Alessandro Genova
R&D Software Engineer at Rutgers University - Newark
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAlessandro Genova is an R&D Software Engineer with nine years of experience bridging quantum chemistry research and high-performance scientific software development. Based in New York and holding a PhD in Quantum Chemistry, he builds and optimizes parallelized atomistic simulation tools and contributes production-grade code to prominent open-source projects such as cclib and Drake. His work spans low-level parsing fixes for computational chemistry outputs and improving Python bindings and geometric algorithms for robotics, demonstrating fluency across scientific domains and language boundaries. At Kitware and Rutgers he has combined algorithmic rigor with scalable engineering to enable large-scale electronic-structure predictions. Notably, he has implemented subtle but critical fixes—like improved Psi4 parsing and Eigen type casters for pybind11—that prevent silent errors in downstream analyses. He brings a research-first mindset to engineering, pairing deep domain knowledge with practical software craftsmanship.
9 years of coding experience
Master's Thesis, Theoretical Chemistry, Master's Thesis, Theoretical Chemistry at Leiden UniversityDoctor of Philosophy (PhD), Quantum Chemistry, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Quantum Chemistry at Rutgers University - NewarkMaster of Science (MS), Physical Chemistry, Master of Science (MS), Physical Chemistry at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Italian
Github Skills (18)
c-language10
python10
computational-chemistry10
eigen10
parsing10
drake10
pybind1110
text-parsing10
cprogramming-language10
robotics9
unit-testing9
linear-algebra9
optimization8
geometry8
data-structures6
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
cclib/cclib
Oct 2018 - Nov 2018
Parsers and algorithms for computational chemistry logfiles
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:10 commits, 3 PRs, 9 comments in 12 days
Contributions summary:Alessandro primarily focused on fixing parsing issues within the `cclib` library, specifically related to the parsing of output files from the computational chemistry software Psi4. Their contributions include fixing the parsing of molecular orbital coefficients, normal modes, and the origin point. Furthermore, the user added a new regression test for Psi4 and addressed an issue regarding finite-difference scf data. They also added parsing functionalities for the functional used in Psi4 calculations and addressed a minor issue with the CJSON bond atom index.
logfilescheminformaticspythonchemistryparsers
RobotLocomotion/drake
Feb 2022 - Mar 2022
Model-based design and verification for robotics.
Role in this project:Backend & Algorithm Engineer
Backend & Algorithm EngineerContributions:7 reviews, 5 commits, 3 PRs in 1 month
Contributions summary:Alessandro implemented and refined EigenPtr type casters for pybind11, enabling the use of Drake's Eigen types within Python bindings. They added test cases to validate these bindings and ensure compatibility with the Eigen library. Furthermore, the user contributed to the VPolytope class by adding the ability to create VPolytope objects from non-minimal sets of vertices and improved the algorithm. They also modified the PlanarSceneGraphVisualizer to leverage this enhanced VPolytope functionality.
model-basedmodel-based-designroboticsdrakeverification
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