The Speakers
ABDALLA DARWISH
Presidential Professor, Ruth Simmons Distinguished University Professor, SPIE Fellow, Dillard University, New Orleans, USA
Dr. Darwish is a Dillard University professor of physics, University Presidential Professor, also is holding the Ruth Simmons University Distinguished Professorship, he is International Society of Optics and Photonic (SPIE) Fellow. He has authored over 120 publications and four book chapters in the areas of nonlinear optical materials, magnetic resonance, waveguides, thin film fabrication, Prof. Darwish has been able to secure over $18.8 million in grant funds as a PI or CoPI to establish several programs and research enterprises in physics and Dillard’s School of STEM. Through his research efforts, nine patents have been filed, and three were issued in May and July 2019 and July 2021. Dr. Darwish has also been able to form an international research collaboration and MoU with Japan Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT) in Tokyo. Under his leadership, the physics department became a signature program and holds a National standing in graduating more than 55% of African Americans in physics since 2000 by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and ranked second in graduating black females in physics. In 2017, Professor Darwish was named the Male Professor of the year by the HBCU digest. Dr. Darwish has delivered many invited talks and keynote presentations in Japan, China, Italy, Greece, France, and many others. Dr. Darwish has been a Dillard University faculty member since 1998 and has served Dillard university in numerous administrative roles, including chair of the physics, chair of the School of STEM, interim dean of the College of A&S and Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs. Prior to coming to Dillard, Darwish served as an associate professor at Alabama A&M University, where he supervised many graduate students (MS and PhD). In addition, Dr. Abdalla Darwish holds a public office where he has been serving as member of city of Kenner civil service board since its inception in 2006 until present. Dr. Darwish was awarded the Monte Lemann Award from the civil service league of the State of Louisiana in October 2014.
BORIS MAIOROV
Senior research staff, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
Boris Maiorov graduated (B.S. and M.S) from the Instituto Balseiro (Bariloche, Argentina) in 1997 and in 2003 he received his Physics Ph.D. from the same institution. Dr. Maiorov joined Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) as a post-doc in 2003 and became a staff member in 2005. Dr. Boris Maiorov has contributed significantly to understand vortex pinning and dynamics in superconductors with focus in the interrelation of defect creation for effective pinning centers. He now leads the studies of elastic properties in aging Plutonium using Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy, leading the first aging experiments showing stiffening in bulk modulus and several science campaigns reports.
Dr. Maiorov explores elastic properties of materials and topological defects (e.g. vortices, skyrmions, dislocations) using electric transport and ultrasound techniques to study strongly interacting elastic systems. Dr. Maiorov has particular interest in areas where there is interaction between defects and elastic properties.
Dr. Maiorov is the author/coauthor of 1 patent and 133 peer-reviewed papers cited more than 6,099 times/h=37 (WebofScience), 8035/h=43 (Google Scholar). He has given more than 50 invited talks in international conferences.
KANAME MATSUMOTO
Emeritus Professor, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kitakyushu, Japan
Kaname Matsumoto received his PhD from Kyoto University. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Nagoya University, a Fellow of Japan Society of Applied Physics and coordinator of a JST-CREST project from FY2023
Research Interests and areas of expertise of Dr. Matsumoto are materials science of superconductors, alloy and compound superconductors as well as HTS, superconducting thin films, artificial pinning center technology, flux pinning and critical current, new material search with machine learning, large scale numerical simulation.
The research of Dr. Matsumoto was funded by several public and private agencies in Japan. He published more than 330 papers, and co-authored 6 books in the area of materials science and superconductivity
MARCO antonio LÓPEZ DE LA TORRE
Professor, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain
Marco Antonio López de la Torre obtained a bachelor's degree (1984) and a Phd degree (1989) from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Between 1986 and 1990 he was an assistant lecturer in the Department of Fundamental Physics at UAM. He trained as a researcher in the Laboratory of Low Temperature Physics of the aforementioned department. There he carried out the research work that constituted his doctoral thesis, an experimental study of the interaction between magnetism and superconductivity in f- electron systems. In 1990 he was awarded a NATO fellowship to perform a postdoctoral stay at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) between 1990 and 1991, at Professor Brian Maple’s group. There he continued to investigate magnetism and superconductivity in highly correlated systems as well as the "non-Fermi liquid" behavior in systems near a quantum critical point.
