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foto-gdMy name is Giuseppe De Nittis. I’m currently an assistant professor at the department of mathematics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

I was born on February 18th 1977 in Montalbano Jonico, a small town in Basilicata (province of Matera) lying on white clay hills and not far from the Jonio Sea. In this place I lived  with my family until the age of 18. In 1996 I achieved the Scientific High School Degree in the  E. Fermi high school. During these years I developed a strong passion for  physical and mathematical sciences as well as a deep interest for philosophy and literature. In 1997 I began the graduate program in physics at the University of Pisa. I obtained the Bachelor’s degree in 2003 and the Master’s degree in theoretical physics in 2006 under the supervision of prof. G. Morchio. En the same year I started the PhD program at SISSA in Trieste. I obtained my PhD in 2010 with a thesis entitled “Hunting colored (quantum) butterflies: a geometric derivation of the TKNN-equations” under the supervision of prof. G. Dell’Antonio.

From 2010 to 2012 I got my first post-doc position in Paris. Here, I worked in the research group coordinated by prof. F. Klopp and prof. F. Germinet. During this same period I started a scientific collaboration with prof. J. Bellissard on a research project on the electron dynamics in quasicrystals. This collaboration was a moment of great importance both for my scientific as well  human training. In the last years I had also the opportunity to establish stimulating scientific collaborations with prof. G. Landi, dr. A. Moro and dr. M. Lein.

In 2012 I obtained the prestigious fellowship of the Alexander Humboldt Foundation and in September 2012 I moved at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität of Erlangen.  Here I’m doing research on topological insulators in collaboration with prof. H. Schulz-Baldes.

In these first years of activity, my scientific research has been orientated towards the study of the electronic properties of solids (periodic, aperiodic, dirty). More precisely, my domain of interest regards the phenomena of topological quantization showed by these materials. Topological insulators provide nowadays a research field of great physical interest and strong  mathematical charm. The rigorous analysis of the properties of these materials requires the use of sophisticated mathematical tools like the theory of vector bundles and the non-commutative geometry. In a more systematic way I list below my fields of scientific expertise:

Scientific Expertise

+ Condensed Matter Physics
  • Topological effects: charge transport, magnetization, quantum Hall effect, spin-quantum Hall effect;
  • Space-adiabatic perturbation theory;
  • Random magnetic Schrödinger operators;
  • Geometry and topology of aperiodic sets (quasi-crystals);
  • Wannier functions and molecular dynamics;
  • Photonic crystals.
+ Geometry, non-commutative geometry and operator theory
  • Non-commutative manifolds and spectral triples;
  • C*-crossed product, deformation quantization and magnetic Weyl quantization.
+ PDEs and integrable systems
  • Shock singularities.

Mathematics and physics are not my only interest. In may lifetime I always cultivated the passion for reading and writing, sports activities and a great interest for food and wine traditions. Among my personal interests are:

Personal Interests

  • Scientific popularization (collaboration with Liberascienza)
  • Alpinism
  • Enogastronomy