MBA (October 2021-present): MIB Trieste School of Management, Trieste, Italy.
Previous position (June 2021 – September 2021): Research associate with Professor Sally Brooker (Otago, New Zealand) and Professor Federico Totti (Florence, Italy) on ‘Towards Predictable Tuning of Spin Crossover’.
PhD (2017-2021): co-tutelled program between the University of Otago, New Zealand, with Professor Sally Brooker and University of Florence, Italy, with Professor Federico Totti, ‘Towards Predictable Tuning of Spin Crossover’.
MSc (2015-2017, Chemical Sciences): University of Florence, MSc thesis with Professor Federico Totti, ‘DFT Characterization of Vanadyl Phthalocyanine on Graphene’, awarded with distinction.
BSc (2012-2015, Applied Chemistry): University of Rome Tor Vergata, BSc thesis with Professor Pietro Tagliatesta, ‘Optimizing and Characterizing Buffer Layers in Polymeric Solar Cells’, awarded with distinction.
Luca Bondì at the (left) Chemistry Department, University of Otago, (right) St. Claire beach, Dunedin.
I came to New Zealand in 2017, after completing my Master’s at the University of Florence (Italy), to pursue PhD studies with Prof. Sally Brooker on a University of Otago PhD scholarship. I was fascinated by the idea of visiting places so far from my country, in terms of nature and people’s attitudes. I was conquered by New Zealand, in the way it opened my mind and caste me into a very international environment. During these past four years I came across a lot of opportunities and I met people from worldwide countries. I got chances to talk to them, to experience their life perspective and, through putting myself into ‘somebody else shoes’, I grew incredibly.
The University of Otago provides a very dynamic environment, full of inputs from very well qualified professors from domestic and international universities. As well, the chemistry department spreads an atmosphere of being a very safe place, where scientific ideas are very welcome, finding fertile land to blossom.
I am really grateful to Sally and Federico for their guidance in this path. This academic career of mine has supplied me with an unusual path which I consider priceless: my PhD studies were shaped from both experimental and computational chemical perspectives. From Sally I learned a wide range of hands-on skills, from multi-step organic synthesis to metal complexations and crystal growth. Additionally, a very large set of characterisation techniques (SCXRD, NMR, IR, UV-vis, ESI-MS, CHN). From my summers in Florence with Federico I learnt several IT skills, big data analysis and basic language in Linux.
On top of all of that, I learnt how to write reports and manuscripts suitable for publication. Quickly, it became clear in my mind how steep is the walk to pack a refined draft where each tiny detail is accurately, concisely and clearly described. As well, I often presented my results to large audiences in international conferences. During these four years, I was accepted to nine international conferences and I had the opportunity to attend to six of them (because of the COVID19 pandemic the others were virtual), giving invited talks at a few of them. We published a very good amount of work in strong international peer-reviewed journals, including Inorg. Chem., Chem. Asian J., Chem. Eur. J. and J. Mat. Chem. C. and we currently have a paper under revision for Inorg. Chem. Front. and another paper in an advanced stage of preparation.
Brookers Bunch is an extremely friendly workspace, each of the members of our crew was always available to help at the first glance. Finally, a special acknowledge to the MacDiarmid Institute that opened up several doors during these past years and invested a large number of resources for the professional growth of us, young researchers.
I would have never had the same experience here in Italy, and this is for me a reason for eternal gratitude to this wonderful country, New Zealand!
