ALBERTO GIACOMELLO

The classes of the fall semester 2025 will be held in the classroom starting September 22nd, 2025. For the schedule and classrooms, please refer to the usual website https://www.ing.uniroma1.it/orari-delle-lezioni here reported for convenience:
Turbulence and Combustion: Fridays, 10-13, room 32 RM031
For further information, please email the instructor at alberto.giacomello@uniroma1.it 

http://scholar.google.it/citations?user=Rpj9JLsAAAAJ&hl=en
https://sites.google.com/a/uniroma1.it/flumacs/people/giacomello

EDUCATION
2014 Theoretical and Applied Mechanics PhD, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Thesis: “Metastable states in the wetting of rough hydrophobic surfaces”, finalist at the ERCOFTAC Da Vinci prize.
2011 Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnic Institute New York University, USA.
Final grade: A. Prize as best thesis in Mechanical Engineering.
2010 Master Sci. Mech. Eng., Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Final grade: 110 cum laude/110.
2008 Bachelor Sci. Mech. Eng., Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Final grade: 110 cum laude/110.

CURRENT AND PREVIOUS POSITIONS
2019 – today Associate professor by special appointment of the Italian Research Ministry (chiamata diretta), Dept. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
2019 – today Junior Fellow of the SSAS, Sapienza School for Advanced Studies
2014 – 2019 Researcher (“RTD-A”) working on ERC-2013-AdG n. 339446, Sapienza University
2014 Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Theoretical Physics, Germany
2010 – 2013 PhD Student, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
2010 NSF-funded research engineer, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, USA

FELLOWSHIPS
2009 – 2010 30,000$ fellowship, H2CU Sapienza—New York University joint Master’s degree program

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
2022 – today Italia Domani, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: Sapienza contact person for flagship project “Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and digital twin for advanced engineering and aerospace”. Member of the National Centre for HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing.
2019 – today Member of the PhD academic board in “Theoretical and Applied Mechanics”, Sapienza
2019 – today Examiner in 6 PhD Committees in Italy, France, UK, and Ireland

PRIZES & AWARDS
2022 Sapienza Research Prize on the occasion of Sapienza’s 719th anniversary
2019 Junior Research Fellow of Sapienza School for Advanced Studies (SSAS)
2017 AIMETA Junior Prize in Fluid Mechanics, (age<40)
2010 Double Degree fellowship, ca. 30,000$, Honors Center of Italian Universities (H2CU)

COMPETITIVE RESEARCH GRANTS AND MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE
2023—2025 National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), NextGenerationEU, “Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and digital twin for advanced engineering and aerospace” total ca. 1,200,000€ (PI)
2023 – 2025 Research project of national interest (PRIN) 2022 PNRR, MUR, “v-EV – The virtual EV: A digital twin of extracellular vesicles for health and food” (PI) total ca. 240,000€ (PI)
2023 – 2025 PRIN 2022, MUR, “PINENUT – Phase transitions in nanoalloys: Equilibrium structures and phase nucleation” total ca. 190,000€ (PI of the local unit)
2022 – 2023 ERC Proof of Concept 2022, “NODRY - Designing green and energy-efficient anti-dewetting protocols for liquid chromatography”, 150,000€ (PI)
2020 – 2025 FARE 2018, MIUR, “SERENA – In silico design of SElective and REsponsive NAnoporous materials for water purification”, ca. 300,000€ (PI)
2019 – 2023 PRIN, MIUR, “UTFROM – Understanding and Tuning FRiction through nanOstructure Manipulation” total ca. 1,000,000€ (PI of the local unit)
2019 – 2024 ERC Starting Grant 2018, “HyGate – Hydrophobic Gating in nanochannels: understanding single channel mechanisms for designing better nanoscale sensors”, ca. 1,500,000€ (PI)
2015 – 2022 PRACE/EuroHPC, largest European competitive computational research grants giving access to European Tier-0 supercomputers, 6+ grants amounting to 200+ Mcore hours (PI)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
1. D Caprini, F Battista, P Zajdel, G Di Muccio, C Guardiani, B Trump, ..., A Giacomello* (2024). Bubbles enable volumetric negative compressibility in metastable elastocapillary systems. Nature Communications 15 (1), 5076.
2. G Paulo, K Sun, G Di Muccio, A Gubbiotti, B Morozzo della Rocca, J Geng, ..., A Giacomello* (2023). Hydrophobically gated memristive nanopores for neuromorphic applications. Nature Communications 14 (1), 8390.
3. E Telari, A Tinti*, M Settem, L Maragliano, R Ferrando*, A Giacomello* (2023). Charting Nanocluster Structures via Convolutional Neural Networks. ACS Nano, 17 (21), 21287
4. C Guardiani, F Cecconi, L Chiodo, G Cottone, P Malgaretti, L Maragliano, ML Barabash, G Camisasca, M Ceccarelli, B Corry, R Roth, A Giacomello*, B Roux (2022). Computational methods and theory for ion channel research. Advances in Physics: X, 7(1), 2080587. E271
5. CAZ Bassetto Jr, F Costa, C Guardiani, F Bezanilla, A Giacomello* (2023). Noncanonical electromechanical coupling paths in cardiac hERG potassium channel. Nature Communications 14 (1), 1110
6. F Costa, C Guardiani, A Giacomello* (2022). Molecular dynamics simulations suggest possible activation and deactivation pathways in the hERG channel. Communications biology 5 (1), 1-11
7. G Camisasca, A Tinti, A Giacomello* (2020). Gas-induced drying of nanopores, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 11 (21), 9171-9177
8. A Tinti, A Giacomello*, Y Grosu, CM Casciola (2017), Intrusion and extrusion of water in hydrophobic nanopores, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 114 (48), E10266-E10273
9. A. Giacomello*, L. Schimmele, and S. Dietrich (2016). Wetting hysteresis induced by nanodefects. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 113(3), E262–E271
10. A. Giacomello, M. Chinappi, S. Meloni, and C.M. Casciola. (2012). Metastable Wetting on Superhydrophobic Surfaces: Continuum and Atomistic Views of the Cassie-Baxter–Wenzel Transition, Phys. Rev. Lett., 109, 226102