Rengel Cane Sia

Rengel was born and raised in the Philippines. As an undergraduate, he worked on computational kinetic modeling on copper-catalyzed atom transfer radical addition (ATRA). Thereafter, a series of fruitful scientific engagements inspired him to do a tandem of computation and experiment, which led him to propose his master's thesis on Synthesis, Computational, Electrochemical, and Photoconductivity Studies on Naphthalene and its derivatives. This led to a master’s degree in Chemistry at the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) in the Philippines.

He joined the division of Computational Chemical Physics of the Gdansk University of Technology in Poland in October 2019 as an early-stage researcher and in October 2021 as a PhD student, where he worked on a multidisciplinary research project in an innovative training network (ITN) within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

The project was called LOGIC LAB (molecular logic lab-on-a-vesicle for intracellular diagnostics), where his task involved the investigation of the photophysics of tailor-made molecular logic sensors as diagnostic tools for early identification of endothelial dysfunction, which causes atherosclerosis - a precursor to the world's leading causes of death. This work has consequently led to a doctorate (summa cum laude) within the discipline of Physical Sciences in June 2025.

He joined the Nano and Molecular Systems Research Unit (NANOMO) in July 2025, where he is working on the H2FUTURE project. In H2FUTURE, his work focuses on the expansion of quantum computing applications within the scope of Hydrogen technology and the development of methods thereof – stretching material science quantum computing to the limits of quantum simulators and existing quantum computers.