and polymeric semiconductors, the development of printing-based nanopatterning techniques, the use of scanning probe techniques for electrical characterization of functional nanostructures, and the development of novel approaches to quantum computation. He is a member of the Optoelectronics Group, and also current head of the Microelectronics Research Centre of the Cavendish Laboratory. He is co-founder and Chief Scientist of Plastic Logic Ltd., a technology start-up company commercialising printed organic transistor technology.

G. Jeffrey Snyder, Northwestern University, USA (School Co-Director)

G. Jeffrey Snyder received his Ph.D. in Physics at Stanford University in 1997 with Prof. Th.H. Geballe. From 1997 to 2006 he was with NASA at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, moving then to the California Institute of Technology. In 2015 he became Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Northwestern University. His research interests span the whole range of thermoelectricity, from nanomaterials to band structure engineering, extending to solid-state physics and thermodynamics of thermoelectric materials. Snyder was the recipient of the Fanny and John Hertz Fellowship, the Ross Tucker Memorial Award, the CAS International Cooperation Award for Young Scientists, and the NASA Patent Award. He is the vice-president of the International Thermoelectric Academy and the treasurer of the International Thermoelectric Society. He has over 200 publications in thermoelectrics, with a H-index of 85, and mentored several students and postdocs in the field including two Goldsmid and two ITS Young Investigator Award winners.