Dr Francesco Turci

I am a lecturer at the School of Physics, University of Bristol (UK), working on nonequilibrium disordered systems with powerful theoretical and numerical techniques. My focus is on emergent properties, collective behaviour and spatial structure in a wide range of systems: from glasses to animals, from gels to bones.

Research

• July 2023 – today
  Lecturer in Physics – Education at the University of Bristol
• January 2019 – July 2023
  Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Bristol.
  Topic: Wetting and drying in active systems.
  with  Nigel Wilding

• July 2014 – December 2018
  Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Bristol.
  Topic: Deeply supercooled liquids and structure.
  with  C. Patrick Royall

• July 2012 – July 2014
  Postdoctoral Fellow in the Theory of Soft Condensed Matter Group, Université du Luxembourg.
  Topic: Growth kinetics of solid-liquid interfaces.
  with Tanja Schilling

• October 2009 – July 2012
  PhD Thesis in Physics in the Laboratoire Charles Coulomb – UMR CNRS et Université Montpellier 2.
  Topic : Transport Models with Constrained Dynamics: Heterogeneous Flow and Intermittency.

• with Estelle Pitard

• December 2008 – July 2009
  Research project at the Physics of the City Laboratory, Physics Department, Bologna University.
  Topic : Statistical properties of a dynamic process on networks. Monte Carlo modeling.

• Supervisors : A. Bazzani, G. Turchetti.

• January – September 2007 Research project in the frame of the CoChiSe (Cell-on-Chip bioSensor) european programme at ARCES, Bologna University.
  Topic : Modelisation of evaporative fluxes for the control of micro-fluidic devices. Experiments and simulations.Supervisors: G. Servizi, D. Gazzola.

Teaching

Teaching assistant:

• 2014-today: In Bristol, I have taught Biophysics, Soft Matter, Statistical Physics and Scientific Computing to bachelor and master’s students in the School of Physics and tutored students in Foundational courses.
• 2012: During my post-doc in Luxembourg, I taught (in English and French) Electrodynamics, for two months, whilst also planning, organising and evaluating exams.
• 2009-2012: During my PhD studies, I was teaching assistant in Calculus, Mechanics and Newtonian dynamics for first year Bachelor students in Physics, Geophysics and Chemistry. In total, I taught (in
• French) three modules of 64 hours each.

Student supervision

• 2023 – today: Supervisor of 2 MSci students.
• 2019-2023: Supervisor of 2 PhD students.
• 2014-2018: Supervision and co-supervision of 10 Master students; co-supervision of 5 PhD students. Currently official second supervisor of two PhD students in glassy physics and biological neural networks.
• 2012-2014: Co-supervision of 2 Master and 2 PhD students.

Education & Qualifications

• October 2023
  Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) (UK)
• January 2023
  Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale – Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (Italy)
• 2013 and 2019
  Qualification à Maitre de Conférénces – Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (France)
• June 2012 – Université Montpellier 2 (France).
  Ph.D. thesis Transport Models with Constrained Dynamics: Heterogeneous Flow and Intermittency. Supervisor: E. Pitard.
  Jury: C. Appert-Rolland, S. Ciliberto, N. Kern, K. Mallick, A. Parmeggiani, M. Sellitto, C. Vanderzande.
• June 2009 – Bologna University Alma Mater Studiorum (Italy).
  Master Degree in Applied Physics: 110/110 cum laude.
• October 2007 – Bologna University Alma Mater Studiorum (Italy).
  First Degree in Physics: 110/110 cum laude.
• 2006 – oboe diploma at G. Frescobaldi Conservatory of Music, Ferrara (Italy). Mark: 9/10.
• July 2004 – Scientific Highschool Fulcieri Paulucci de’ Calboli in Forlì (Italy).
  Maturità Scientifica : 100/100.

Publications

See full list here.

Languages

Fluent English, Fluent French, Elementary Turkish, Italian mother-tongue.

IT Skills

• Certificates : French C2i1, C2i2e, Coursera Machine Learning, Andrew Ng, Stanford University (2020).
• Development : C/C++, Python, R, Mathematica, Matlab/Octave. Elements of Fortran, Tcl/Tk, Java.
• Simulation and data analysis: LAMMPS, ESPResSo Molecular Dynamics, VMD, Comsol Multiphysics, Matplotlib, Gnuplot, Grace, DataGraph.
• Image processing : Gimp, Pixelmator, Inkscape, OmniGraffle, VectorDesigner, Matlab.

Referee Activity

I regular review scientific articles for journals in the areas of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and disordered condensed-matter systems. The main journals and institutions for which I have acted as a referee are:

• Nature Publishing Group: Nature Physics
• American Physical Society Journals: Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, Physical Review Materials, Physical Review E, Physical Review B
• AIP Publishing: Journal of Chemical Physics
• Royal Society of Chemistry: Soft Matter
• IOP Publishing: Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, Journal of Physics: Condensed
• Matter
• French National Research Agency (ANR) (evaluation of research grants)