Annalisa Vacca, graduated in Chemical Engineering and PhD in Industrial Engineering, got the associate professor position in the field of “Fundamentals of chemical technology” (SSD CHIM/07). She carries out didactic and scientific activity at the Department of Mechanical, Chemical and Materials Engineering (University of Cagliari). From 2006, she is teacher of the course of General Chemistry at the first level degree for the Faculty of Engineering.

The research activities are focused in the field of electrochemical engineering applied to the study of processes for environmental remediation and energy conversion. In particular, the study covers both key aspects such as the catalytic activity of electrode materials and the identification of reaction mechanisms, both practical aspects such as design and characterization of electrochemical reactors.

For the environmental remediation, processes for removal of toxic organic pollutants, bacteria and microalgae from industrial wastewater and from natural waters have been studied using different electrode materials and suitable reactor configuration.

The research on energy conversion have focused mainly on the study of electrocatalysts both effective for the hydrogen production by water electrolysis, both for the use of hydrogen for energy production in cells fuel. The preparation and characterization of electrodes based on nanotubes of titanium dioxide forms has been also studied for the photo-electro water splitting, which allows to obtain hydrogen exploiting the solar radiation. More recently, the synthesis of hybrid organic/inorganic materials for catalysis and photoelectrical applications have been studied. The research activities are documented by 59 papers published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and by more than 100 contributions at national and international congresses.

Alessio Filippetti, currently Associate Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Cagliari, Italy, graduated in Physics in 1994 at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, took his PhD Physics in 1998 at the University of Cagliari. He was postdoctoral researcher of the University of California at Davis (1998-2000) and of the University of California at Santa Barbara (2000-2003). From 2003 to 2007 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Cagliari in the framework of MIUR Program ‘Rientro Cervelli’, and from 2007 to 2016 Researcher of CNR-IOM Cagliari.

A.F. is a theoretical/computational physicist studying solid state properties mainly by ab-initio approaches. His scientific activity is at the forefront of computational modeling and design of materials with strong potential in future microelectronic, spintronic, and energy conversion technology. A large portion of his activity is devoted to the development of advanced energy functional theories addressed to improve the accuracy of the ab-initio treatment for strong-correlated and localized-electron systems such as molecules and nanoparticles.

A.F. matured a solid experience in group leading and coordination of research projects at European level (EU FP7 “OxIDes” and Eu-India FP7 NMP “ATHENA” Project), national level (several PRIN projects funded by Italian Ministry of Research and one SEED project funded by Italian Institute of Technology), and regional level (several projects funded by “Bank of Sardinia Foundation” and “Regione Sardegna”).

A.F. was involved in the organization and management of a series of Project Meetings, Schools, and International Conferences. Overall, A.F. participated to more than 100 international conferences, including about 30 invitations, contributing with oral communications, lectures, and chairs. In the course of his activity AF published about 90 articles in peer-reviewed International Journals. To date, they collected more than 4000 citations, and h-index = 28 (source: Scholar).

Maria Giorgia Cutrufello graduated in Chemistry in 1996 at the University of Cagliari where she afterwards joined the research group in Industrial Chemistry first with a two-year Research Contract and then as a PhD fellow. After getting her PhD in Chemical Sciences in February 2003, she had a Research Contract (Assegno di Ricerca) at the University of Cagliari from March 2003 to March 2006, also spending one year (May 2003-May 2004) as a post-doc fellow at the Tulane University in New Orleans (LA, USA), with a grant from the Italian CNR. She got the assistant professor position in the field of Industrial Chemistry (SSD CHIM/04) in April 2006. She has carried out her didactic and scientific activity at the Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences (University of Cagliari), teaching Industrial Chemistry, Inorganic Industrial Processes, and Sustainable Industrial Processes.

Her research activity is focused on the synthesis (by standard or innovative procedures) and thorough characterization of solid materials (such as zeolites, oxides, supported metals, mesostructured materials) and on their application as sorbents or catalysts in processes of industrial interest. Besides the development of sorbents for H₂S removal or CO₂ capture from gaseous streams, the present research topics deal with the study of catalytic processes for the production of fine chemicals and fuels from renewable materials and the chemical recycling of CO₂. Great interest is devoted to the correlation between the properties of catalysts or sorbents, determined by various characterization techniques, and their performance.

Her research activity, often developed in collaboration with other Italian or foreign research groups, is documented by 39 papers published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and about 60 contributions at national and international congresses.

  Luca Pilia is currently Assistant Professor in the field of “Chemical Technology Fundamentals” (SSD CHIM/07) at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Since 2013 he has carried out his didactic and scientific activity at the at the Mechanical, Chemical and Material Engineering Department; he teaches Chemistry at the Faculty of Engineering.

L.P. graduated in Chemistry at the University of Cagliari and took his PhD in Chemistry in 2004 at the same university. The research activity during the PhD was developed in collaboration with the group of Dr. Patrick Cassoux at the “Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS” (Toulouse, France) where he spent 20 months working on multifunctional materials based on transition metal complexes and organic donors. From 2003 to 2010 he was appointed as research assistant at the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Cagliari, and from 2010 to 2012 he was postdoctoral researcher as Marie Curie IEF fellow and EPSRC research assistant at the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh (U. K.).

L.P. main expertise are related to the synthesis and characterization of ligands with O, N and S as donor atoms, and their complexes with transition metals. The characterization techniques employed by L.P. include FT-IR, FT-Raman and UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopies, spectroelectrochemistry and electrochemistry. He also performs calculations using the density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT methods.

L.P. research interest are focused on the metal complexes mainly of Ni(II), Pd(II), Pt(II) and Fe(II/III) as mono-functional materials and, combined with organic donors, as precursors of multi-functional materials with conducting and magnetic properties. He is also interested in semiconductor metal complexes for field effect transistor applications or showing giant magneto resistance effect for spintronics. The main L.P. interest is related to heteroleptic charge transfer metal complexes showing second order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties. In particular, Nickel-triad complexes with dithiolene and/or diimine as ligands are studied as NLO-chromophores both in solution and dispersed into polymeric thin films, showing high NLO activity.

The research activities are documented by 56 papers published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, 1 EU patents, 2 book chapters and by numerous contribution at national and international conferences. Bibliometrics (SCOPUS 2001-July 2017): Scientific papers: 56. Total citations: 895; H-index 18.

L.P. is member of the editorial boards of the “Journal of Chemistry”, Inorganic Chemistry area and of “The Open Access Journal of Science and Technology”, and referee for ACS, RSC, Wiley and Elsevier Journals.

Fellowships and grants: Regione Sardegna fellowship for training abroad (2000); Marie Curie fellowship for a stage at LCC-CNRS Toulouse (2002); Grant of the University of Cagliari for young researchers (2002-2003); “Assegno di Ricerca” of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to develop a project titled: Functional Molecular Materials (2003-2008); Regione Sardegna fellowship for young researchers, 2010Marie Curie IEF fellowship, for a post-doc at the University of Edinburgh (UK) (2010-2012); grant of the Regione Sardegna for Fundamental Research 2011;

Founded projects: Project CRUI-British Council (2004); Research Project of National Interest PRIN (2005-2007); Banco di Sardegna Foundation Grant 2007; Regione Sardegna grant for the Innovation Research (2008); EPSRC GLOBAL Project – Edinburgh-Pacific Partnership of Excellence in New Energy Technologies (2012).

Luca Pilia

Giorgia Cutrufello

Alessio Filippetti

Francesca Mocci

Angela Serpe

Annalisa Vacca