The Ministry of Universities and Research has conferred the title of Professor Emeritus on Franco Ciccacci, full professor of Experimental Physics in the Department of Physics at the Politecnico di Milano.
The proposal to confer the title was put forward during the Academic Senate meeting held in May and subsequently submitted to the Ministry for approval. The official notification of the award was received in recent weeks.
Franco Ciccacci was born in Rome on 6 August 1955 and graduated with honours in Physics in 1979 from La Sapienza University.
He began his career as a researcher at the IFF-KFA in Jülich, Germany (1980–1982), before moving on to the University of Rome Tor Vergata (1984–1987). He also worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of Calabria and was a guest scientist at the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France.
In 1988, he joined the Politecnico di Milano, where he held the post of associate professor in General Physics, before becoming a full professor in 2001.
Throughout his career at the Politecnico di Milano, he has also been heavily involved in teaching. He taught Experimental Physics to students on various engineering degree programmes and, following the introduction of the degree programme in Engineering Physics in 2001, he has taught several modules for this programme, including Introduction to Quantum Physics and, more recently, Advanced Quantum Mechanics.
His research has covered various fields, including surface physics, the production and detection of spin-polarised electron beams, electronic spectroscopy of solids (including the use of synchrotron radiation and spin-resolved spectroscopy), thin-film magnetism, and the deposition of nanostructured materials for spintronics.
Throughout his career, he has published more than 280 scientific articles in international journals and has authored and/or edited several university-level physics textbooks.
Head of the Department of Physics from 2013 to 2019, in charge of the research area Epitaxial Growth and Fabrication of Nanostructures from its establishment to today and among the creators of the Interuniversity Center L-NESS (Laboratory of Epitaxial Nanometric Structures on Silicon and for Spintronics), for which is was Director (and/or Deputy Director) for twenty years
The title of Professor Emeritus is a significant recognition of a long career dedicated to research, teaching and academic life at the Politecnico di Milano.
Congratulations, Franco, on this important honour!