Affiliation: The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Castelldefels, Spain
Keywords: Ultrafast spectroscopy | Molecular Dynamics simulations | Conformational changes | Photosynthesis | Photobiology
Full profile: Nicoletta is a physicist with experimental and computational experience in biomolecular physics, especially in photosynthesis. She graduated cum laude in physics at Università degli Studi Roma Tre (IT), after an MSc thesis in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at UC Berkeley (US) in Head-Gordon’s group. For her Ph.D., she joined the group of Biophysics of Photosynthesis headed by R. Croce at the VU Amsterdam (NL). During her Ph.D., she combined ultrafast spectroscopy with MD simulations to investigate how photosynthetic antenna avoid photooxidation.
In 2018 she obtained a competitive national grant (VENI) from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), that allowed her to lead her independent research line at the VU Amsterdam. She developed a new spectroscopic tool able to probe in real time the role of the environment in modulating the spectroscopic properties of molecules.
In October 2022, Nicoletta was appointed Prof. and Group Leader at ICFO (ES), within the elite CELLEX NEST fellow program. The group that she leads, called “Photon Harvesting in Plants and Biomolecules” (PHPB), develops novel spectroscopic and computational tools to study the functional response of photoactive systems to changes in structure, light and environment. The PHPB is an international (IT, DE, IE, ES, CN, PL), fast-growing research group that in short time has already attracted several national and European funds and international talent: Nicoletta is PI on a La Caixa Junior Leader fellowship, an MSCA doctoral network on computational photosynthesis (101119442, PhotoCaM), a FLIGHT MSCA-COFUND to ICFO for a PhD project in collaboration with IRTA, a BIST-Ignite grant in collaboration with ICIQ and a RES grant for computational resources. The PHPB group has been awarded 2 MSCA Postdoctoral fellowships (2023 Call), a Juan de la Cierva, a Severo Ochoa MINECO and 2 SPIE student fellowships.
Nicoletta has a great passion for supporting the next generation of scientists and the outreach and dissemination of science. She was one of the chairs and organizers of international meetings such as: GRS Photosynthesis 2023, “Computational methods in Photosynthesis: from atoms to the mesoscale, from theory to experiment” 2021, “Jam session in photosynthesis: bridging the gap between experimental and theoretical spectroscopy” 2014, each meeting reflecting her drive to promote the benefits of combining experimental and computational approaches in photosynthesis and biophysics.
Also, she was an invited speaker at outreach events for the future generation of researchers: ICFO-UNAM International School on the Frontiers of Light (Queretaro, MX, 2023), CARLA the Photonics Career Hub (2022, 2021), EU-funded eTwinning (2022), International Talent Event Amsterdam (2014). During her PhD she was Chair for iProVu: the organization representative of international PhD and Postdocs at the VU Amsterdam.