Important award assigned to a young ICS researcher

The Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft für physikalische Chemie (DBG, a leading German organisation for research in chemistry and physics) will honour Dr. GiovanniMaria Piccini – researcher at USI Institute of Computational Science (ICS) – with the Ewald Wicke-Prize, an award dedicated to young researchers for outstanding scientific achievements. The prize will be awarded at the opening ceremony of the 117th General Assembly of the DBG on Thursday, May 10, 2018, in Hannover, Germany.

Dr. Piccini studied chemistry at the University of Trieste where he completed his European master’s degree in theoretical chemistry in collaboration with the Zernike Institute of Technology in Groeningen, the Netherlands. During his doctoral studies at Humboldt Universität Berlin, in the group of Prof. J. Sauer, he developed and applied computational chemistry methodologies for the study of absorbent and catalytic properties of nano porous materials such as zeolites and MOFs (Metal Organic Frameworks). The materials mentioned above are essential in industrial petrochemical processes, and in the development of new technologies to transport and convert natural gas.

GiovanniMaria Piccini has been working since 2016 as a post-doctoral assistant in Prof. Parrinello’s group at Università della Svizzera italiana and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He is involved in the development of computational methods of molecular dynamics for the study of complex chemical processes, which may involve basic chemistry, but also modern industrial processes, or transformations in biological systems.

Information on DBG: www.bunsen.de/en/