Pablo M. Piaggi
Pablo Piaggi is currently an Ikerbasque Research Fellow in the Theory Group at CIC nanoGUNE, San Sebastian, Spain. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2019 from EPFL, Switzerland working in the research group of Prof. Michele Parrinello. From 2019 to 2023 he held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University, USA. Piaggi has received several awards for his work on the use of advanced simulation methods to study phase equilibria and crystallization phenomena, including the 2021 IBM Research Award. In 2019 he was awarded a postdoctoral mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and in 2023 he was selected as a fellow of Ikerbasque, the Basque Foundation for Science.
Pablo and his team work on the development and application of molecular simulation methods rooted in machine learning, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics. By combining knowledge in these three fields, they simulate complex processes starting from first principles (i.e., from a quantum-mechanical treatment of the electrons and, sometimes, the nuclei). They use molecular simulation as a computational microscope, shedding light on processes that not even state-of-the-art experimental techniques can access. These simulations allow them to tackle a broad range of problems in materials science, chemistry, condensed-matter physics and related fields. In particular, they are currently interested in applications of these tools to understand crystallization, i.e. how crystals form at the nanoscale from the melt or the solution, which is a process of great relevance both in nature and in multiple industries.
Pablo has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Communications, and Physical Review Letters. His work has been cited more than 2200 times and his current h-index is 21 (Google Scholar). His research interests are the development and application of molecular simulation methods rooted in statistical mechanics, machine learning, and quantum mechanics. Furthermore, he is a member of the PLUMED consortium, an initiative aimed at fostering reproducibility in enhanced-sampling simulations.
Pablo has given 17 invited talks at world-renowned universities and research centers, such as Columbia University (USA), Cornell University (USA), and ICTP (Trieste, Italy). He has also formally advised three undergraduate students and one master student for their thesis or internship research work. Furthermore, he has reviewed more than 60 manuscripts for journals, such as Science, Nature, Nature Physics, and Physical Review Letters, and computational project proposals for the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) and for the Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire (CECAM).
A full list of his publications can be found in Google Scholar or arXiv.