Stefan Bromley heads the Nanoclusters and Nanostructured Materials (www.ub.edu/nnmgroup) group within the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at the University of Barcelona (IQTC-UB). He obtained his PhD in Computational Physics (University of Southampton, UK) in 1997 and has held research posts in the UK (Postdoctoral fellow, Royal Institution), the Netherlands (Associate Professor, Delft University of Technology) and Spain (Ramón y Cajal fellow, UB). He has published over 200 articles and given many invited talks about his work at international conferences and academic institutions. He has also co-edited two books and co-authored two reviews on computational modelling of nanoparticles and nanomaterials.

With the constant technological drive for device miniaturisation, materials are increasingly being used at scales of only a few 100s or 1000s of atoms (i.e. the nanoscale). Such nanomaterials display novel size-dependent properties compared to materials at everyday length scales. Employing classical atomistic and quantum chemical modelling methods implemented on powerful supercomputers, we aim to provide a detailed predictive understanding of the structural, electronic and chemical properties of nanomaterials. We focus on how nanomaterials evolve with size, and designing new materials from nanoscale building blocks. Our research follows three main themes:

1) Inorganic nanoclusters and nanostructured materials for energy applications (e.g TiO₂, ZnO, CeO₂).

2) Nucleation, growth and properties of nano-sized cosmic dust particles (e.g. nanosilicates).

3) Design and understanding of low-dimensional materials for electronics/spintronics using organic molecular building blocks .