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Francesca Calegari
Femtosecond and attosecond laser spectroscopy
Francesca Calegari leads the Attosecond Science division at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY. She is also a full professor of physics at Universität Hamburg. Amongst other distinctions, she received the ICO prize and the Ernst Abbe medal from the International Commission of Optics and she is a Fellow of the Optical Society (Optica).
The main focus of her research is to track and ideally control in real time the electron dynamics occurring in systems with increasing complexity from simple molecules to molecules of biological interest and nanostructured materials. To this purpose, her group develops state-of-the-art table-top light sources providing extreme time resolution (from a few femtoseconds down to attoseconds) and spanning from the infrared to the ultraviolet and then further down in wavelengths to the soft-x ray spectral range. In her group, attosecond technology is used to understand the role of the electron dynamics in the photo-induced chemical changes that occur in our own biomolecules (e.g. DNA and proteins) in a bottom-up approach. Her research will allow not only to disclose the physical origin of a variety of light-driven processes of crucial importance in photo-chemistry, but also to mimic and optimise those process for artificial light harvestin. Her approach is fully synergetic with the possibility to resolve structural changes in biomolecules through femtosecond time-resolved x-ray diffraction using XUV/X-ray Free Electron Lasers (FELs) .
Academic career
| Since 2016 | Leading Scientist at DESY and Professor (W3) at the University of Hamburg |
| 2013-2016 | Adjunct Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy |
| 2011-2016 | Staff Researcher at IFN-CNR, Milan, Italy |
| 2014 | Visiting Scientist at MPSD, Hamburg, Germany |
| 2009-2011 | Post Doctoral Researcher at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy |
| 2009 | Post Doctoral Researcher at INFM, Milan, Italy |
| 2009 | PhD in Physics, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy |
| 2005 | Master Degree in Physics, Università Statale di Milano, Milan, Italy |
