Pedro Ninhos completed the Integrated Masters Degree in Engineering and Technological Physics (MEFT) at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Lisbon, in 2020. His background is in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, working in the frontier between Condensed Matter and Nano-Optics and studying the theory of light-matter interactions in nanoscale systems. He joined POLIMA as a PhD student in September 2022, under the supervision of N. Asger Mortensen, Nuno Peres and Christos Tserkezis. His PhD research was on the excitonic optical response of 2D materials, focusing on periodically modulated hexagonal boron nitride. Pedro spent 6 months as exchange student at Universidad Autónoma Madrid, under the supervision of Juan José Palacios, where he contributed to the development of an efficient numerical method to obtain the optical properties of two-dimensional semiconductors.
Pedro defended his thesis, titled "Optical Properties of Two-dimensional Semiconductors: Excitonic and Polaritonic Effects" in January 2026, with Kristian Thygesen (Technical University of Denmark), Diego Martin-Cano (Universidad Autónoma Madrid) and Joel D. Cox (SDU) as examiners. During his stay at SDU, he led or contributed to the following publications:
[1] P. Ninhos, A. J. Uría-Álvarez, C. Tserkezis, N. Asger Mortensen and J. J. Palacios, "Microscopic screening theory for excitons in two-dimensional materials: A bridge between effective model and ab initio descriptions", under review (2026).
[2] V. G. M. Duarte, P. Ninhos, C. Tserkezis, N. A. Mortensen, and N. M. R. Peres, "Tunable exciton polaritons in biased bilayer graphene", Physical Review B 111(7), 075411 (2025).
[3] P. Ninhos, C. Tserkezis, N. A. Mortensen, and N. M. R. Peres, "Tunable exciton polaritons in band-gap engineered hexagonal boron nitride", ACS Nano 18(31), 20751 (2024).
