Massimo Mastrangeli

In Barcelona, May 2008

Hello everyone,

I am a 3rd year Italian PhD student at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium. I also belong to Interuniversity MicroElectronic Center (IMEC), located in the same town. My exploratory research aims at developing new techniques to improve the packaging of microchip. This may be seen as a rather dull task, but things start to appear exciting once you introduce stochastic techniques and self-assembly to work that out! That's what I am presently doing. And that was only the n-th trail that lead me to the galaxy of complex systems.

I started getting interested in complexity by the end of my high-school years, and since then I started pursuing a personal educational path through self-organization, dynamical systems, pattern formation, critical phenomena, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence. For my BS thesis, I looked into phase-looked loops, whose functionality is built on non-linear dynamics. For my MS thesis, I investigated (microelectromechanical) resonators, acquiring a taste for these fundamental an ubiquitous objects. Meanwhile, I fed on books by Kosko, Kauffman, Gell-Mann, Deutsch, Penrose, Barabasi and more. I am still addicted.

I probably want (a subset of) this stuff to be the leading theme of my future career. So I think CSSS may be the right place to start this new phase of my life.

I also like playing and composing music, singing in choirs, running, talking with interesting people and write satire and short essays (Italian only, so far).

I look forward to meeting you next June! Till then, you can keep in touch by writing me.

Massimo