In 1991 he joined the Department of Applied Physics of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM-campus of Toledo) as Lecturer. In 1996 he moved to UCLM-Ciudad Real, where he obtained the position of Full Professor in 2003. His research at the UCLM has consisted of experimental studies of electrical, thermal, magnetic and structural properties of various types of materials. We will mention highly correlated electronic systems, superconducting and magnetic oxides, nanocrystalline materials with spin-glass properties, magnetic materials with multilayer structure, and more recently nanostructured materials for energy applications (ionic conductors, thermoelectric and materials for thermal barriers). Recently has acted as the main force behind the establishment of new Physics department at Toledo campus of the UCLM.
ALBERTO CASTELLERO
Associate professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Turin, Torino, Italy
Alberto Castellero received his PhD in Chemical and Materials Science from University of Turin, Italy, and had postdoc positions at University of Cambridge (UK), Tohoku University (Japan), and ETH Zurich (Switzerland) before he became researcher and associate professor at University of Turin.
The research activity of Dr. Castellero is mainly focused on topics related to Physical Metallurgy and Materials Science. Past and current activities covered involve: thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transformations in metallic systems; glass formation, structural and mechanical properties of amorphous alloys; non-equilibrium processing of alloys, solidification in industrial alloys, hydrogen solid state storage; thermoelectricity, with specific interest towards the metallurgical processing of TE materials, the correlation between structural, microstructural and transport properties, and the diffusion barrier in junctions for TE modules.
Dr. Castellero coordinates a national project on thermoelectricity. He published 72 scientific papers, 1 monography, 4 book chapters.
CARLO FANCIULLI
Senior researcher, CNR-ICMATE Lecco, Italy
Dr. Fanciulli has a solid state physics curriculum followed by a PhD in Materials Science and Technology. Dr. Fanciulli is a senior researcher at National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry and Technologies for Energy (CNR – ICMATE). He is author of 60 papers published on international journals collecting more than 1000 citations (WoS). Since 2016 he is supporting professor at Politecnico di Milano giving lectures on thermoelectric and superconductive materials and technologies. He has been selected as technical coach in the European Program for SME CoachCom2020 and assigned to a project for the design and development of a thermoelectric power unit for the market of camper vans and motor homes. He is actually board member of both Italian thermoelectric society (AIT) and European thermoelectric society (ETS) actively promoting the dissemination and supporting the development of the thermoelectric community across Italy and Europe. In 2019, he has been the secretary of the 1st summer school “Enrico Fermi” promoted by the Italian Physics Society (SIF) on thermoelectricity.
The main interest of all research activity has been the field of energy saving and recovery, initially developing superconducting tapes for power transport applications, lately studying thermoelectric materials, for waste heat recovery.
He worked on several projects related to superconducting technology at LAMIA labs in Genoa: focusing on the preparation of long multifilamentary tapes based on MgB2. The processes developed allowed the production of a superconducting tape 1.6 Km long, without joints and degradations in superconducting properties. Moving to thermoelectric subject, he took advantage of the expertise achieved in material processing. At CNR-ICMATE the research activities have been focused on thermoelectric materials processing (sintering, cold and warm mechanical working) and characterization designing an original fast sintering process. The main purpose of the research is to improve thermoelectric performances of novel materials by mechanical processing.
In recent years the interest also opened to thermoelectric applications focusing the attention on the development of thermoelectric generators based on catalytic combustion. Actual target is to achieve high power density devices, enabling the development of thermoelectric solutions for battery backup/alternatives. He is also collaborating with companies for the study and development of novel solutions based on thermoelectric technology both on energy harvesting and thermal management.