Prof. Dario Polli

Dario Polli is Associate Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano (Italy).
His main research focus is on coherent Raman spectroscopy and microscopy, ultrafast and non-linear optics, Fourier-transform spectroscopy and time-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy and microscopy. He provided fundamental contributions in the study of the ultrafast dynamics of the excited states of organic molecules and semiconductors, such as:
(1) the first observation of the ultrafast isomerization of the retinal chromophore in rhodopsin, a process that constitutes the primary event of the human eye vision mechanism;
(2) the study of the dynamics of ultrafast excited-state relaxation in carotenoids with the discovery of a new excited state relevant for photosynthesis and photoprotection processes;
(3) the first measure of the coherence length and mobility of excitons in carbon nanotubes.
He is the P.I. of an ERC Consolidator grant (1,8 M€, from 2015 to 2020, see www.vibra.polimi.it) on the development of high-speed broadband coherent Raman microscopy for fast and reliable tumour identification.
This activity is witnessed by the publication of approx. 130 scientific papers on international journals, >35 invited talks and several oral presentations at international conferences. His H-index is 41. He became OPTICA Fellow in 2022 "For pioneering contributions to ultrafast spectroscopy and nonlinear label-free microscopy". The total number of citations of his papers is aprrox. 7000. He recently filed five patents related to spectroscopy. He is passionate about Science and Science divulgation to the public. He is co-founder of NIREOS (www.nireos.com), Specto Photonics (http://spectophotonics.com/) and SunCUBES (www.suncubes.space/).