July 2023

Where are you from, originally?

My country of origin is Italy. I was born and raised in Rome. In my opinion, the uniqueness of this town comes from the fact that somehow you can find traces of every historical period Italy has been through: from the well-known Roman ruins, to the narrow medieval alleys, to the post-unification and Napoleonic buildings, even to the monuments of the darkest times when the regime was still ongoing. However, it is also an extremely chaotic place to live in, and it is definitely not free from problems.

I have lived for three years in Turin, which is another beautiful northern Italian city that, in my opinion, does not get all the attention it deserves! It was the first capital of Italy, and it has a very charming vibe. I might be looking at it through nostalgia lenses, because the people I have met there and the connections I built, that managed to stay even through the pandemic years, are significant like no other. But even considering that, I still think it is a nicer place to live in.

Can you summarize your educational background?

I got accepted at Politecnico di Torino (“Politecnici” is how engineering schools are called in Italy) and I moved to Turin to pursue my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. During these three years, I developed a lot of interest and curiosity in physics and mathematics, and that motivated me to continue my studies with a degree that would make it possible for me to apply CS topics to physics. After a bit of research, I found out about the Computational Sciences and Engineering Master’s degree at ETH Zürich, in Switzerland, and I applied to it. I chose to specialize in physics, and learned a lot about HPC and numerical methods. Now I am in my final year, and since last semester I joined the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) to conduct a master thesis on a Particle In Cell library.

Tell us how you first learned about ICL.

Last semester, when I was still doing my semester project and the proposal of my thesis was still in progress, my supervisors anticipated that there would have been the possibility of doing part of it at ICL. Then when they came back at me to confirm, I accepted.

What made you want to visit ICL?

I already had familiarity with the Highly efficient FFT for Exascale library (heFFTe), since my group at PSI uses it for FFT solvers in our library, and I was very amazed by its results. After my supervisors’ proposal, I did more research on the ECP software stack and looked at the other projects from the lab, in particular from the Linear Algebra group. The thought of meeting and interacting with the people involved in the development of all these libraries made me very excited to accept the proposal and was surely the main motivation. Moreover, I liked the idea of having my project divided in two parts – the one at PSI and the one at ICL, with both parts being related, but at the same time targeting different libraries and focusing on different things.

What are your research interests?

Although right now I can say I am experienced in HPC topics, numerical methods for physics and particle optics modeling, I am currently keeping my options as open as possible. I am a naturally curious person, and if the topic catches my attention, I automatically get interest in learning it. But if I had to decide tomorrow based on what I like today, I would say anything remotely related to HPC, no matter the application, would be good for me. Or in even broader terms, anything related to numerical methods. During my time at ICL, I am also developing a big interest in linear algebra.

What are you working on during your visit with ICL?

I am working on heFFTe, in particular I am writing CUDA kernels for a type of real-to-real transform that has still been not implemented.

What are your interests/hobbies outside work?

I am a self-taught artist, and I draw a lot in my free time-that is probably the hobby I invest more time in. When I draw I like to create original characters and stories, and I would like to start a comic book school in the future. I play a lot of video games, and I also really enjoy playing RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, or strategy card games like Magic: The Gathering.

Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.

Although I am left-handed, I have self-taught myself to write with my right hand. That comes extremely useful when I have to do two things at the same time, problem is I hold my pen in a very unnatural way. Most of the people I know where very surprised when they noticed!