Research News

Zheyao Hu, a student with a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council, defended her doctoral thesis entitled “In silico design of inhibitors of RAS oncogenic proteins and strategies for blocking of tumour growth” and directed by Dr. Jordi Martí Rabassa on January 14, 2025 at the UPC North Campus. The thesis presents a detailed study of the behavior of oncogenes of the RAS family, related to a third of all cancers that exist, and proposes a new methodology to achieve the computer design of drugs capable of blocking the activation of oncogenes. As an example, two prototype drugs are proposed, one of them potentially suitable for treating patients with pancreatic cancer and another for patients with melanoma

Mohammad Nayeem Akhter defended his thesis co-supervised by Kestutis Staliunas and Muriel Botey on December 20, 2024 at Campus Terrassa. Entitled “Non-Hermitian mode management in optical fibers and waveguides", the thesis presents a novel approach to tailoring optical beam transformations in graded index multimode fibers through non-Hermitian mode management

Maria Duque defended her thesis co-directed by Cristina Masoller and Jordi Tiana on December 5 at the Terrassa Campus. Entitled "Experimental study of the coherence of the light emitted by a semiconductor laser with optical feedback", the thesis studies the appearance and evolution of coherence during laser start-up in different optical feedback scenarios. In addition, the impact of sinusoidal modulation in the injection current on the coherence of lasers is investigated and includes a chapter on the impact of optical injection

Refrigeration systems contribute significantly to climate change. Now, a European Consortium involving institutions from France, Slovenia, United Kingdom and Spain, has been awarded with 3.4M euros EU grant for the next 4 years to develop a new all-solid refrigeration technology based on the energy exchanged during spin transitions driven by pressure: the FROSTBIT project

Eda Vurgun defended her doctoral tesis entitled “Compact binary millisecond pulsars: X-ray observations and numerical simulations” on November 7, 2024 at the Besòs Campus. The thesis has been co-directed by Domingo García Senz and Manuel Linares Alegret

Anurag Surapaneni defended his thesis supervised by Dr. Daniel Mira on October 30, 2024 at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Entitled "Multi-regime combustion modelling in high-fidelity numerical simulations of reacting flows" the thesis focuses on developing high-fidelity numerical combustion models for simulation reacting flow with mixture inhomogeneity and under complex combustion regimes.

The candidate Mehran Nabahat defended his thesis, directed by Eloi Pineda, on October 10, 2024 at the Diagonal Besòs Campus. Entitled "Dynamic Heterogeneity in Metallic Glasses: Study of Structural Relaxation, Aging, and Mechanical Properties of Vit4 alloy", the thesis presents a study of the evolution of the structural dynamics of an alloy in the vitreous state