Mr D. Andrea Cristaldi BSc, MSc

Postgraduate research student

Scientifically speaking, “the glass is always full, half of water and half of air”. I like to think that science give us an incredible point of view.

Andrea is not only a great team worker and a positive thinker, but his extremely various background makes Andrea a solid avant-grade scientist. He produced his first paper in 2010 due to his thesis work for the MS in Chemistry at the University of Catania. His synthetic product was crucial in stepping forward the research of the Prof Roberto Purrello’s group, about host-guest control in supramolecular chemistry. He changed his main topic in the following 3 years under the supervision of Prof Antonino Gulino, increasing his knowledge in material science and hybrid organic/inorganic materials, improving material’s characteristics and aiming the creation of chemical sensors and optical devices. His motivation and curiosity led Andrea to a second Master degree in molecular modelling and drug design, followed by a collaboration with Prof Cosimo Fortuna in contact with Molecular Discovery. He worked for a second time with the group of Prof Roberto Purrello until 2016, on the spectrophotometric characterization of proteasome inhibitors, and the study of supramolecular interaction on surfaces.

Andrea started his PhD at the Engineering and Physical Sciences in April 2016, under the supervision of Dr Xunli Zhang, Prof Eugen Stulz and Dr Dario Carugo. Andrea’s project it is about the large-scale synthesis of nanomaterials by continuous flow reactor for energy saving glazing.

His enthusiasm and experience in interdisciplinary projects makes him an open-minded scientist, able to have great productive ideas on his research. In less than eight years, Andrea produced more than twenty papers, managing techniques such as XPS, AFM, UV-vis, IR, FT-IR, PL, MOCVD, TEM, SEM, and always looking forward for new challenges.