Our Team

Prof. Daniel Escudero

Principal Investigator

Prof. Escudero is currently Assistant BOFZAP Professor in the Department of Chemistry, at the KU Leuven. His current research interests lay at the interface between computational/theoretical chemistry and photochemistry and present a specific focus on the applications in molecular optoelectronics. Born in 1984 in Palma de Mallorca, he graduated in Chemistry at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain, and obtained his PhD with honors in Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, in 2011. Following his PhD, he spent three years (2011-2014) at the Max-Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung, Germany and four years (2014-2018) at the Université de Nantes as a postdoctoral researcher. He was appointed tenure-track Assistant Professor at the KU Leuven (Belgium) in 2018. Among his recognitions, he was awarded the Green Photonics STIFT prize for his PhD work by the Fraunhofer Innovationscluster and he was the holder of a Marie Sklodowska-Curie action (CompOLEDs, H2020-MSCA-IF-2015 call). He is author of more than 65 publications, he has delivered over 15 invited lectures all over the world and serves as a reviewer for numerous international journals. He serves in the editorial board of Dyes and Pigments and Molecules.

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Mariana Telles do Casal

PostDoc Researcher

Mariana T. do Casal obtained her Doctorate in 2022 at the Aix-Marseille Université. Her research interests include using computational chemistry to understand the photophysical processes molecules undergo after photoexcitation, with a focus on doubly excited states and mixed quantum-classical nonadiabatic dynamics. Currently, she is working with excited-state rate theory.

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Pham Thanh Chung

PostDoc Researcher

P. T. Chung completed his doctoral degree in 2021. His research focused on the creation and analysis of high-efficiency chromophores with applications in sensing, phototherapy, and OLED. Presently, his primary interest involves investigating photophysical properties and excited state models using a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches.

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Maxime Hodée

PostDoc Researcher

Maxime obtained his PhD in 2023 at the University of Rennes, France. His research consists in the study of the excited state of photoactive molecular systems, considering the UV-vis absorption, prompt and delayed fluorescence, non-radiative de-excitation pathways, and all excited state processes. He also uses several theoretical tools, ranging from TD-DFT to Coupled Cluster methods, as well as approximated tight-binding methodologies such as DFTB. His current research consists in the study of the photophysical properties of polymer systems.

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Maristella Alessio

PostDoc Researcher

Dr. Maristella Alessio is a postdoc with expertise in computational chemistry of molecules and materials, molecular magnetism, and heterogenous catalysis. Her current research explores non-Aufbau radicals and their potential applications as emitters.

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Laura Galleni

Doctoral Researcher

Laura Galleni is a PhD student at the Department of Chemistry of KU Leuven in collaboration with the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (Imec). She obtained her M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Milan, Italy. Her research focuses on simulating photoresists for extreme UV photolithography.

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Arne Meulemans

Doctoral Researcher

Arne Meulemans has a FWO PhD Fellowship for Fundamental Research, 11PQU24N, and does his work at the department of Chemistry of KU Leuven, where he also obtained his M.Sc. in chemistry at KU Leuven. His master thesis was a computational study of solid phase anti-Kasha photoluminescence. His current research focuses on thermoelectric properties of conjugated polymers.

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Yixuan Li

Doctoral Researcher

Yixuan Li is a PhD student at the department of Chemistry at KU Leuven. She did her M.Sc. in Functional Materials at the University of Marburg, Germany. Currently, her research aims at developing density-based descriptors for the prediction of radiative and non-radiative photochemical processes.

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Steven He

Doctoral Researcher

He is a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry of KU Leuven. His research is mainly about “Photochemistry in complex environments”. His favorite motto is “Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen” from David Hilbert.

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Youssef Badawy

Doctoral Researcher

Youssef is a PhD student at the Department of Chemistry of KU Leuven. He obtained his master's from the Erasmus Mundus TCCM program. His area of research is focused on studying the photophysical properties of TADF-based emitters.

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Janko Civic

Doctoral Researcher

Janko is an FWO PhD fellow at KU Leuven, conducting research under the supervision of Prof. Jeremy Harvey, with co-supervision from Prof. Daniel Escudero and Prof. Hideaki Mizuno. He earned his master's degree in 2023, specializing in modeling metalloenzymes through classical molecular dynamics simulations and QM/MM calculations. His current research focuses on investigating photoinduced reactions in fluorescent proteins.

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David Catalán Fenollosa

Master Project Student

David Catalán Fenollosa is a master's degree student in the Erasmus Mundus TCCM program at the University of València. He is interested in the photochemistry and photophysics of atmospheric molecules of environmental relevance.

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