PEOPLE

Marco Garavelli is full professor in Physical Chemistry at Bologna University (Italy). His main research activity focuses on the development and application of computational tools for modeling photoinduced events and transient spectroscopies in complex molecular architectures as well as for designing novel photoresponsive materials.

He is the author of more than 200 publications, including monographs, reviews, and books, with an h index of 47. For his activity, he received several awards, including the PRIMO LEVI Prize and the Younger European Chemists commendation award. In 2012, he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant (1M€) for a project on two dimensional UV spectroscopy in biomolecules. He is currently deeply involved in developing accurate simulation protocols for the calculation of spectroscopic signals in the X-ray regime, as well as for designing novel nonlinear spectroscopic techniques exploiting the quantum properties of light. He is the local PI of several running projects funded by EU (Lightdynamics, SIMDOME) and USA (2 projects funded by the Department of  Energy-USA).

Elisabetta Venuti is Full Professor in Physical Chemistry at the University of Bologna. A former student at the University of Florence and at CNR (Bologna), she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Planck Institute in Mülheim a. d. Ruhr (DE) and visiting scientist at the Universities of Reading (UK) and Helsinki (FI). Her research has dealt with the experimental and computational spectroscopic response of molecular systems in the gas and condensed phases by means of high resolution IR, time resolved fluorescence and solid state Raman techniques.  Recent activity has focused on the study of structural and dynamics properties of materials for organic electronics.

Luca Muccioli is associate professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Bologna (Italy). He earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences from University of Bologna in 2003, under the supervision of Prof. Claudio Zannoni, with a thesis on atomistic computer simulations of liquid crystals. From 2003 to 2014 he was postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bologna, and from 2014 to 2016 assistant professor at the Institut des Sciences Molećulaires of the University of Bordeaux (France). His research interests concern the application of computational chemistry techniques to the study of the physicochemical properties of organic materials, with particular focus on the prediction of structural and electronic properties of liquid crystals and organic semiconductors through multiscale approaches. 

Artur received his diploma in 2007 in Chemistry from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (Germany), where he was awarded PhD in natural sciences in 2012. In the same year he joined the group of Prof. Marco Garavelli's in the Department of Chemistry "G. Ciamician" at the University of Bologna as a researcher (assegnista di ricerca). In 2018 Artur became a Junior assistant professor at the Department of industrial chemistry "T. Montanari" and was promoted to Senior assistant professor in 2019. Artur's main interests lie in the development of ab initio techniques for simulating nonlinear electronic spectroscopy in the Visible, Ultraviolet and X-ray regimes and in the development of tools for simulating mixed quantum-classical dynamics in vacuo and condensed phase. Artur is the leading programmer of COBRAMM, an interface of widely known commercial and academic software for ground and excited state molecular modeling. 

Tommaso Salzillo graduated in Industrial Chemistry in 2011 and he received his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry in 2015 from the University of Bologna. He was awarded with a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 at Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC, Spain) where his research project focused on the study of polymorphism and morphology control in flexible organic electronic devices. in 2020 he won a Senior Koshland Postdoctral fellowship at Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) performing studies on the structural dynamics of functional materials such as organic crystal and chalcogenide perovskites by means of low-wavenumber Raman spectroscopy. Currently he is holding an Assistant Professor (Junior) position at the Department of Industrial Chemistry, University of Bologna. His research interests include polymorphism in organic semiconductors and active pharmaceutical ingredients, solid-state photoreactions and vibrational spectroscopy.

Francesco Segatta received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics from the University of Trento (Italy). In 2017, he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Bologna (Italy) under the supervision of Prof. Marco Garavelli, with a thesis entitled “Modeling Photoinduced Events and Nonlinear Spectroscopy in Complex Multichromophoric Systems”. He is currently a Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Industrial Chemistry “Toso Montanary” (University of Bologna), as a member of the Theoretical and Computational Physical Chemistry group. His main research activity focuses on the theoretical study of excited state properties of single molecule and multichromophoric aggregates with state-of-the-art quantum chemistry approaches (e.g., RASSCF/RASPT2), and the simulation of time-resolved spectroscopic techniques, ranging from linear to nonlinear and from VIS/UV to X-ray.

Elisabetta Canè is Assistant Professor in Physical Chemistry at the University of Bologna. A former student at the University of Bologna  she worked two years in HIMONT, Ferrara, Italy. From 1990 her research has dealt with the experimental, molecular, high resolution spectroscopy of species in the gas phase.  Recent activity has focused on the analysis of rotation or ro-vibration spectra of  molecules of atmospheric or astrophysics interest.

I am currently a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Marco  Garavelli aiming to study the interactions of ultraviolet light with the biological molecules.  I aim to simulate these photoinduced  ultrafast processes using high-level electronic structure methods. My work focusses on simulating in realistic environments with QM/MM methodologies enabling quantitative comparisons with cutting-edge experimental spectroscopic data. I obtained my Bachelor of technology from IIT Guwahati , India and my masters in ATOSIM from VU/UVA - Amsterdam/La Sapienza – Rome/ENS de Lyon.

