Ilario Gelmetti, PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Emilio Palomares (ICIQ), has defended his PhD Thesis entitled “Advanced Characterization and Modelling of Charge Transfer in Perovskite Solar Cells” (assigned to the Department of Electrical Electronic Engineering and Automation of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili) publicly on July 15th July at the ICIQ Auditorium.
The members of the examining committee were: Monica Lira-Cantu (Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia), Thomas Kirchartz (Jülich Research Centre) and Wolfgang Richard Tress (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne).
Dr. Gelmetti with the members of the evaluation committee and his supervisor, Prof. Emilio Palomares.
Dr. Gelmetti is from Verona and studied Chemistry at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. He is a political activist and collaborates with Guifinet, a free, open and neutral, mostly wireless telecommunications community network. He also enjoys rock (and antenna) climbing, and thus joins all the activities organized by the ICIQ Mountain group.
Why did you study science? What do you want to achieve as a scientist?
Since childhood I’ve been very curious, trying to understand why things happen – to be honest, I studied chemistry simply because I liked it. Now, at ICIQ I’ve been working in photovoltaics: this technology is not going to save the world but can help build a more sustainable future… although we will still need to change our lifestyle to save the planet.
From the lessons learnt in ICIQ, which one do you think is the most valuable?
The importance of planning your work well! I also really enjoyed the stay I did at Imperial, the more people you work with, the more things you learn.
What advice do you have for someone starting their PhD now?
Get a notebook and write down all the new ideas you find, either from the literature or your own. It’s very helpful to have your own list of concepts and references that you can look up whenever necessary.
What ICIQ moment you’ll never forget?
How intense it was to make solar cells by high temperature annealing in the globe box in August… Luckily, in Tarragona you can always find friends up for some ice-cold drinks after work!
What’s next?
I’m really not sure…I like doing research and working with people, so I think I might look for a technician position in a lab.
If you were a laboratory instrument, what would you be?
The Schlenk line!