Three Spanish postdocs from MIT, Luis Antonio Benitez, Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro and Fernando Romero López, were chosen by the Physics department as the first cohort of Mauricio and Carlota Botton Foundation Fellows.
This year’s recipients receive a one-year stipend and a research fund to pursue their research interests; will visit the Botton Foundation in Madrid this summer.
L. Antonio Benitez
With dual citizenship of Spain and Colombia, L. Antonio Benítez is an MIT postdoc whose research focuses on investigating the electronic properties of new quantum materials, with a particular emphasis on two-dimensional materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides. . His work aims to push the boundaries of our knowledge of these materials and unlock their full potential for future technologies. Benítez received his PhD in physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where he specialized in the electronic and spin properties of these materials, developing a deep understanding of their unique characteristics and behavior.
Carolina Cuesta-Lazaro
Carolina Cuestra-Lazaro’s main research interests lie at the intersection of cosmology and artificial intelligence. She is interested in developing robust and interpretable machine learning models for the advancement of physics, especially in developing cosmological inference techniques to understand the accelerating expansion of the universe. She received her PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the Institute for Computational Cosmology and now holds a joint position between MIT Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions and Harvard University’s Institute for Theory and Computation in the Center for Astrophysics. Cuestra-Lazaro is a native of Cuenca, where she says: “You can find some of the best Manchego cheeses”.
Fernando Romero Lopez
Romero-López completed his PhD in 2021 at the University of Valencia. As a postdoc, her research focuses on understanding the strong interactions between quarks and gluons, described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD). By combining effective field theories with numerical simulations of quantum field theories (lattice QCD) and machine learning tools, she seeks a better understanding of confinement mechanisms, how protons, neutrons and other hadrons are formed, the properties of the atomic nuclei. , and the nature of the exotic hadrons that have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider.
The foundation also recently funded fellowships for two PhD students in physics from MIT: Oriol Rubies Bigorda, who is researching the physics of interacting quantum particles and its applications in future quantum technologies, and Miguel Calvo Carrera, interested in applying physics to develop renewable energy sources.
Established in 2017, the Mauricio and Carlota Botton Foundation supports scientific research, including the training of young physicists at the world’s most prestigious universities, and provides support for conferences that bring world experts in the frontier fields of physics to Spain.
