We are interested in combining plant and material sciences to harness plants as biofactories to produce complex biological materials with tailored properties, with particular focus on cotton. Cotton is the global leading natural fiber involving 250 million around the world from farmer to retailer. Combining chemical synthesis of cotton fibers building blocks and a comprehensive understanding of the underlying biochemical and physiological mechanisms, we can produce cotton fibers with tailored properties such as increased hydrophobicity (think about your rain jacket). We coined this approach as Material Farming. This approach is an opportunity to implement sustainable alternative(s) to produce functional fibers overcoming the chemical fiber post-processing known to generate large amounts of chemical waste hazardous to the enviroment and humans. Finally, our approach will allow us to harness higher organisms' complexity, such as cotton plants, which can change how we currently think about the design of complex biological materials, plant sciences, and their physiology and biochemistry with a profound impact on the future of cotton-related industries.

We explore hidden signatures from the archaeological artifacts using artificial intelligence (AI) to infer human behavior. Our research explores cultural evolution and transmission in the Levant, the origin of domestication of cattle in the Fertile Crescent, and the relations between hominins and fire use. We combine the dozens of thousand unearthed and available archaeological remains (pottery, statues, stone tools, etc.) with AI to infer new relations between cultures - the known of the unknowns - while pinpointing the origin of revolutionary technologies their dispersion and implications to the cultural transmission continuum. We investigate the domestication of cattle, and their use for cultures was originated in the Fertile Crescent. What if older organic artifacts (plow) perished and the use of animals for plowing started earlier? We use AI combined with ancient cattle bones to find morphological changes induced by plowing and inform whether this behavior started earlier, implying a new conceptual understanding of a revolutionary technology that changed our way of living until today. Pyrotechnology is one of the most revolutionary advances in human evolution initiated about 2 million years ago. This technology allowed, for example, the cooking of food, changing our biochemistry (e.g., more energetic intake) and physiology (e.g., larger brain size). We develop new AI-based methodologies applied to flint stone tools (the most durable artifacts) that act as a thermometer to infer hominin relations with fire deep in time.

sustainable resources Self-healing materials & concepts; New optoelectronic materials; Halide Perovskites; Between hard and soft matter.

Quantum effects in BIology Proteins as solid-state electronic materials; Electronic charge transport in and across proteins; Biomolecular electronics; Between soft & hard matter.

Isolation, characterization and cloning of enzymes from extremophilic microorganisms.

Crystalization and determination of the three-dimensional structures of extremophilic enzymes.

Structure of acyl carrier protein synthase (AcpS) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb)

The XENON Dark Matter project: Data analysis, physics interpretations, development and construction XENONnT , PMTs, calibration techniques, statistical inference

Novel effects in LXe detectors

Future concepts for Cosmic Ray precision detection

Data analysis - Searches for physics beyond the standard model

Asymmetry in electron/muon final states

Instrumentation - Upgrade of the ATLAS muon spectrometer

Performance studies

Basic R&D

Charge and light amplification in Liquid Argon

Physics applications - future calorimeters in accelerators