Phd in PHYSICS

email: francesco.sciortino@uniroma1.it
phone: 23799
building: Fermi
room: 105

Prof. Francesco Sciortino. Curriculum Vitae atque Studiorum

Short Biography: born in Palermo 1984 (Italy), December 29, 1960.

Laurea cum laude in Physics, Università degli Studi di Palermo. Thesis: Order- Disorder topological transition in a biostructural system. Study of the effect of a Markov dichotomous noise on a supramolecular ordering process.

Ph.D. Thesis , Università degli Studi di Palermo: The coupled solvent-biomolecule system: cooperative mechanisms in the hydrogen bonding and role of the thermody- namic instabilities in supramolecular ordering processes.

Post-doctoral fellow - Boston University (BU), Center for Polymer Studies, in the group of prof. H.E. Stanley.

Researcher C.R.S.4, Centro Ricerche, Sviluppo, Studi Superiori in Sardegna, Cagliari (Group Prof. Clementi).

Assistant Professor, Università di Roma La Sapienza. Associate Professor, Università di Roma La Sapienza. Full Professor, Università di Roma La Sapienza.

Visiting professor for period longer than a month in several academic institutions, including Uni- versité de Bordeaux I, University of Western Ontario Canada, ESPCI Paris, Boston University, NYU New York, Princeton University USA, Lund University Sweden.

Research interests: Liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water and tetrahedral liquids; ther- modynamics of supercooled liquids; glass transition in molecular and colloidal systems; aging phe- nomena; potential energy landscape formalism; self-assembly; physical gels; percolation and phase transitions in complex fluids; patchy colloidal particles; DNA nanotechnolgy.

Major achievements:
• I suggested the possibility, supported by computer simulations, that the well known thermody- namic anomalies of water originate form the presence of a second critical point in the super- cooled liquid region. This idea has generated an extensive experimental and theoretical activity due to the possibility of interpreting in a novel paradigm not only the properties of water as a pure liquid, but also the properties of water as biological solvent (not to mention other liquids as phosphorous, sulfur, silicon, tellurium to name a few). In 2021, a sophisticated pump and probe experiment by the group of Anders Nilsson in Science provided final evidence of such a liquid-liquid transition.
• I contributed to the investigation of the structural glass transition applying the mode coupling theory and the inherent structure formalism. Within this last framework, I developed a method to evaluate the configurational entropy in glass-forming systems which is widely used. The estimate of the configurational entropy makes it possible to discriminate between different theories.
• In colloidal physics, I discovered re-entrant glass formation in short-range attractive colloidal systems, explaining the possibility of different arrest mechanisms. I also demonstrated that colloidal gelation induced by depletion forces occurs with the interference of phase separation, solving a long-standing debate.
• I contributed to open the field of patchy colloids. I discovered that the reduction of the valence, i.e., of the number of bonds that a particle can form, provides a mechanism for suppressing phase separation and stabilizing equilibrium gel states and that, contrary to any expectation, such disordered states can be thermodynamically more stable than crystals.
• I exploited DNA-nanotechnology to explore the possibility to reproduce in the laboratory some of the most important theoretical and computational findings I had worked on by creating patchy DNA particles. Exploiting the versatility of DNA, I have investigated in the laboratory empty liquids, equilibrium gels, re-entrant gels, swapping gels, hyperbranched clusters.

International collaborators: I had and I still have the pleasure to collaborate with several leading scientists and with their students. A list of the senior scientists includes: A. Angell (Arizona State U.), P. De Benedetti (Princeton U.), S.H. Chen (MIT), J. Douglas (NIST), W. Goetze (Munich T.U.), W. Kob (U. Montpellier), C. Likos (Duesseldorf U.), H. Loewen (Duesseldorf U.), P. Poole (St. Francis Xavier University), S. Sastry (JNC Bangalore), R. Schilling (U. Mainz), P. Schurtenberger (Friburg), H.E. Stanley (Boston U.), F. Starr (Wesleyan U.), D. Weitz (Harvard U.), M. Telo da Gama (Lisboa University), S. Kumar (Columbia), O. Gang (Columbia), L. Leibler (Paris).

Editorial Activities: (2001-2004) Member of the Editorial Board of Chemical Physics; (2003- 2007) Member of the Editorial Board of J. Phys. Condensed Matter; (2008-2012), Editor of the Liquids and Biological Physics section of J. Phys. Condensed Matter; (2015-2019) Editor in chief European Physical Journal E, Soft Matter and Biological Physics (EPJE); (2020- ) Associate Editor, J. Chem. Phys.

