Columbia University
The Italian Academy
for Advanced Studies in America

Columbia University
Italian Academy for Advanced Studies

Emergent Nanoscience
December 4 and 5, 2008

Speaker Bios

FABIO BELTRAM
Fabio Beltram is a Professor of the Physics of Matter at the Scuola Normale Superiore. He received a PhD in Physics and Electronic Engineering. He conducted research from 1986 to 1991 in the U.S. at Bell Laboratories and since 2001 he has been Director of CNR-INFM NEST (Italy’s National Enterprise for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology). At present he is Vice Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore,Vice President of Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences, and a member of COST, Physics, Materials and Nanosciences Committee. He work on the physics and applications of semiconductor and hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanostructure and in the field of molecular biophysics.

RENATO BOZIO
Renato Bozio is  professor of Physical Chemistry in the Department of Science and Vice Rector for Research at the University of Padua. He chairs the Scientific Committees of the Technology Cluster on Nanotechnologies in the Veneto Region (Veneto Nanotech) and CIVEN, the Veneto Association of Universities for Nanotechnologies. His research interests include: charge transfer interactions and electron transfer processes in molecular systems; structural, dynamic and electronic properties of organic molecular materials, organic semiconductors and metals; theoretical models and calculations of spectroscopic properties of molecular solids; nonlinear laser spectroscopies applied to condensed phase molecular systems and molecular photonics.

LOUIS BRUS
Louis Brus is the S. L. Mitchill Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He studied Chemical Physics at Rice University and Columbia University and joined the chemistry and materials research area of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1973, where he became a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in 1998 he became the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gordon Conferences. He has won the APS Langmuir Prize, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Prize, and the OSA Wood Prize.  In 2008 he shared the first Kavli Prize in Nanoscience with Sumio Iijima.

SANDRO DE SILVESTRI
Is a Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano and has done extensive research on the generation of ultrashort laser pulses and its application to the study of ultrafast processes in matter. Presently, his interests are in the application of attosecond pulses to atomic and molecular physics, as well as in the development of techniques that combine time and special resolution towards nano-object characterization.
JULIO M. FERNANDEZ
Julio M. Fernandez obtained his PhD in Physiology at UCLA in 1982 and taught cellular and molecular biophysics at the Mayo Medical School until 2002, when he joined the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.  The Biophysical Society selected him as the recipient of the 2009 U.S. Genomics Award for Outstanding Investigator in the field of Single Molecule Biology for his pioneering use of AFM techniques to monitor the dynamics and chemistry of single proteins exposed to mechanical forces. 

TONY F. HEINZ
Tony F. Heinz is the David M. Rickey Professor in the Department of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Columbia University.  Heinz received his PhD in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982 and was at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights from 1983 until joining Columbia University in 1995.  Heinz has been recognized by the International Commission Prize for Optics and has received the Senior Scientist Award of the von Humboldt Foundation and the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics.  He is currently the Scientific Co-Director of the Columbia Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center. Heinz’s research activities focus on the electronic properties and dynamics of nanoscale materials.

JAMES HONE
James Hone is currently Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University.  He received his PhD in experimental condensed matter physics from UC Berkeley in 1998, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and Caltech, where he was a Millikan Fellow.  He joined the Columbia faculty in 2003.   His current research interests include: synthesis, characterization, manipulation, and applications of carbon nanotubes; graphene; nanomechanical devices; and nano-biology.

LIBERATO MANNA
Dr. Liberato Manna received his MSc in Chemistry from the University of
Bari (Italy) in 1996 and his PhD in Chemical Sciences in 2001. His thesis discussed the use of organic templates to control sizes and shapes of colloidal nanocrystals. During his PhD studies and as a postdoctoral fellow he worked at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2003 he has been a junior scientist at the National Nanotechnology Lab of CNR-INFM in Lecce (Italy), where he is
responsible for the Nanochemistry division. His research interests are in the
development of a new synthetic approach to colloidal nanocrystals and the
study of their structure and assembly.

PAOLO MILANI
Paolo Milani is a Professor of Physics at the University of Milano.  He currently serves as Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces at the University of Milano, as Scientific Director of the Filarete Foundation, and as Coordinator of the PhD School in Medical Nanotechnology, which is supported by the European School of Molecular Medicine and the University of Milano. He holds six patents and is co-founder and president of Tethis, a start-up company active in the field of nanostructured systems for chemical sensing and biomedical microdevices. He has conducted research on nanostructured carbon-bases and transition metal oxide(s) systems for applications in the field of microsensors and nanomedicine.

ANDREW MILLIS
Andrew Millis is Chair of the Department of Physics at Columbia University. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1982 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1986. He has served as a member of the Technical Staff at ATT (later Lucent Technologies) Bell Laboratories and as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers University. He is a theoretical physicist whose research interests center on the electronic properties of novel materials, including heavy fermions, colossal magentoresistance manganites; high temperature superconductors and single-molecule devices; and the theoretical and computational methods needed to describe them.

ELISA MOLINARI
Elisa Molinari is a Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and Director of the INFM National Research Center on NanoStructures and BioSystems at Surfaces (S3). She was a research associate at the Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung in Stuttgart and Grenoble (1983-1985) and permanent research staff member at CNR - Istituto “O.M. Corbino” in Roma (1986-1992). She was the Associate Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), an organization that coordinates international cooperation in physics. Within IUPAP she has also been the Scientific Secretary of the Semiconductor Commission (C8) and a member of the Working Group on Women in Physics. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). Her main research interests are in nanoscience and nano(bio)technologies. She has been particularly active in the theory of fundamental properties of low-dimensional structures, and in the simulation of advanced nanodevices. 

