Alfonso Franciosi

Professor of Physics, University of Trieste and Chief Executive Officer, Sincrotrone Trieste

Alfonso Franciosi and His Holyness Bartholomew I at Elettra

Alfonso Franciosi, Professor of Physics with the University of Trieste, is the present Chief Executive Officer of Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. and the Scientific Director of its Elettra Laboratory.

Alfonso Franciosi was born in 1955 and obtained his laurea degree in Physics from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1978. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1980 to 1981, mostly focusing his work on the electronic properties on transition metal silicides and metal/silicon interface chemistry. In 1982 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as an Associate Scientist. In 1983 he became an Assistant Professor with the same Department, establishing a research program in the area of electronic materials growth and characterization.

During his years in Madison and Minneapolis he had the privilege of working on some of the first dedicated synchrotron radiation sources - the 240 MeV Tantalus storage ring, now at the Smithsonian Institute, and the 1 GeV source Aladdin - at the Physical Sciences Laboratory of Stoughton, Wisconsin. He was promoted to tenured Associate Professor of Materials Science at the University of Minnesota in 1988. In the U.S. he has been Principal Investigator of numerous research projects funded by NSF, ARO, ONR, 3M, Honeywell, Sperry, Control Data Corporation, etc.

From 1993 to 1999 he held concurrent appointments as Director of the TASC National Laboratory of the Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia (INFM) in Trieste, Associate Professor of Physics with the University of Trieste, and Associate Professor of Materials Science with the University of Minnesota. As Director of TASC-INFM he was responsible for the activities of a research staff of 60, organized in 5 Divisions (Materials, Quantum Devices, Surface Structure, Chemisorption, and Analytical).

From 2000 through 2004 he chaired the INFM National Committee for Synchrotron Radiation Research and served on the Board of Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., the company responsible for the operation of the Elettra Laboratory, which includes the homonymous third generation synchrotron radiation source. Since 2000 he is Professor of Physics with the University of Trieste and continues to lead the Materials Division of the TASC-INFM Laboratory.

Since 2004 he serves as Chief Executive Officer of Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A, in his capacity of managing director on the company's Board. In addition, he serves as Scientific Director of the Elettra Laboratory of Sincrotrone Trieste, with a staff of about 400 and over 1000 international users per year. He is Principal Investigator of numerous ongoing research projects funded by the Italian government, the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia regional government, and the European Union.

Professor Franciosi has published some 300 articles in refereed international journals on the physics and materials science of semiconductors, semiconductor heterostructures, superlattices, quantum wells, metal/semiconductor contacts, thin film nucleation and growth, lasers and optical modulators, synchrotron radiation spectroscopies and microscopies, and holds 3 U.S. patents in such fields.

In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society “for his contribution to the understanding of the properties of interfaces, including semiconductor heterojunctions and metal/semiconductor contacts, and his efforts to bridge the gap between basic interface science and applications”. A selection of the most relevant publications of the last 5 years is available.