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AleX My full name is Alexandre Miguel de Araújo Lopes and I am a 35 year old systems engineer working on the semiconductor lithography industry Carl Zeiss SMT with a PhD in theoretical physics. In what follows I try to present a thematic, (not so) succinct description of myself.

Some of my interests

I am, and have always been, a curious person. I have always strived to understand the World, and I have a very broad range of interests. In terms of science I am interested in most everything, from physics to mathematics (both of which I have formally studied in college ) to biology to chemistry and computer science. Besides science, I also love computers and electronics and enjoy reading about human history, economics and mostly everything pertaining to the World.

Computers and electronics

I love computers and electronics in general. In fact, I maintain my own Linux server which I have been administering for several years and whenever I have the time I also do some amateur electronics. As far as programming languages go, I feel they are somewhat like human languages: in todays world it is invaluable to speak as many as possible as they provide the means to communicate with different communities and give you a different perspective of the World. For me the same goes for markup/programming languages and I have tried to learn as many I can. While I am clearly no expert in most of the languages I have dealt with, I find that knowing at least a bit of each can be not only a major competitive advantage but also highly rewarding. For example, my knowledge of HTML and CSS allowed me to write this website myself. One of my favorite programming language is Python. Perhaps I am biased due to my background in physics and because the language was written by a mathematician but I just love how clean it is, the portability and the speed at which I can write code. I know many people would go for Java, but I just find Python to be cleaner. I am also quite used to C/C++ and love the power of these languages. Truth be told, I prefer C++ as I like to use an OOP approach, but whenever necessary I am also able to use pure C (and truth be told, the standard is much simpler).

Autodidact

I am an autodidact and love to learn new things in different areas. As an example, when I was 13 years old I began to study computer programming on my own. As another example, when I was 17 years old I decided to learn how to play classical guitar by myself and did so for ca. one year. The skills I obtained during this year allowed me to compete against other candidates for a position in the conservatory of Aveiro where I continued studying guitar and music theory for five years.

Academic record

As for my academic history, I hold a BSc and a MSc from University of Aveiro, Portugal, in Physics. My Bachelor thesis, in the area of condensed matter physics, is entitled The Aharonov-Bohm effect and persistent currents in quantum rings. It studies, theoretically, some properties of the so called quantum rings enclosing an external magnetic flux, namely persistent currents. To this end I made use of different models such as the electron gas model, the tight binding model and interacting spinless fermions. My Master's thesis, also in the area of condensed matter physics, and building on my Bachelor's thesis is entitled Electronic, thermodynamic and transport properties of the diamond chain. This thesis studies the electronic and transport properties of the diamond chain (which is actually a fancy name a specific bipartite system) when it is threaded by a magnetic field. I studied not only a perfect chain but also study the effect of next nearest neighbors coupling, of introducing impurities in the system and of interactions.

In 2011 I have worked at Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, under the supervision of Mikahil Katsnelson in the theory of the membrane behavior of a recently isolated material: graphene.

In February 2012 I started a PhD at the University of Freiburg, Germany, in the group Quantum Correlations in Physics, Math, and Computer Science under the supervision of David Gross, which I finished in April 2015. There, I have continued to work on Condensed Matter Physics but I have also worked on Quantum Chemistry and in the Quantum Marginal problem and shifted to more mathematical minded approaches/methods. While working at this research group, I was also acted as:

Now

At the moment I am working at Carl Zeiss SMT, Oberkochen, Germany. There, I have been in charge of the following:

At the moment I am a systems engineer working on High-NA EUV Optical Mirror Metrology. The main topics of my work are

If you wish to learn more about the multi-disciplinary and challenging area of systems engineering you can either consult: Wikipedia or NASA's Systems Engineering Handbook!

More info can be found in my Linkedin profile