Fernando D. Vila

Fernando received his MSc from the University of the Republic (Uruguay) in 1995 and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2000, followed by postdoctoral positions at the University of Washington with Profs. Hannes Jonsson and John Rehr. Since then he has been a Staff Scientist in the Department of Physics, as a member of the FEFF group. With a background in Theoretical and Quantum Chemistry, he specializes in various aspects of chemical reactivity, catalysis at the nanoscale, nuclear and electronic real-time dynamics, optical and X-ray spectroscopy (XAS), and the associated scientific software development and deployment needed to study these topics. In particular, he is one of the main developers of FEFF, a computer program for the simulation of EXAFS, XANES and other X-ray spectroscopies used by thousands of scientists in synchrotrons around the world. Fernando brings his expertise in combining state-of-the-art XAS simulations with density functional theory to the interpretation of experimental results in Co-ACCESS.