Group Leader Fabrice Piazza E-mail: fpiazza at pucmm.edu.do; Phone: + 1 809 580 1962, ext. 4081 Resume
Fabrice Piazza is Associate Professor, Director of the Nanoscience Research Laboratory (NRL) and leader of the Functional Nanocarbon Materials Group (NANOCARBON) of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM), Santiago, Dominican Republic. Born in France, Fabrice earned his doctoral degree in Physics in 2001 from the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, under the supervision of Dr. André Golanski and Dr. Paul Montgomery. He initiated his research career studying the synthesis of functional Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) thin films from a new distributed electron cyclotron resonance (DECR) plasma process in the French National Research Center (CNRS). In 2001 and until 2004, Fabrice joined, as Research Associate, the University of Cambridge, England, where, under the supervision of Prof. John Robertson, he conducted the research and succeeded in providing innovative protective carbon coatings from electron cyclotron wave resonance (ECWR) plasma for next generation of ultra-high storage density optical media in collaboration with Philips and Thomson. Between spring 2004 and spring 2006, Fabrice was employed as Research Associate at the University of Puerto Rico where he worked in Prof. Gerardo Morell’s group on nanocrystalline diamond thin films, diamond crystals, carbon and BCN nanotubes targeting emerging technologies in electronics, bio-nanoprobes and innovative coatings. Piazza and Morell were the first to successfully report on the low temperature synthesis of diamond nanocrystals on polymers for electronics and thin film coating applications.