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, and automation. I have experience in both academia and industry, working on problems in nanoscience, energy, and material science. I am currently expanding into machine learning focusing on AI-driven materials simulations, discovery, and design.

You can find a short version of my CV here: Short CV (PDF)
You can find my publications on Publications or at Google Scholar
You can find my github profile at Github

A brief summary of my career:

• University of California, Merced. Postdoctoral Scholar at the SAIL Group (Jul 2021 - Present)
• 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)
• Responde Aí, a Brazilian educational platform startup. Roles: Reviewer (Dec 2017 - Jul 2018), Expert (Aug 2017 - Dec 2017)
• Ph.D. in Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – June 2021. NAMOR group Phd Thesis (PDF)
• M.Sc. in Physics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – February 2017. NAMOR group Master Thesis (PDF)
• B.Sc. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – February 2015

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 interations. 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).