Marco Buongiorno Nardelli

Musician, Chemist, Physicist: A Renaissance Man

He probably became a musician first. Marco Buongiorno Nardelli says he started to study and make music when he was only six years old, but his interest in the sciences came early to him too. He played the drums in 1974, (black and white photo) in a Renaissance music masterclass. Now he is a flutist, composer and distinguished research professor in physics and chemistry—a man of many talents and areas of knowledge.

Marco, as he prefers to be called, keeps up his musical chops through performances and his membership in two music organizations. In his science-based work, as a computational materials physicist, he is researching how matter can be manipulated to design generations of new materials for yet unknown technologies and applications. His research activities are focused on the application of beginning electronic-structure techniques to the theoretical study of important aspects of the physics of materials. Marco's current research programs focus on various aspects of computational materials and high-performance simulations.

"Serendipity, opportunity, chance, ambition, determination, you name it"—these are what Marco says helped him get from Rome, Italy, to Denton, Texas. "I started a journey long ago and I am still traveling," he said. Working as a teacher for 11 years at North Carolina State University, Marco joint the UNT faculty in 2012.

Musician

Marco is a member of the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia, an interdisciplinary center focused on music and arts technologies that is housed within UNT's Division of Composition Studies. CEMI fosters integration of electroacoustic music, live performance, video/film, plastic arts and theater. CEMI is a unique creative environment, world-renowned for innovative works and musicians and provides an environment for research, education and public performance. Many of his compositions, such as Amargosa Triptych for piano, can be accessed through the Petrucci Music Library.

Marco also belongs to iARTA, the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology. His project, materialssoundmusic, is a new computer-aided data-driven composition environment based on the sonification and remix of of scientific data streams. Sonification of scientific data, i.e., the perceptualization of information through acoustic means, not only provides a useful alternative and complement to visual data representation, but provides also the raw data for potential artistic remixes and further musical interpretation. The materialssoundmusic project starts with the sonification of the materials property data from the online computational materials science repository AFLOWLIB.org. Read more about this project.

Another musical outlet of Marco's is his miniature opera project about making space become an interactive score and allowing the audience to create unique musical sequences by acting directly on a physical art piece, depicted in the first photograph on this page. These installations are designed as a large, interactive electronic “game boards” made of numerous “electronic tiles” that can be connected to each other in a completely reconfigurable way. Each tile contains a light sensor that triggers a unique sound event when covered. Read more.

As a member of Ecco La Musica, Marco has released the critically acclaimed album "Morning Moon" (Big Round Records, 2012). In 2018, he premiered the installation “Miniature Opera Project #1: UNKNOWN, a journey”, presented, among other venues, at CURRENTS New Media, the international exhibition and festival of new media arts in Santa Fe, N.M.

Chemist/Physicist

In his undergraduate work, Marco studied condensed matter theory: the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter. In particular this field is concerned with the "condensed" phases that appear whenever the number of constituents in a system is extremely large and the interactions between the constituents are strong. His undergraduate work was completed at a university that was founded in 1303. One of the most prestigious and largest universities in Italy, La Sapienza, formally known as Università degli Studi di Roma, is a research university in Rome and university of numerous notable professors and alumni, including Nicolaus Copernicus and Guglielmo Marconi, Nobel laureates, heads of nations, scientists and astronauts. Travel to a city in north-eastern Italy, the largest port on the Adriatic and capital of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, almost to Slovenia, and you reach the ancient city of Trieste, where Marco studied for his doctoral degree in physics at SISSA, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati.

His research group at UNT, one of the representative members of the Quantum-ESPRESSO Foundation and member of the AFLOW consortium (mentioned above), is at the forefront of computational materials and high-performance simulations. Particular emphasis is on theoretical developments of ab initio DFT-based methods, high-throughput computational techniques and computational materials design with a strong vision for sustainable development of scientific software for high-performance materials simulations.

Art and Science

He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Institute of Physics, and a Parma Recordings artist. His Art-Science practice orbits around the duality of data sonification: translation of complex events in sonic material, and object for musical poiesis. Data are raw elements for a compositional process that transcends the materiality of the original information in a post-sonification praxis: the data stream is open for elaboration as principal element of a data-driven compositional environment. He uses these data as a sculptor would use clay (the raw data) to mold any object or create any design (the music).

Teacher

"The most important soft skill that I require in my students at all levels is critical thinking," says Marco. "I look for passion, dedication and commitment. A successful PhD graduate must must achieve independence, creativity, originality of thought and courage to explore uncharted territories." Having moved away from the passive-lecture model, Marco says he tries actively to engage his students through hands-on projects and independent work.

The general skill or software apps/technology skill that Marco believes every graduate should master is coding—in any language. Mastery of a coding language is not an option in any advanced degree career—it is a necessity. In his research group, Python and Fortran are used mostly, but any computer language would do, Marco said.

Offering advice to students, Marco points to quantum computation, artificial intelligence and big data applications as the biggest opportunities facing the industry in his areas of expertise.

"Keep your eyes open; do not narrow yourself down to a hyper-specialized degree and, of course, have fun!" Marco also says "always have a mentor—dead or alive."

If you're wondering what book you might expect to see on Marco's bedside table, here goes. Of course, there is not only one.

Primo Levi, Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table)
Albert Camus, Lettre a un Ami Allemande (Letter to a German Friend)
Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of New Music
Patrick O’Brien, The Mauritius Command
Luciano Berio, Intervista sulla Musica (Interview on Music)
Wendy Heller, Music in the Baroque
Frank Zappa, Zappa on Zappa

Contact Information

940-369-8596  |  Marco.BuongiornoNardelli@unt.edu  |  Physics Building, Room 317  | Google Scholar Profile