Dr. Maria Losurdo,
Before joining ICMATE as Director, Maria Losurdo served CNR since 1996. She brings almost 30 years of experience in research and higher education to the role. Losurdo received her Chemistry degree from University of Bari in 1990 and her doctorate in Chemistry and Material Science in 1994. She was Adjunct Professor at ECE Department -Duke University, NC, USA and Visiting Scientist at several International Universities, including the Dept of Chemistry at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -US, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosi-Mexico, the Dept. of Materials Engineering - Shandong University – China and the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National Univ. Korea. She teaches Master and PhD courses on materials processing, engineering and characterization.
Losurdo’s work focuses on novel materials growth and characterization, including low-dimensional materials, for applications in energy photonics, optics, plasmonics, chemical sensing, photocatalysis and biomedical sciences. Her specific approach to materials discovery is the combination of low temperature plasma processes with in situ real time non invasive monitoring diagnostics such as spectroscopic ellipsometry. Her research work covers alternative materials for plasmonics, creating the concept of “broadband active tunable phase change plasmonics”. She is active in the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of 2D materials. Nowadays, she is one of the pioneers of the phase-change 2D and transdimensional materials, including novel optically activated phase-change chalcogenides and oxide materials.
She is co-author of over 400 peer reviewed publications. Her most downloaded book, “Ellipsometry at the Nanoscale” was published by Springer-Verlag. She is co-author of 6 Patents.
Losurdo is Elected Member of the IUPAP Committee C10- Structure and Dynamics of Condensed Matter
As of 2008 she has been coordinating several European projects (FP7, H2020, HE) on nanomaterials, 2D materials, optronics and photonics.
She is part of the Horizon Europe European-Innovation-Council - EIC-Women Leadership Programme.