Professional Msci in Physics graduate from KCL - Maths tutor with Elena

To Whom it may concern:

For the first time, I met Miss Elena Gazzarini in October 2017, in my capacity as Female tutor, as she came to me for asking academic advice. Later in October 2019, Elena opted for doing a MSci research project under my supervision. I can confirm Elena is enrolled on the MSci Physics programme with one year abroad at the Physics Dept. King’s College London, UK. Under this programme, students can spend the whole third year in a different university, previous a strong selection from both sides. Elena spent one year at the Berkeley University. She got brilliant marks over there too, one of the best performing students we have had. Elena is likely to secure a first-class degree classification.

Let me comment on my experience as Elena’s project supervisor. Presumably my experience may help you to understand her commitment and het ability. Her project deals with the characterization of active sites on copper nanoaprticles for CO2 reduction. She is going to compare a variety of nanoparticles obtained following different routes, mainly annealed, grown one-by-one and after coalescence. In a short time, Elena understood the software package, a molecular dynamics software with more than 60 different subroutines. She learnt how to manage it and how to analyse data writing an original piece of coding in Python to link geometrical features of Cu-nanoparticles to their CO2 activity. She looked within the literature and she decided to adopt an available structure-relationship for reaction energies built onto the generalized coordination number of adsorption sites. She was critical and give always physically relevant details. Elena’s progress was a very fast pace and the quality and quantity of results she got is outstanding. Her project obtained a very high mark and the highest in her cohort of student. She got very positive feedback from both her markers. Elena is currently drafting a research paper, to be soon submitted to an international journal.

Elena is enthusiastic about learning under any different aspects. She has a very positive attitude towards science, learning and people. Elena is very calm, hard-working, well organized, and punctual all qualities that makes very pleasant working with her. Elena has a strong commitment and a very strong background. She is a curious person -a quite rare but essential quality in any job career. Elena has all the skills to pursue an academic pathway in physics, in scientific communication, and generally in teaching. Elena has also a variety of other skills including playing flute in a band, being fluent in various languages. I strongly recommend Miss Gazzarrini without any reservation.

I am writing to recommend Miss Elena Gazzarrini for a position as a tutor. Elena recently finished her degree in the Department of Physics at King’s College London. She finished amongst the top 5-10 students in her year, and graduated with a well-deserved first class overall mark. I have had the great pleasure to get to know Elena over the past four years while I have been her personal tutor within the department. She is a very bright and friendly student who took an interest in the research (computational materials science with a particular interest in soft matter and biological physics) in my group. Her interest led to her applying for and being selected for an internship position in my group during the summer of 2018.

During her internship, Elena worked very closely with one of my PhD students on a project which was far from trivial. Elena demonstrated a great ability to work independently and performed to a very high level. Her efforts allowed us to make significant progress on this challenging project, which culminated in an article which was published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (Smith et al. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. (2019) 21, 9845-9857) for which Elena was a co-author. We are continuing with related research in the group, none of which would be possible without the contributions from Elena.

Elena also took my Master’s level materials modelling module this past fall. She seemed to really enjoy the module, which requires the students to write quite a bit of code to investigate challenging problems within materials modelling (Metropolis Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics codes). She received a first in this module. For her final year project, she also has been working on a materials-modelling related project with Dr. Francesca Baletto within the Department of Physics at King’s College London. From my conversations with Elena, she seemed enjoy this project a lot and she earned a high first on that project as well.

Elena is a very bright and talented young scientist, who I believe has a very promising career in front of her. In addition to her scientific skills, she is also a very personable and friendly person, who got along very well with the other students and postdocs in my group. I would be very happy to host her back in my lab as a PhD student in the future. I am sure that Elena will be a benefit to the programme both intellectually and in terms of her personality. Therefore I provide the strongest recommendation for Elena’s participation in this programme.