Rebecca Scatena

My research spans a broad range of crystalline materials, including coordination polymers and complexes, metal–organic frameworks, hybrid organic–inorganic systems, inorganic perovskites and transition‑metal oxides, and, more recently, intermetallic compounds containing rare‑earth elements such as Eu and Gd. I work with resonant elastic X‑ray scattering for magnetic structure determination, as well as absolute structure determination using anomalous scattering. I have extensive expertise in single‑crystal X‑ray diffraction, encompassing both structure solution and aspherical charge‑density determination for chemical bonding analysis, alongside powder X‑ray diffraction using Le Bail and Rietveld refinements. My work also includes neutron diffraction from both single‑crystal and powder samples for structural and magnetic structure determination. I also use symmetry analysis and structure refinement using symmetry‑adapted modes. Complementing the experimental activity, I have significant experience with gas‑phase and periodic density functional theory calculations using Gaussian and CRYSTAL, applied to the analysis of electron and spin densities and to the calculation of magnetic exchange coupling constants.

I completed my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Chemistry at the University of Padua, Italy. I then moved to Switzerland, where I obtained my PhD at the University of Bern, specialising in crystallography. My doctoral research was presented in a thesis entitled “Charge and Spin Density Based Properties of Materials,” which was awarded the prize of Best PhD Thesis by the Italian Crystallographic Society.

I subsequently moved to the UK to take up a postdoctoral position in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Oxford. This was followed by a personal fellowship funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Early Postdoc Mobility), held jointly at University College London and the University of Oxford, where I investigated structure–property relationships in hybrid organic–inorganic quantum magnets.

I later joined Beamline I19 at Diamond Light Source as a postdoctoral researcher, working on the development of charge density analysis under extreme conditions, before taking up my current role as a Beamline Scientist on Beamline I16 at Diamond Light Source.