APPLAuSE

Bernardo Malaca
Bernardo joined the APPLAuSE programme in 2019. He obtained his MSc degree in Engineering Physics in 2018 from IST, under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira. He now focuses on optimizing laser wavefronts for particle acceleration, particularly how the laser focal trajectory could become a different degree of freedom in future accelerators. Bernardo spends his time playing guitar, reading books, playing sports, and watching NBA.

Daniel Hachmeister
Daniel was born in Lisbon, on March 13th, 1996. He is the eldest of three children who grew up in uptown Lisbon, where they all went to elementary school in Campo Grande.
He obtained his MSc in engineering physics at IST in the field of Nuclear Fusion. He is a firm believer that Nuclear Fusion will achieve commercial viability in 50 years from any given date. For this exact reason, he is pursuing a PhD in Nuclear Fusion, namely experimental physics of the scrape-off layer.
As a backup plan, Daniel has become a musician, tutor, and martial-arts instructor. If given the cue, he will not shut up about Tesla.

João Oliveira
João Oliveira completed his MSc in Physics Engineering at IST in 2019. His MSc thesis was centered on the development of a proof-of-concept spherical induction motor for space applications, and was supervised by Prof. Horácio Fernandes.
He was accepted in the APPLAuSE programme in the same year and is now working on his PhD. His research is focused on the development of control and data acquisition systems for nuclear fusion experiments. In his spare time he likes to swim, fix his electric bicycle and restore old computers.

Miguel Pardal
Born in 1995 near Lisbon, Migue lstarted an internship in the Group of Lasers and Plasmas in 2017 under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira to contribute to the production of educational tools for plasma physics.
He developed his MSc thesis in the same group, working on a simulation code to obtain the radiation emitted in plasma particle-in-cell simulations called Radiation Diagnostic for OSIRIS.
Currently he is doing his PhD in the Group of Lasers and Plasmas exploiting the possibilities offered by the aforementioned tool to explore radiation generation scenarios in plasmas under the supervision of Prof. Jorge Vieira.

Patrícia Estrela
Patricia obtained her MSc Degree in Engineering Physics in 2018, from IST. In the APPLAuSE PhD program, she works on XUV Plenoptic Imaging, where she gets to work in different laboratories either on optical experiments or on the nanofabrication of optical elements.
She became fascinated with experimental physics during her MSc degree. The interest in nanotechnology appeared during her Erasmus at Udine University (Italy) in 2016. After that, she enrolled in the nanotechnology courses available at IST and in the summer internship program at the Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory.
She joined the Group of Laser and Plasmas (GoLP) at IPFN to work on the fabrication of X-ray Fresnel Zone Plate lenses as her MSc thesis topic. Before enrolling in the APPLAuSE program, she continued to work at GoLP from 2018 to 2019.

Pedro Cosme 
Pedro completed his MSc in Engineering Physics in 2019, with a dissertation titled "Terahertz plasmonic instabilities in graphene: a hydrodynamical description". In the present day, he is pursuing his PhD on plasma physics under the supervision of Prof. Hugo Terças and Prof. João P. Bizarro, developing his research at the Laboratory for Quantum Plasmas.
During his academic path, he developed his interest in the fields of plasma physics, particularly on the cross-over to condensed matter physics, nonlinear phenomena and dynamical systems. Currently, his research focuses on plasmonics of graphene and other 2D materials, notably studying its wave instabilities as an active medium for the generation of radiation in the THz range.

Tiago Dias
Tiago C. Dias is a PhD student at IPFN in the N-PRiME group. Tiago obtained his MSc degree in Engineering Physics in 2019 at IST. His MSc thesis work was performed at the low-temperature plasmas group of IPFN, aiming to study the oxygen-atom kinetics in CO2-O2 gas discharges. Currently he is working on his PhD on plasma physics under the supervision of Prof. Vasco Guerra. His research is mainly based on plasma modelling, in particular on the creation of a unified formulation of a gas discharge using Monte Carlo techniques.
Besides science, Tiago enjoys playing football and basketball, and endure motorcycle riding.