Politecnico di Milano: Two Important Prizes To Margherita Maiuri And Rocio Borrego-Varillas

Dr. Margherita Maiuri, researcher of the Department of Physics, received the Fresnel Prize by the EuropeanPhysical Society, for significant contributions to quantum electronics and optics made by scientists under 35 years of age.

Maiuri received the award “for outstanding achievements in ultrafast optical spectroscopy, unveiling primary light-induced processes in bio-molecules and nanostructures with sub-10-fs pulses”.

Margherita Maiuri obtained her PhD research degree at Politecnico di Milano in 2014, specializing in ultrafast optics and spectroscopy. After his doctorate he worked as a Research Fellow at Princeton University. In 2015 she won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship.

She is currently Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics, where she deals with multidimensional electronic spectroscopy for the study of light-energy conversion mechanisms in complex systems. His current research interests include understanding the dynamics of femtoseconds of light-induced mechanisms in biological and biomimetic systems and nanostructured complexes. She works in the team of Prof. Giulio Cerullo.

Rocío Borrego-VarillasAlso at the Physics Department, Dr. Rocío Borrego Varillas was awarded the Early Career Women in Photonics Award by the European Optical Society, to honour a young female scientist who has made outstanding contributions to photonics.

Rocío Borrego-Varillas obtained her PhD in Physics from the University of Salamanca, with research stays at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Universitat Jaume I. In 2013 she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship to conduct her postdoctoral research at Politecnico di Milano.

At present she is a researcher at the Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IFN) of the CNR, where she is responsible for the scientific activity in the joint IFN-Polimi laboratory for attosecond dynamics in molecules. Her research interests include few-cycle pulse generation in UV, ultrafast spectroscopy of biomolecules and sub-femtosecond electron dynamics. She works in the team of Prof. Mauro Nisoli.

The official award ceremony took place on 22 June 2021, during the CLEO online conference.