Doctoral candidates
DC 1: Development of ternary
halide indoor photovoltaics for sustainably powering IoT electronics.
Location:
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
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I’m Irene, I come from Rome, Italy, where
I graduateinPhysics
with a background in condensed matter. During my master’s I
developed an interest in photonics and spectroscopy, which I now
continue to explore in my PhD at the University of Cambridge,
where I work on ultrafast spectroscopy on energy-harvesting
materials.
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DC 2:
Self-powered
photodetectors based on ferroelectric thins films for IoT applications.
Location:
University of Minho, Portugal.
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I’m Bhoomika, I come from India. I hold a Master’s degree from
Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology,
where my thesis investigated rubrene derivatives for crystalline
organic photodetectors. My research in MASAUTO will focus on
design, fabrication using PVD processes, and characterisation of
novel optoelectronic materials and devices, particularly
ferroelectric and photoactive systems for sustainable sensing
applications. My interests lie at the intersection of materials
physics, optoelectronic device engineering, and sustainable
technology development, with long-term ambitions in
semiconductor innovation and healthcare-oriented sensing
technologies.
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DC 3:
Perovskite solar cells
for sustainably powering IoT electronics.
Location:
University of Pavia, Italy.
DC 4:
High-performance
supercapacitors based on HfxZr1-xO2 thin films.
Location:
University of
Minho, Portugal.
DC 5:
Lead-free
anti/ferroelectrics optimized for energy storage.
Location:
Luxembourg
Institute of Technology, Luxembourg.
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Anurag Verma was born in India in 2002. He received his
Bachelor’s (Honours) degree in Physics from Banaras Hindu
University, India, in 2023, and his Master’s degree in Physics
from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, in 2025.
His Master’s thesis focused on orbital Hall transport in
magnetic skyrmions, studied using low-energy effective
tight-binding models.
In September 2025, he joined the
MASAUTO project as a research employee at the Luxembourg
Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and began pursuing a
doctorate at the University of Luxembourg. His doctoral research
focuses on anti-/ferroelectric materials for energy harvesting,
using first-principles density functional theory (DFT) and
machine-learned interatomic potentials (MLIPs) calculations.
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DC 6:
Tunable polar
topologies in lead-free ferroelectric/paraelectric heterostructures.
Location:
TTS, Czech Republic.
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I'm Matilde Oliveira and I come from Portugal. I made my
Bachelor and Master Degrees in Physics at University of Minho.
My research in MASAUTO will focus on lead-free
ferroelectric/paraelectric superlattices for advanced energy
storage, combining oxide thin-film growth, electrical and
structural characterisation, and an interest in DFT simulations
to better understand structure-property relationships in
functional materials. |
DC 7:
Ferroelectric tunnel
junction for low power data processing.
Location:
University of Groningen, Netherlands.
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Yaiza Cintora completed her Bachelor’s studies in Physics in the
Complutense University of Madrid, where she discovered her
passion for solid state and condensed-matter physics. In the
same university she pursued a Master in Advanced Materials and
Nanophysics, where she worked for the first time in correlated
oxides. There, she gained hands-on experience on PLD growth,
nanofabrication and electrical characterization of thin films.
In September 2025, she joined the Solid State Materials for
Electronics group (University of Groningen), as a doctoral
candidate and became a member of MASAUTO. Her project focuses on
developing ferroelectric tunnel junctions for memristive
devices, as well as optimizing these devices to fulfill the low
energy consumption and high endurance/cyclability goals needed
for edge computing.
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DC 8:
New Schottky to Ohmic
memristor mechanisms in doped epitaxial HfO2 films.
Location:
University
of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
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Michael grew up in Dublin, Ireland and completed his Bachelor’s
degree in Nanoscience at Trinity College Dublin. During his
studies, he worked in the group of Valeria Nicolosi on 2D MXene
materials for electrochemical energy storage, focusing on
supercapacitor performance and charge-storage mechanisms. He
also undertook research at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical
Physics of Solids in Dresden, Germany, in the group of Claire
Donnelly, where he studied 3D chiral nanoscale magnetic systems.
Michael joined the University of Cambridge in 2025 to begin his
PhD as part of the MASAUTO network, where his research focuses
on hafnia-based ferroelectric thin films for low-power
non-volatile memory and energy-storage applications, with
particular emphasis on interfacial engineering and proximity
effects in oxide heterostructures.
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DC 9:
Comprehensive study of
doping effects on the ferroelectricity in epitaxial HfO2 films.
Location:
Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona, Spain.
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Mostafa received his Master’s in the
Materials Science and Engineering at Pohang University of
Science and Technology (South Korea) and his B.Sc. degree in
Materials Science and metallurgy from the Sharif University of
Technology (Iran). Prior to joining MASAUTO His research has
been dedicated to HZO for FeRAM applications. He gained insights
into HZO's ferroelectric behavior and its practical implications
for memory devices through hands-on experience in fabrication,
physical analysis, and electrical characterization through
collaboration with the Ferroelectric Memory Company (FMC) for 2
years, as a part of their stack development efforts.
In
ICMAB-CSIC, he will study how different dopants can affect
ferroelectric characteristics of hafnia thin films for improved
polarization and reliability focusing on both cycling endurance
and data retention. He will investigate epitaxial films
fabricated by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD).
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DC 10:
Ferroelectric
HfO2/ZrO2 superlattices for edge-computing.
Location:
IBM, Switzerland.
DC 11:
Predictive modelling
of novel material heterostructures for energy harvesting.
Location:
University of Minho, Portugal.
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Born in 1998 in Zaragoza, Spain. Physics
Graduate and Nanoscience Master’s from the University of
Zaragoza. I joined the Computational Physics Group of the
University of Minho to be part of the MASAUTO Project. My
research focuses on modeling and predicting material behavior
for photosensing applications using Density Functional Theory
(DFT) and Finite Element simulations.
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DC 12:
Epitaxial
ferroelectric doped hafnia for improved performance energy storage
capacitors.
Location:
Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona,
Spain.
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My name is Neus Alert Peret and I come from a
small village in the Catalan Pyrenees. After graduating from a
bachelor in physics in Universitat de Barcelona I moved to
Stockholm to study a MSc in Medical Radiation Physics. I
developed my Master’s thesis in the nuclear physics department
in KTH Royal Institute of Technology working with a radiation
monitor based on a neutron-gamma emission tomography technique.
I have joined the MASAUTO project in the Institut de Ciència de
Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB) where my research will be focused
on the improvement and development of ferroelectric capacitors
with high energy storage density.
Beyond the lab, I enjoy
spending time in nature, going on hikes with friends and I also
love reading.
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Contacts:
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Dr. José
Silva
Scientific Project
Coordinator
josesilva@fisica.uminho.pt |
Prof. Luís
Marques
Network Coordinator
lsam@fisica.uminho.pt |
University of Minho
Campus de Gualtar
PT-4710 - 057 Braga
Portugal |