Other Activities: (2002-2003) Member of the ESRF review committee; (2007-2012) Member of the Liquid Board of the European Physical Society. (2009-2011) Director of SOFT; (2005-2010) Member of the scientific committee of the Erasmus Mundus ATOSIM program. 2018- Member of the Scientific Advisor Committee of the Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire (CE- CAM), Lausanne. 2022- Scientific Advisory Board of the Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematics and Physics (Wien).

Educational Activity: Supervisor of several master (Laurea) students (P. Finocchi, E. La Nave, C. Padoa Schioppa, L. Rosso, F. Thiery, P. Laureti, E. Zaccarelli, G. Foffi, A. Rinaldi, C. Valeriani, E.Bianchi, S. Gabrielli, F. Ciulla, F. Romano, Z. Slimani, O. Akinde, S. Dussi, G. Fiorucci, S. Ciarella, M. Chiappini) and Ph.D. students (L. Fabbian, N.Ghofraniha, E. Bianchi, J. Russo, F. Romano, S. Rovigatti, F. Bomboi, N. Thuy, G. Das, Z. Pressler, S. Biagi, J. Castanon, D. Caprara). Mentor of post-docs (S.H. Chong, C. Donati, C. De Michele, G. Foffi, E. Lattuada, E. La Nave, J. Largo, C. Mayer, A. Moreno, S. Mossa, I. Saika-Voivod, A. Scala, E. Zaccarelli, N. Gnan, G. Munao, T. Visser, S. Roldan, F. Smallenburg, P. Handle, D. Caprara, E. Lattuada, D. Pinto, A. Neophytou).

Conferences and Seminars: In the last 10 years I have been invited to speak in more than 40 conferences and I have delivered a large number of seminars and colloquia around the world. A list can be found at https://www.roma1.infn.it/ sciortif/talks.htm

Organization of international conferences: I have (co-)organized several conferences: Inter- national conference Unifying concepts in the glass transition II Roma, 2002, Short range attractive colloidal systems, Messina, 2004; Soft, Complex, and Biological Matter Conference, 2007,Cinisi; International Soft Matter Conference, held in Roma, September 15-19 (2013). This conference has been attended by 840 participants. Several CECAM workshops, Perspective of GPU Computing in Physics and Astrophysics, Rome September 2013; MRS symposium Design, Fabrication and Self-Assembly of Patchy and Anisometric Particles (2008), Colloidal Glasses and Gels; 81st Colloid and Surface Sci- ence ACS. I have also organized two international schools in Varenna, Physics of Complex colloids (2012) and Soft Matter Self Assembly (July 2015) and a School on Entropy, Information and Order in Soft Matter in September 2018 at ICTS Bangalore. I have been member of several International program committees.

Recent funding: I have constantly applied for grants from the Italian Ministry of the University (MIUR) with very good success. I have been funded with PRIN-type projects in 2001-2002, 2003- 2004, 2006-2007, 2011-2013 and 2017-2021. Since year 2001, I have always been the National coordinator of the project, coordinating several research units distributed all over Italy. The total grant value is of the order of 200-300 keuro for year. I have also received a MIUR-FIRB-type grant, (557 keuro) covering the period 2002-2005. I have been the scientist in charge of the Roma node of several EU Marie Curie-Initial Training Network (ITN-COMPLOIDS, ITN-COLLDENSE, ETN- SUPERCOL )". In 2010 I was awarded a 5-years ERC Advanced Grant PATCHYCOLLOIDS for 1500 keuro to investigate the phase behavior of new generation colloids. Recent and ongoing funds include LAZIO Innova (a project on application of DNA gels) for 150 keuro (2018-2020) and Italian Ministry of the University PRIN-2017-2021 (300 keuro) and PRIN2022 (300 keuro).

Prizes: EPS Invited Speaker for Liquids 2014, Lisbon; Indian National Scientific Academy Dr. D.S. Kothari Chair (2017).

Publications: I am author of more than 450 publications in international journals. I have coau- thored 55 articles which have appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett., 6 which have been published in Nature, three in Nature Materials, two in Nature Physics and one in Science. More than fifty have received more than 100 citations. I have received a total number of citations larger than 24000, of which 1400 in the last year. My ISI-WOS h-index (January 2025) is 94. My Google scholar h-index is 104. The complete list of publications is available at https://www.roma1.infn.it/ sciortif/publications.htm