Alberto Salleo is the Hong Seh and Vivian Lim Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford and, since 2025, Vice Director for Science and Technology at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, one of the 17 laboratories of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Salleo earned his degree in Chemistry in 1994 from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and a PhD in Materials Science in 2001 from the University of California, Berkeley, on damage to glass caused by high-power infrared and ultraviolet laser irradiation. His thesis work was carried out at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as part of the National Ignition Facility, the first instrument to achieve inertial nuclear fusion. From 2001 to 2005 he was a postdoc at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he conducted research on conjugated polymers for printed electronics. In 2006 Salleo began his academic career in Stanford University's Department of Materials Science, where he received tenure in 2012 and became a full professor in 2019. From 2019 to 2025 he served as chair of Stanford's Department of Materials Science. His research focuses on the relationship between microstructure and properties of semiconducting conjugated polymers, using advanced analytical techniques such as transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction with synchrotron radiation. His group also fabricates and characterizes electronic devices that make use of semiconducting polymers for applications ranging from photovoltaics to bioelectronics and brain-inspired computing.
Salleo has won the SPIE Early Career Award and a National Science Foundation Career Award. He was awarded the Gores Award for Teaching, Stanford's highest teaching honor. Salleo has been a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2015 and is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and the European Academy of Science, in addition to being a member of the Academia Europaea. Finally, Salleo was awarded the title of Knight of the Ordine al Merito of the Italian Republic for his contribution to strengthening the community of Italian researchers in North America.