Rafael R. Del Grande

Short Bio:

I am a computational physicist with a PhD in condensed matter, specialized in first-principles simulations of materials, high-performance computing, scientific software development, automation, and machine learning. I work with multiscale problems, developement of methods and strategies to accelerate computational materials simulations, and developement of machine learning models to predict material properties. I have experience in both academia and industry, working on problems in nanoscience, energy, and material science.
See my portfolio here

You can find my CV here: CV (PDF)
You can find my publications on Publications or at Google Scholar
You can find my github profile at Github
My ORCID: ORCID
You can find my LinkedIn profile at LinkedIn
You can find my ResearchGate profile at ResearchGate

Experience

• University of California, Merced. Postdoctoral Scholar at the SAIL Group | Jul 2021 - Present | Advisor: David A. Strubbe
• IBM Research Brazil – Internship at IBM Brazil Lab (Dec 2013 - Mar 2015 and Oct 2015 – May 2016)
• Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Part time Physics Lecturer. (Aug 2018 - Nov 2020)

Education

• Ph.D. in Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – June 2021. NAMOR group Phd Thesis (PDF) (Advisors: Marcos G. Menezes, Rodrigo B. Capaz)
• M.Sc. in Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – February 2017. NAMOR group Master Thesis (PDF) (Advisors: Marcos G. Menezes, Rodrigo B. Capaz)
• B.Sc. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – February 2015

Awards and Honors

• 2020 - Bolsa nota 10 - PhD excellence fellowship from FAPERJ (Rio de Janeiro state funding agency)

Awarded computational grants

• Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) Frontera Pathways. Title: Ab initio excited-state forces from GW/BSE and DFPT calculations: applications to perovskites and 2D materials. Role: PI. Amount: 102,000 CPU/GPU Node Hours. Year: 2023-2025. Co-PI: David A. Strubbe
• San Diego Supercomputer Center (through ACCESS). Title: Excited-state forces from GW/BSE and DFPT calculations. Role: PI. Amount: 10,000 CPU Node Hours and 93 GPU Node Hours. Year: 2022-2023. Co-PI: David A. Strubbe

Research interests:

Theoretical condensed matter physics and material science. Computational simulation of materials, ab initio methods (DFT, GW approximation, Bethe-Salpeter equation, DFPT), molecular dynamics, tight binding. Electron-phonon and exciton-phonon interactions. Dynamics of excited states. Semiconductors, 2D materials, carbon nanotubes. Defects, heterostructures. Machine learning applied to computational material science. Scientific software development for high-performance computing (CPU and GPU).