Research News

Jordi Pera i Ferreruela defended his doctoral thesis co-directed by Joaquim Casulleras i Ambrós and Jordi Boronat Medico on April 17, 2026 at Campus Nord. The thesis, entitled Itinerant ferromagnetism and polarons in SU(N) Fermi gases, focuses on determining under which regimes Fermi gases become ferromagnetic and, if so, how they get there. On the other hand, it also includes a small exploration of the behavior of impurities in these gases.

Ignasi Puch Giner defended his doctoral thesis, supervised by Víctor Guallar Tasies, at the North Campus on April 16, 2026. Titled “Optimization of Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics Techniques for Receptor–Ligand Binding Studies”, the thesis focuses on taking advantage of the theoretical framework of Monte Carlo methods to design a protocol applicable to the energetic characterization of ligand–protein interactions. In addition, these methodologies, combined with other computational techniques, have been applied in three collaborations oriented to real cases related to pathologies of the nervous system and the cardiac system.

Professors Jordi Mazón and David Pino propose the abolition of seasonal time changes in the European Union, arguing that the permanent adoption of winter time (UTC+1) would provide critical benefits for public health and safety in the face of global warming.

David Conesa defended his thesis “Empirical and Structural Mathematical Models for Biological Systems: Case Studies in COVID-19 and Cardiac Dynamics” in the EPSEB in Campus Sud on the 18th of December. Under the supervision of Dr. Enric Alvarez Lacalle, the thesis develops different empirical, predictive, and mechanistic mathematical models to study and analyze two branches of biology: epidemiology in the context of a pandemic such as COVID-19, and cardiac dynamics.

In a joint project between the research groups GCM (Department of Physics) and NEMEN (Department of Chemical Engineering), PhD student Maahin Mirzay Shahim, from South Azerbaijan, Iran, has developed new catalytic materials by combining glassy alloys and cerium oxide in her PhD defended on December 16 and directed by Eloi Pineda and Lluis Soler

Benet Eiximeno Franch defended his thesis co-directed by Oriol Lehmkuhl Barba and Ivette Maria Rodríguez Pérez on October 31, 2025 at Campus Nor. The thesis is titled "High performance computing and artificial intelligence for dimensionality reduction of turbulent flows" and investigates how large-scale artificial intelligence can help compress aerodynamic simulation data to better understand chaotic turbulence phenomena

A study by researchers Juan Sánchez-Baena, Ferran Mazzanti and Jordi Boronat, from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, together with researcher Raúl Bombı́n, from the University of Bordeaux, shows for the first time the creation and destruction of a quantum supersolid by heating a dipolar system, initially in a superfluid phase without spatial order. The work illustrates the connection between the counterintuitive appearance of a solid by heating, exclusive to the quantum realm, and the expected phenomenology of fusion when the temperature is raised