Simone Gargiulo grew up in the small town of Boscoreale, in the province of Naples, Italy. Here, besides being a hyperactive child, he absorbed the richness of the Neapolitan spirit, for which he is deeply grateful. Due to his talkative nature, many professors encouraged him to explore humanistic studies, an idea that he greatly appreciated. However, Simone ultimately chose to undertake scientific studies. After much internal debate between physics and engineering — almost as if reflecting an eternal struggle — he pursued a Bachelor and Master of Science in Electronic Engineering at the University of Naples Federico II, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 2018. During his master's, he had the opportunity to spend more than one year at CERN, where he worked on crystal collimation for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2019, reviving a previously suppressed interest in fundamental physics, Simone secured an open position at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), sponsored by Google Inc. At EPFL, he delved into the study of nuclear excitation phenomena within the framework of nuclear energy storage. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from EPFL in 2023, and his doctoral thesis was recognized with the Swiss Physical Society Award for General Physics. Though his academic journey has been primarily scientific, Simone has always maintained a vibrant passion for philosophy and the humanities.
