Caterina Vozzi is Research Director at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). She currently leads the Ultrafast dynamics in matter group (www.udyni.eu) at the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies (IFN) of CNR. Her research interests focus on ultrafast spectroscopy and attosecond science. She obtained a Ph.D. in Physics from Università Degli Studi di Milano in 2005. She was then hired as a Research Officer by CNR-IFN in 2009 and was promoted Senior Researcher in 2010. In 2010 she spent a year as a visiting scientist in the group of Prof. Paul Corkum at the Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences of the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa. Her research activity has been devoted to atomic and molecular physics, and in particular on the physics and applications of high-order harmonic generation in noble gases, molecules, and clusters, in the generation and characterization of isolated attosecond pulses, in high-order harmonic spectroscopy and the development of high energy parametric sources for strong-field applications. Her contribution to high-order harmonic spectroscopy and Attosecond Science and in the development of high-energy IR parametric source with passive carrier-envelope phase stabilization for strong field application is recognized worldwide. She is one of the pioneers of high-order harmonic spectroscopy and attosecond science with mid-IR driving sources, having made high impact contributions in source development and applications. Although high harmonic generation cutoff extension using a long-wavelength driving laser was first demonstrated in 2001 by Z. Chang, attosecond X-rays at the carbon K-edge were only characterized recently. One of the major obstacles is the lack of high-energy MIR driving lasers. She successfully obtained the development of such lasers, achieving broad bandwidth, high conversion efficiency, and good carrier-envelope phase stability. Thanks to the development of these driving sources, she was able to extend harmonic spectroscopy beyond the state of the art by demonstrating a novel approach for molecular orbital tomography. She also contributed to the proposal and realization of different techniques for the generation of isolated attosecond pulses. One of her major interests is currently the development of attosecond spectroscopy in the water window spectral range.
In 2012 she has been awarded a European Starting Research Grant with the project “Ultrafast Dynamics of complex molecules” (UDynI). She is Associate Editor for OSA Continuum; Topical Editor on Nonlinear and ultrafast optics for Journal of Optics (IoP) and Section Editor for Optical and Laser Physics at Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (IoP). From 2005 to 2017 Dr. Vozzi has been contracted professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano. she has been teaching physics courses of Mechanics and Electromagnetism at the Biomedical Engineering.