ALBERTO MORGANTE
Alberto Morgante received his PhD in Physics from the University of Trieste,
where he has been an associate Professor of Physics in the Physics Department since 1999. He carries out his research at the National Laboratory TASC-INFM and at the Italian Synchrotron light source Elettra in Trieste, and has been the coordinator of various national and international research projects. He was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and for many years cooperated with professor Ertl (2007 Nobel prizewinner in Chemistry) at the Fritz-Haber-Institut of the Max-Planck-Society in Berlin. He was also a Fellow at the Italian Academy at Columbia University. His research is concerned mainly with the experimental study of solid surfaces, thin films and nanostructures by using electron, X-ray and neutral atom scattering and spectroscopies.

COLIN NUCKOLLS
Colin Nuckolls is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University, where he  received his Ph.D. in 1998. He was an NIH post-doctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, until he joined the faculty at Columbia in 2000.  In 2006 Nuckolls was promoted to the rank of Professor, and in July 2008 he assumed the Chairmanship of Columbia’s Department of Chemistry. He is a founding member of the Columbia University Nanoscience Center.  Amongst other awards, he is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, and a 2008 ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award.  His research focuses on integrating reaction chemistry into electrical devices. 

VITTORIO PELLEGRINI
Vittorio Pellegrini is a senior researcher at the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics (INFM) of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, where he coordinates the research line "Semiconductor nanostructures for nanoelectronics and spin-photonics." He received his PhD in physics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 1997. In 2008 he was awarded the Campisano prize by the INFM and took up a fellowship at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University. His scientific interests are in nanoscience; in particular, his experimental work currently focuses on the study of emergent states of interacting electrons in nanostructures by means of light scattering and magneto-transport.

ARON PINCZUK
Aron Pinczuk is a Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Columbia University.  He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania. Pinczuk joined AT&T - Bell Laboratories, in Holmdel and Murray Hill, NJ, in 1978, and in 1998, while  maintaining his affiliation with Bell Laboratories, he came to Columbia University.  Pinczuk’s research has received the Distinguished Member of Staff Award of Bell Laboratories (1985) and the 1994 Oliver E. Buckley Prize for Condensed Matter Physics Prize from the American Physical Society. In 2008 he was awarded the Avanessians Diversity Award by Columbia University. Pinczuk’s research activities are in optics studies of electron quantum fluids and of nanoscale systems.
MYRIAM P. SARACHIK
Myriam P. Sarachik is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the City College of CUNY, where she does research on the physics of solids at very low temperatures. She received the 1995 New York City Mayor's Award for Excellence in Science and Technology, a 2004 Sloan Public Service Award from the Fund for the City of New York, the 2005 Oliver E. Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics, and the 2005 L'Oreal/UNESCO Award "For Women in Science" for North America. She was President of the American Physical Society in 2003. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Amherst College in 2006.

SANDRO SCANDOLO
Sandro Scandolo is a senior research scientist at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy. He received his PhD in physics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 1993 and was appointed associate professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, in 2002. He spent a two-year sabbatical leave (2000–02) at the Princeton Materials Institute at Princeton University. His research encompasses classical and quantum simulations of nanoscale and high-pressure phenomena. He coordinates several research and training programs to advance science in developing countries.

ROBERTA SESSOLI
Roberta Sessoli is an associate professor of chemistry in the pharmaceutical department at the University of Florence. She has been a pioneer in the study of molecules that behave like nanomagnets and in the investigation of quantum effects on the dynamics of the magnetization of these materials.  She was one of the discoverers of a novel type of slow relaxation of the magnetization in one-dimensional systems also known as Single Chain Magnet behavior. Recent developments in her research have involved magnetism of lanthanide based molecular materials and an investigation of molecular magnets arranged on surfaces by the self-assembly technique. She is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and coauthor of a book on molecular nanomagnets published by Oxford University Press.

ERIO TOSATTI
Erio Tosatti of SISSA and ICTP is a theorist known for his creation
of a school in Trieste that is dedicated to the study of condensed matter, and for contributions that include: the theory of dielectric response in crystals; the prediction of charge-density waves at solid surfaces; the theory of surface reconstruction and melting; the novel structural, electronic and magnetic properties of metal nanocontacts; the theory and simulation of matter at ultra high pressures; the simulation of nanofriction; and a soluble model of fulleride conductors exhibiting strongly correlated superconductivity.

LATHA VENKATARAMAN 
Latha Venkataraman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University. She received her B.Sc. from MIT in 1993 and her PhD from Harvard in 1999.  She was a research scientist at Vytran Corporation (1999-2002) and a research scientist at Columbia University's Center for Electron Transport in Molecular Nanostructures (2003-2007).

JAMES T. YARDLEY
James T. Yardley is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Columbia University where he serves as Director of the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering (formerly the Columbia Radiation Laboratory).  Prof. Yardley is also Managing Director of the Columbia Center for Electron Transport in Molecular Nanostructures, one of the NSF-sponsored Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centers (NSEC).  He received a BS in Chemistry from Rice University (magna cum laude) in 1964 and PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967.  He served as Associate Professor of Chemistry at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, from 1967 to 1977, where he received the Alfred P. Sloan fellowship and a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.  He has published over 120 research papers and is co-inventor on more than 27 issued US patents.  Previously he served as Vice President of Technology for the Electronic Materials division at AlliedSignal (now Honeywell International).  He has directed several technical and business development programs.  In particular, at AlliedSignal  Prof. Yardley created a research program to develop new optical materials and devices resulting in several business ventures in polymeric optics.  His organization also developed new polymeric substrate materials for advanced electronic circuitry.