Team
Principal Investigators
Alejandro Molina-Sánchez
Alejandro Molina-Sánchez is professor at the University of Valencia. He has Ph.D. in Physics. He was a postdoc in the University of Luxembourg where, working with Prof. Ludger Wirtz, he investigated ab initio approaches to study optical excitations and ultrafast dynamics in two-dimensional materials. He also completed a postdoc stay at the group of Prof. Fernández-Rossier at INL, working on 2D magnetic materials. He is now the leader of the Computational Quantum Materials group based at the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia. His group applies theoretical physics and computational approaches to study of optics, magnetism and electronics of quantum materials applied to quantum computation, ultrafast optics, spintronics and optoelectronic devices. He is recipient of the Ramon y Cajal fellowship. He is also PI of a SEJIGENT (GVA) and a MINECO project.
Alberto García-Cristóbal
Alberto García-Cristóbal is professor at the University of Valencia, senior scientist, science project manager with long PhD supervisor experience. He is expert in the calculation of the electronic structure of semiconductor systems (both bulk and nanostructures), and the simulation of various structural, transport, optical and thermal properties thereof. The techniques used range from ab initio computation (by means of, e.g., Quantum Espresso or ABINIT packages) to effective continuum modelling, the latter being treated both in analytical and fully numerical (e.g., by finite element software such as COMSOL) approaches.
System Administrator
José María Castelo
José received a BSc in Theoretical Physics from the University of Valencia (UV). From the same university he holds a MSc in Astrophysics. In 2015, he obtained an international PhD from the UV (conjoined with the Hochschule RheinMain in Germany, under the supervision of Klaus Michael Indlekofer), wherein he theoretically studied electronic transport in nanowire-based field effect transistors by means of the non-equilibrium Green’s function formalism. Afterwards, he left the academia for the private sector during several years, working as a software developer. He joined our group in December 2021 as a high-perfomance-computing system administrator.
Project Manager
David Vinué Visús
PhD. in Geomatics, he has over 15 years of experience as a researcher and as a project manager at the University of Valencia, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and in private enterprise, including regional projects of the Valencian Agency for Innovation (AVI), program for consolidated research groups (GVA-AICO), IVACE grants and university-industry agreements. He participated in other European programs such as LIFE, Interreg-MED or Climate-KIC.
PhD Students
Jorge Cervantes Villanueva
Jorge received his BS degree in Physics from University of Murcia, Spain, in 2021. His undergraduate research focused on functionalization of graphene using first-principles methods, which was a collaboration with the “Electronic Structure Theory” group from the University of Oldenburg, under the supervision of Prof. Caterina Cocchi. His current research involves the study of physics of excitons in 2D material heterostructures using first-principles methods.
Josep Mas García
Josep Mas Garcia received his B.S. degree in Physics by the University of Valencia in 2022. His interest on Material Science began there, when he focused his Undergraduate Thesis Project on the theoretical study of 2D Topological Insulators and their applications. He is now currently studying an M.S. degree in Photonics, and his Master’s thesis will be focused on the study of “ab initio” methods and their computational application to material modelling, in relation to the field of quantum computation and spintronics.
Torsten Geirsson
Torsten Geirsson received his BSc in Physics from the University of Iceland in 2021 and his MSc in Computational Physics from Stockholm University in 2023. While in Stockholm, he worked with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations as part of the Quantum Chemical Molecular Simulations group, investigating the structural and electronic properties of perovskite materials for solar cell applications. He is currently conducting research at the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia, exploring computational approaches to investigate magnons in magnetic materials, with a particular focus on two-dimensional systems.
Lifeng Ou
Lifeng Ou got his Bachelor’s (2021) and Master’s (2024) degree in Condensed Matter Physics at Nankai University, China. His past research mainly focused on excited states of multi-electron system using ab initio calculation method like TDDFT. He is currently computing exciton relaxation dynamics due to structural complexity based on MBPT, to explore the effect of crystal packing, strain, and composition on the exciton nature, spin polarization and optical selection rules, at the Institute of Materials Science of the University of Valencia.
Former Members
Ali Esquembre Kučukalić
Ali Esquembre Kučukalić obtained his PhD in October 2025, with a thesis that gathers the present modelling methodologies and applies them to the study of optical and magnetic properties, with special attention to the description of magnons, which are fundamental to the development of spintronics. From the theoretical point of view, his work is a first step towards the methodologic integration of the different strategies proposed to the simulation of collective excitations of spin in solids.