Prof. David Lima Azevedo

Profile

A physicist and professor with more than 30 years of university teaching, working at the boundary between condensed matter physics and computer simulation. He is Full Professor at the Institute of Physics of the University of Brasilia (UnB), permanent faculty member of the Graduate Programme in Physics (PPGF-UnB) and holder of a CNPq research productivity fellowship. To teaching and research he now adds science outreach and the development of open data tools on Brazilian higher education.

Education

• BSc in Physics — Federal University of Maranhão, UFMA (1990).
• MSc in Physics — Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, UNICAMP (1997).
• PhD in Physics — Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics, UNICAMP (2001).
• Postdoctoral research — Federal University of Ceará, UFC (2004–2005) and Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, UFRN (2010).

Career

• Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA) — Professor from 1992 to 2013, rising to Associate Professor III; permanent faculty member of PPGF-UFMA.
• University of Brasilia (UnB) — Professor since 2013 and Full Professor since 2025; teaching at undergraduate and graduate level in Physics (PPGF-UnB).

Research areas

Condensed Matter Physics and Atomic and Molecular Physics, with an emphasis on computer simulation — ab initio calculations (DFT and related methods) and molecular dynamics. Main topics:

• Electronic, optical and vibrational structure of molecules and nanostructures;
• Nanomaterials and 2D materials: MXenes, dichalcogenides, carbon nanostructures (penta-graphene, nanoribbons, monolayers);
• Vibrational and transport properties of inorganic and biological molecules.

Publications and scientific activity

• About 90 full articles in journals, 1 book and 7 book chapters.
• H-index = 17 and more than 1,300 citations (Web of Science; comparable figures on Google Scholar).
• Reviewer for international journals (among them Molecular Simulation, AIP Advances, Journal of Electronic Materials and the Brazilian Journal of Physics) and member of editorial boards.
• Supervision of undergraduate, master's and doctoral students.

Science outreach

Creator of the DA ciência project and of the open tools MAPA-GR (undergraduate education, INEP/SINAES data) and MAPA-PG (graduate education, CAPES data), whose methodology was published in the journal Physicae Organum (2026).