Diego Alonso Álvarez

As many physicist, I started my degree with an eye in astrophysics and astronomy… but then I ended up working on semiconductors science and nanotechnology, doing a PhD on quantum nanostructures with application in infrared devices such as light detectors, lasers and solar cells. As a postdoc in the UK since I came in 2012, I devoted my efforts to the research of new materials for photovoltaics. Over time, however, my experience broadened to include not just the solar cells, but the photovoltaic system as a whole and its integration with other systems, like in hybrid photovoltaic-thermal solar systems to produce both electricity and hot water for industry or domestic applications.
During all these years as a researcher, first as a PhD and then as a postdoc, I worked extensively developing software for my research. Combined with my teaching duties at Imperial College, precisely on programming and computational physics, by the end of the last postdoc contract I decided to move on and try something different, outside the academic path. In November 2018 I joint the Research Computing Service, at Imperial College London to work as Research Software Engineer, putting these computational experience into practice and making it my goal, rather than a means to achieve something else.