Research News

Researchers from the Group of Characterization of Materials at the Department of Physics of the UPC along with international collaborators have discovered a spin-crossover compound that undergoes a giant thermal response driven by pressure. This work, published in Advanced Materials, open routes to exploit this type of compounds in future solid-state refrigeration technologies as alternative to current methods that use harmful fluids

Albert Falqués and Francesca Ribas, from the group of Nonlinear fluid dynamics of the Physics Department, together with two other researchers from the UPC, have discovered a new morphodynamic instability mechanism that can explain the formation of alongshore-rhythmic systems of transverse finger bars that often develop at beaches with an abundant supply of sand, like those at El Trabucador beach, in the Ebro delta

Jaime Coello de Portugal-Martínez Vázquez defended his PhD thesis on accelerator physics co-directed by Rogelio Tomás (CERN) and Youri Koubychine Physics Department & INTE, UPC) at the ETSEIB on June 16, 2021.

Arjuna Castrillon defended her thesis, co-directed by DFIS professors Jordi José and Domingo García-Senz on May 12, 2021 by teleconference. The thesis, entitled "Study of the physical properties of collided regions in planetary nebulae", presents an analysis of the morphology of microstructures present in planetary nebulae, as well as simulations of the motions of a star in the protoplanetary nebula phase.

Viktor Cikojević defended his thesis co-directed by Leandra Vranješ Markić and Jordi Boronat on April 20th 2021 at Campus Diagonal Nord, titled "Ab-initio Quantum Monte Carlo study of ultracold atomic mixtures". The thesis presents a systematic study of self-bound quantum droplets in a Bose-Bose mixture, employing techniques of Quantum Monte Carlo and Density Functional Theory.

Araceli Aznar Luque defended her thesis co-directed by Pol Lloveras and Josep Lluís Tamarit on the 15 of April at the Diagonal-Besòs Campus. Titled "Barocaloric effects at first-order phase transitions", the thesis presents the experimental study of the reversible barocaloric effects of different families of materials as a cooling method based on the solid state

Blas Echebarria and Enric Àlvarez, researchers in the Physics department of the research group in Computational Biology and Complex Systems (BIOCOM-SC), together with researchers from the Heart Rate Analysis and Control (ANCORA) research group at the UPC, and other international scientists have identified one of the molecular mechanisms responsible for cardiac alternation. This is an alteration of the heart rhythm that facilitates the induction of ventricular fibrillation, a potentially lethal type of arrhythmia. This discovery, published in the journal Circulation Research (AHA Jounals), opens the door to new pharmacological treatments.