Roberto Brenes

A PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science, Roberto is a member of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Lab. He uses MATLAB’s versatile Partial Differential Equation (PDE), Global Optimization, and ParallelComputingToolboxes to solve, model, and fit the group’s experimental data sets on carrier recombination and diffusion in semiconductors for optoelectronic applications. Leveraging the PDE Toolbox, his most recent work, “AccurateDetermination of Semiconductor Diffusion Coefficient Using Confocal Microscopy,” explores common pitfalls in modeling charge carrier diffusion in semiconductors that were elucidated by simulations carried out using the PDE toolbox. He is now focused on modeling semiconductors for solar applications that present anisotropic diffusion and complex boundaries using the PDE Toolbox coupled with the Parallel Computing and the Global Optimization Toolboxes to optimize multi-variable minimization problems. The Parallel Computing Toolbox has been essential in bringing the computation times down to manageable time frames, allowing him to explore multiple schemes that could represent the complex carrier diffusion anisotropy that is observed. He earned an SB in electrical engineering and physics fromMIT.