Team

Marco Bernardi is a Professor of Applied Physics, Physics and Materials Science at Caltech. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from MIT in 2013, working on theory and simulations of novel materials and physical processes for energy conversion. He was a postdoc in the Physics Department at UC Berkeley, where he developed new computational approaches to study the dynamics of excited electrons in materials. Marco's group at Caltech develops quantum mechanical calculations to understand electron interactions and dynamics in condensed matter, with application to electronics, energy, ultrafast science and quantum technology. Among other recognitions, Marco received the Franco Strazzabosco Award in 2020, the NSF CAREER Award in 2018, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award in 2017, the Psi-K Volker Heine Young Investigator Award for electronic structure theory in 2015, and the Intel Ph.D. Fellowship in 2013. His work favors quantitative analysis and accurate computational approaches to advance the understanding of novel materials, charting new directions in materials theory.

Email: bmarco at caltech.edu
Phone: (626) 395-2515
Address: Caltech, 1200 E California Blvd. MC 107-81, Pasadena CA, 91125

Tommaso holds a bachelor's and master's degrees in Physics from the University of Trieste, and a PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from EPFL with a thesis titled: "Spectral and thermodynamic properties of interacting electrons with dynamical functionals". He is specialized in the simulation of correlated electronic structures of materials, and, in particular, in the development of new algorithms to predict the spectral and thermodynamic properties of complex solids. Tommaso has joined the group in October 2024. His research focuses on electron-electron interactions and related transport phenomena.

Ramesh earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from Tribhuvan University, and a Ph.D. from Wake Forest University with a thesis titled "Modeling Excitations in Quantum Magnets". His doctoral research primarily focuses on building low energy model Hamiltonians to understand spin-phonon interactions in magnetic insulators and quantitatively estimating their consequences for experiments, such as spectroscopy and the thermal Hall effect. Ramesh Joined the group in July 2026. His research interests include non-linear spin phonon interactions and chiral phonons.

David received his BA in physics from the University of California Berkeley in 2021. He performed undergraduate research in the group of Liang Tan at LBNL which focused on the interplay of anharmonic lattice dynamics and electronic structure in halide perovskites using tight binding models. David entered the Caltech graduate program in applied physics in 2021. His research interests include combining dynamical mean field theory and ab initio electron phonon methods to treat strongly correlated materials.

Serena received her BS and MSc degrees in Physics from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2022 and 2024, respectively. Her undergraduate research focused on the study of hole states in silicon quantum dots for integrated spin qubits. For her master's thesis, conducted at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, she used density functional theory and dynamical functionals to investigate the interplay between electronic correlations and structural effects in vanadium dioxide. Serena entered the Caltech graduate program in Applied Physics in 2025. Her current research interests include the development of first-principles methods to study exciton- and magnon-phonon interactions.

Sergei received his BS degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. His undergraduate research focused on the molecular dynamic study of the glass transition process in metals. In 2022, Sergei received his MSc in Computational Science and Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, where he did research on the implementation and application of machine learning methods for materials property modeling. In January 2023, Sergei started his PhD program at Caltech. His research focuses on the use of deep learning methods for modeling electronic transport in materials.

Khoa obtained his BS in Mathematics and Chemistry at University of Houston in 2020. In his undergraduate research, he studied Förster resonance energy transfer in fluorescent protein, and singlet fission dynamics for a pair of molecules. In Summer 2019, Khoa also worked at NIST Boulder to study atomic flux circuits for the manufacture of chip-scale atomic devices. Khoa joined Caltech Chemistry program in 2020 and he is currently focusing on the study of magnon and phonon interaction in magnetic materials.

Yao obtained his BS degree in Physics at Nanjing University (NJU). His undergraduate research was focused on phase transitions in strongly correlated systems using quantum many-body techniques and functional renormalization (fRG) under the surpervision of Prof. Qianghua Wang. Yao entered the graduate program in Caltech Applied Physics in 2021. His current research interests include developing many-body first-principles methods for polarons.

Shiv obtained a BA in Physics and a BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 2024, where his undergraduate research focused on computational and statistical physics. His senior thesis, conducted under the supervision of Arvind Murugan, explored emergent behaviors in driven magnetic colloidal systems using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations and data-driven analysis. He subsequently completed a master's degree at the University of Cambridge, undertaking advanced coursework in quantum field theory and statistical field theory. Shiv joined the Applied Physics PhD program at Caltech in 2025. His research focuses on first-principles modeling of electron–phonon interactions, polarons, and related many-body phenomena, with an emphasis on scalable computational methods.

Laurie received her BS degree in Chemistry from the University of California Los Angeles in 2023. Her undergraduate research involved synthesizing and characterizing semiconductor nanoplatelets in Prof. Justin Caram's group. Laurie joined the graduate program in Caltech Chemistry in 2023. Her research interests include magneto-transport and spin relaxation phenomena in topological materials.

Thomas obtained his BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Lehigh University in 2025. His undergraduate research with the Strandwitz group focused on atomic layer deposition of thin film heterostructures for applications in optoelectronics. He also worked with machine learning to develop interatomic potentials for use in molecular dynamics simulations of shock loading conditions during an REU at NC State, and developed a computational model to predict the drying behavior of a polymer solution in a web-drying process as a capstone project with the Lamart corporation. He joined the Materials Science PhD program at Caltech in 2025 and his current research interests include topological materials and applications of quantum geometry.