Nicola Curreli received the M.Sc. degree from the University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy, in 2016, and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy, in 2020, with his doctoral research carried out at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genoa, Italy, in collaboration with the University of Cagliari. After completing the Ph.D. degree, he held a fellow researcher position with Graphene Labs at IIT within the Graphene Core 2 Project of the Graphene Flagship, working on graphene-based materials and devices for energy storage and flexible electronics.
He then joined the Functional Nanosystems group at IIT as a postdoctoral researcher, where he worked on nanophotonics, photodoping and charge transport in doped metal-oxide nanocrystals, hybrid heterostructures combining two-dimensional materials and semiconductor nanocrystals, and electromagnetic devices based on low-dimensional materials.
He also served as a researcher at both the Physics and Mechanical Engineering Departments of Columbia University in the City of New York, NY, USA, and at the Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA, within the framework of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie RISE Action SONAR (Horizon 2020). In this context, he worked on nano-optics, nonlinear optics and near-field imaging of low-dimensional material heterostructures, including graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, as well as on hybrid systems combining plasmonic nanocrystals and two-dimensional semiconductors.
In 2023, he was awarded the prestigious Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship (project 2DTWIST), funded under the Horizon Europe programme, to conduct independent research at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Switzerland. This research focuses on dynamically reconfigurable systems based on twisted two-dimensional material heterostructures.
He is currently an Assistant Professor (tenure track) with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, and an affiliated researcher with the Photonic Nanomaterials line at the Italian Institute of Technology.
His research interests include the physics and engineering of low-dimensional materials, their optical and electronic characterization, and their application in photonics, optoelectronics and twistronics, as well as the design, implementation and analysis of linear and nonlinear integrated electromagnetic devices. He received the Young Scientists Award at the General Assembly and Scientific Symposium of URSI in 2022. To date, he has delivered >30 invited and contributed talks at leading international conferences and research institutions, has authored >35 scientific publications, including several in the highest-impact journals in the field, and has contributed to the organization of conferences and workshops. Until 2024, he was also a member of the committee of the Young Professionals Affinity Group of the IEEE Region 8 Italy Section. He serves on the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio), is a member of the Topical Advisory Panel of Photonics, and acts as an Academic Editor for Wiley’s Journal of Nanotechnology and the International Journal of Optics.