Zeila Zanolli is a a Full Professor in “Theory and Simulations of Quantum Materials” at Utrecht University, where she is leading the “Quantum Materials by Design” group. She is recognized world-wide for her works in first-principles simulations of Quantum Materials, and for establishing on a quantitative basis the interplay between topology, superconductivity and magnetism. She has led the implementation of superconducting Density Functional Theory in the Open-Source code SIESTA, making the systematic study of complex forms superconductivity (for instance, proximity induced, spin-triplet, high-temperature superconductivity) in addition to conventional ones. Her scientific production is characterized by high quality publications, more than 250 contributions to international conferences ( ~100 invited/plenary/keynote at international conferences including APS and MRS Meetings and Graphene conference), and numerous invitations to international schools and lectures (Chile, Mexico, Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK).
Before joining Utrecht University, Prof. Zanolli was a Ramon y Cajal Fellow at ICN2, Barcelona, Spain (2018–20), an excellence program of the Spanish Ministry for Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (MINECO). In 2016–18, she leaded the Nanospintronics Group at the Physics Dept of RWTH Aachen University, funded by the DFG. In 2012–15 she was Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) with the GRAFIEST project.
Her academic teaching includes quantum mechanics, quantum transport, and quantum materials theory and simulations. In Utrecht she serves in the program advisory committee to strengthen the theoretical curricula in the BSc in Chemistry and Nanomaterial Science MSc. Next to these undergraduate courses, she organized and developed several international schools for graduate students.
She is Deputy Chair or the European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility (ETSF), a knowledge center and research newtwork across Europe and the United in theoretical spectroscopy. She is serving in several international boards on Quantum Materials (European Physical Society, NWO Quantum Committee, Dutch Chemical Society) and atomistic simulations (Psi-k working group “Quantum materials driven by correlations, topology or spin”).
Prof. Zanolli is actively engaged in Science Policy. She served as Treasurer in the Young Academy of Europe board (2018-22). Professor Zanolli is committed to Open Science, via Open-Source code development (SIESTA, YAMBO) and as a member of the Editorial College of SciPost Physics, a Diamond Open Access publication (2019–24). Since 2021, she serves in the Editorial Board Journal of Physics Materials (IOP), and coordinated the Focus Issues “Quantum Materials” and “Women’s and Perspective on Computational Materials Science”.
In 2018-20, Prof. Zanolli served in the Executive Committee of the MaX (MAterials design at the eXascale) European Centre of Excellence which enables materials modeling, simulations, discovery and design at the frontiers of the current and future High Performance Computing (HPC), High Throughput Computing (HTC) and data analytics technologies.
More info: Zeila's short bio