{"id":35,"date":"2018-09-03T13:23:14","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T13:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/?page_id=35"},"modified":"2018-09-05T17:57:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T17:57:03","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/?page_id=35","title":{"rendered":"Academic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Having journeyed through various fields of physics, eventually, I settled outside of academia. Yet, I have thoroughly enjoyed contributing in different areas of research.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dye-sensitized solar cells<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"409\" src=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/dssc.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-123\" srcset=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/dssc.jpg 600w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/dssc-300x205.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption>A decorated Gr\u00e4tzel cell powering a fan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>My PhD project revolved around the study of dye molecules for applications in an emerging technology of photovoltaic cells called Gr\u00e4tzel cells, or dye-sensitized solar cells.<br\/><br\/>The orchestration of disciplines required to even understand the working process of this cell is fascinating. The cell itself is a feat of engineering, which working process can be explained by chemistry, but the properties of the active absorbers are best explained by quantum chemistry and physics.<br\/><br\/>My contribution to this field was limited to explore a technique called &#8220;co-sensitization&#8221;, which involves using multiple dye molecules in a single cell in order to achieve a panchromatic response. This requires a good knowledge of the dyes, their opto-eletronic properties and their chemical compatibility. I tackled the problem systematically from two angles: computationally and experimentally.<br\/><br\/>Within the realm of co-sensitization, I explored the panchromatic responses of cyanine dyes (<a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlehtml\/2016\/me\/c6me00014b\">paper<\/a>), computationally engineered fluorescein dyes (<a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlehtml\/2016\/me\/c6me00075d\">paper<\/a>) and investigated different adsorption mechanisms of rhodamine dyes (<a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlehtml\/2016\/me\/c6me00076b\">paper<\/a>).<br\/><br\/><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jet clustering algorithms<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1310\" height=\"1122\" src=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1956.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-133\" srcset=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1956.jpg 1310w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1956-300x257.jpg 300w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1956-768x658.jpg 768w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1956-1024x877.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><figcaption>A simulated particle collision at the ATLAS experiment at the LHC (CERN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent my final (master) year at university working in the ATLAS collaboration and looking at various techniques to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio of W and Z bosons hadronic decays. <br\/><br\/>A first approach was via studying the jet substructure and reconstruct the mass via <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0802.1189\">jet clustering algorithms<\/a>. A second approach involved statistical techniques: multi-variate analysis classifiers, such as Fisher determinants, likelihood ratios, boosted decision trees and <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1406.7690\">neural networks<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Magnetic structure of NiPS3<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot-from-2018-09-05-17-57-46.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-135\" width=\"455\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot-from-2018-09-05-17-57-46.png 318w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot-from-2018-09-05-17-57-46-150x150.png 150w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot-from-2018-09-05-17-57-46-300x297.png 300w, http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Screenshot-from-2018-09-05-17-57-46-100x100.png 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 455px) 100vw, 455px\" \/><figcaption>Raw detector image for high energy x-ray powder diffraction from NiPS3<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent my internship at Institut Laue-Langevin analyzing neutron scattering data to determine the magnetic structure of a quasi-two-dimensional anti-ferromagnet NiPS3. You can read about the results <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prb\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevB.92.224408\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Having journeyed through various fields of physics, eventually, I settled outside of academia. Yet, I have thoroughly enjoyed contributing in different areas of research. Dye-sensitized solar cells My PhD project revolved around the study of dye molecules for applications in an emerging technology of photovoltaic cells called Gr\u00e4tzel cells, or dye-sensitized solar cells. The orchestration &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/?page_id=35\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Academic&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/giuliopepe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}