I received my B.Sc. (2006) and M.Sc. degrees (2009) in Chemistry at the Islamic Azad University (IAU) of Shahroud (Iran). In 2019, I received my Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at University of Isfahan (Iran). My Ph.D. thesis was mainly focused on understanding the spectroscopic and photophysical properties of some ferric-Heme complexes, potentially able to undertake spin-state switching process upon binding of small ligands, by mean of Auxiliary-DFT (A-DFT) methods. Since 2020, I joint to the group of Prof. Marco Garavelli, where my main research activity aims on the simulation of the vibratiobally-resolved absorption spectra of metalloporphyrin chromophores. I mainly focus on unrevealing the “non-adiabatic” effects on the absorption spectra, using parametrization of a Linear Vibronic Coupling (LVC) Hamiltonian in combination with non-adiabatic quantum-dynamics simulations conducted with multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (ML-MCTDH) wavepacket propagations method.

Francesco Calcagno obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Bologna, where he is currently a Ph.D. student in Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Rivalta. His main research activity focuses on computational (and experimental) homogeneous catalysis of organoruthenium complexes.

I received my Ph.D. in Chemistry and Materials Science from the University of Pisa (Italy) with a thesis work entitled "Singlet Fission in Molecular Crystals and Covalent Dimers: from Chromophore Design to Nonadiabatic Dynamics Simulation" and performed under the supervision of Prof. Maurizio Persico and Prof. Giovanni Granucci. Later on, I joined the Molecolab group at the University of Pisa where I worked as a postdoctoral fellow for two years under the supervision of Prof. Benedetta Mennucci and Dr. Lorenzo Cupellini. Next, before joining the SC² group, I worked for one year as a POLONEZ BIS Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw (Poland) in the group of Dr. Joanna Jankowska. My main research interests and expertise are (i) the simulation of light-induced reactions in molecular systems, and (ii) the development of novel computational photochemistry methods and computer codes.

Emilio Lorini graduated in Chemistry with a B.Sc. from the University of Florence and an M.Sc. from the University of Bologna. During his Master's, he conducted research at the University of Vienna on excited-state dynamics of solvated chromophores using QM/MM simulations. As a PhD student and now a Postdoc under Prof. Luca Muccioli, he has focused on Molecular Dynamics simulations of organic semiconductors for applications in electronics (e.g. organic photovoltaics). His work includes vapor deposition simulations, free energy calculations, crystal structure prediction, and charge transport analysis, in collaboration with Heliatek, a solar energy company based in Dresden.

Fabio Loprete is currently a Ph.D student in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Bologna under the supervision of Professor Ivan Rivalta. He obtained his B.Sc. (2021) and M.Sc. (2023) degrees in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Bologna. His main research interests are computational catalysis (heterogeneous and electrocatalysis); computational and experimental study of hybrid organic and inorganic materials.

Sara Pandolfi obtained her B.Sc. in Physics and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Physics from the University of Bologna. She is a Ph.D. student in Nanoscience for Medicine and Environment under the supervision of Prof. Tommaso Salzillo. Her main research activity focuses on vibrational spectroscopy in the study of biomaterials and living cells.

Lucas obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2020 and an M.Sc. in Advanced Spectroscopy in Chemistry in 2023. During and after his bachelor's studies, he conducted research at the Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA) under the supervision of Dr. I. Jiménez-Serra, where he focused on exploring the chemical complexity of the interstellar medium. Currently, Lucas is pursuing his PhD in the "Sustainable materials, processes and systems for energy transition" program, working under the guidance of Prof. Luca Muccioli. His research centres on developing molecular solar thermal fuel candidates, employing quantum mechanics, semi-empirical methods, and machine learning techniques.

Tingting Luo is a PhD student in Industrial Chemistry at the University of Bologna. She holds a degree in Chemistry from Mianyang Teachers’ College in China; she then relocated to Shanghai University of Engineering Science and Technology to pursue her studies in major of environmental pollution and Lithium-ion battery technology base on MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) materials, where she received her master's degree in June 2022. During her PhD, she will study the spectroscopic characterization of the interaction of gas molecules with novel porous materials for applications in gas storage and sensors for pollutant detection.

Alessia Ventimiglia is a PhD student in Chemistry of the University Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna. She collaborates with both the catalytic process group and the computational chemistry group, focusing in particular her work on the study of catalytic processes with low environmental impact. She obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry at the Federico II University of Naples; she subsequently moved to Bologna, where she continued her studies in the Department of Industrial Chemistry "Toso Montanari", obtaining her master's degree in October 2020, and proceeding in the same research laboratory with the PhD. In her research she combined the computational study of catalytic systems with an experimental one, focused on the synthesis and characterization of heterogeneous catalysts and on their test in various reactions of high industrial interest. Given her high interest in the environmental aspect, she decided to focus her study on sustainable catalytic processes, optimizing the synthesis and reaction conditions in order to optimize productivity and improve their impact from both an environmental and economic point of view.