Miguel Pardal

Background

About Miguel Pardal

My journey in computational sciences began during my master's studies at IST, where I contributed to the development of a C/Python tool for Plasma Physics Teaching in an internship at GoLP/IPFN. This tool is called ZPIC and is still used and maintained by our team to this day. It plays a key role in plasma physics classes in IST and throughout the world, with much success. It is a simple, light and effective Particle-In-Cell code that allows students to effortlessly run simulations of complex phenomena in their laptops (some even on mobile phones) while they are learning about them in class. I completed my thesis titled "Modeling ultra-high frequency x-ray emission in PIC codes" under the exceptional guidance of Prof. Jorge Vieira and Ricardo Fonseca. During my master's research, I focused on developing a sophisticated and parallel computational tool to simulate high frequency radiation emission in Particle-In-Cell simulations which was later integrated into the Particle-In-Cell code OSIRIS. This tool was specifically designed to run efficiently on some of the world's largest supercomputers. We successfully created a high-performance code that significantly advanced the field of plasma simulations. At the moment, I am finishing my Ph.D. degree (expected conclusion by November), where I have further enhanced the tool developed during my master's thesis. One of the key achievements of my Ph.D. work was the successful implementation of a GPU-compatible version, significantly accelerating the simulations and enabling even more extensive and accurate investigations of X-ray emission in plasma-based systems. Additionally, I have gained valuable experience as an active member of the team that maintains the particle-in-cell code OSIRIS.