Research News

Arjuna Castrillon defended her thesis, co-directed by DFIS professors Jordi José and Domingo García-Senz on May 12, 2021 by teleconference. The thesis, entitled "Study of the physical properties of collided regions in planetary nebulae", presents an analysis of the morphology of microstructures present in planetary nebulae, as well as simulations of the motions of a star in the protoplanetary nebula phase.

Viktor Cikojević defended his thesis co-directed by Leandra Vranješ Markić and Jordi Boronat on April 20th 2021 at Campus Diagonal Nord, titled "Ab-initio Quantum Monte Carlo study of ultracold atomic mixtures". The thesis presents a systematic study of self-bound quantum droplets in a Bose-Bose mixture, employing techniques of Quantum Monte Carlo and Density Functional Theory.

Araceli Aznar Luque defended her thesis co-directed by Pol Lloveras and Josep Lluís Tamarit on the 15 of April at the Diagonal-Besòs Campus. Titled "Barocaloric effects at first-order phase transitions", the thesis presents the experimental study of the reversible barocaloric effects of different families of materials as a cooling method based on the solid state

Blas Echebarria and Enric Àlvarez, researchers in the Physics department of the research group in Computational Biology and Complex Systems (BIOCOM-SC), together with researchers from the Heart Rate Analysis and Control (ANCORA) research group at the UPC, and other international scientists have identified one of the molecular mechanisms responsible for cardiac alternation. This is an alteration of the heart rhythm that facilitates the induction of ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal type of arrhythmia. This discovery, published in the journal Circulation Research (AHA Jounals), opens the door to new pharmacological treatments.

Daniel Calvete and Francesca Ribas, from the group of Nonlinear fluid dynamics, have been working for a few years on the development of image analysis techniques to extract information from video cameras installed on the beaches of Castelldefels and Barcelona, to be able to quantify their evolution

Carles Serrat from the research group on Nonlinear Dynamics, Nonlinear Optics and Lasers (DONLL) of the department of Physics of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has published his last results in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters on the application of nonlinear techniques to efficiently produce the X-ray spectrum of Chemical species

Martí Beltran defended his thesis directed by Dra. Trinitat Pradell on January 22 electronically. Titled “Analysis and degradation mechanisms of enamels, grisailles and silver Stains on modernist stained glass”, the thesis presents a study on the composition and degradation mechanisms of modernist enamels using analytical techniques