Materials Expert Feliciano Giustino joins Oden Institute

Feliciano Giustino, an electronic structure theorist and computational materials scientist, joined the Oden Institute faculty Fall, 2019.

Giustino holds the W.A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr., Endowment in Simulation-Based Engineering Sciences Chair - Quantum Materials Engineering. He is also a professor of physics and a member of the Materials Science and Engineering Program.

Giustino earned a Master of Science degree summa cum laude in Nuclear Engineering form Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 2001, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2005.

During 2000-2001, he was a research fellow in the Experimental Physics Division of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. During 2005-2008, he performed postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2008, he became University Lecturer in Materials Modelling at the University of Oxford, in the Materials Department, a position equivalent to assistant professor in the United States as well as Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.

In 2013, he was promoted to associate professor, and in 2014 to full professor of materials at Oxford. In 2017, he was elected the Mary Shepard B. Upson Visiting Professor in Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, and spent a sabbatical leave in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell in 2017-2018.

Giustino specializes in electronic structure theory, high-performance computing, and the atomic-scale design of advanced functional materials. He is author of 120-plus research papers and one book entitled "Materials Modelling using Density Functional Theory," an undergraduate textbook introducing the quantum theory of materials and first-principles computational materials modelling.

He initiated the open-source software project EPW, which is now a core module of the Quantum ESPRESSO materials simulation suite and is regularly used by many research groups worldwide. He is the recipient of an ERC Grant, and a 2012 Leverhulme Research Leadership Award.

Giustino specializes in many-body electronic structure theory, high-performance computing, and the atomic-scale design of advanced materials using quantum mechanics. He is primarily known for his work on electronic structure methods, and in particular for enabling accurate and efficient atomic-scale calculations of electron-phonon interactions and materials properties at finite temperature. More recently his work on materials design led to the computational discovery and experimental realization of several new materials for applications in optoelectronics and energy; to the filing and licensing of multiple patent applications; and to consulting roles in industry.