Eva Pogna is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IFN) in Milan. Her research focuses on the study and engineering of the optical properties of emerging materials, including low-dimensional materials such as graphene and other two-dimensional materials, topological insulators, metasurfaces, metamaterials, and time-varying media. Through the development of innovative ultrafast spectroscopy and nano-optical imaging techniques, she investigates light–matter interactions with the aim of developing new material platforms for controlling electromagnetic radiation, with applications in photonics, communications, optoelectronics, and energy technologies.
Throughout her career, she has developed novel experimental methodologies to investigate the ultrafast dynamics of electronic states in two-dimensional materials and the propagation of polaritons in the far-infrared and terahertz spectral range. More recently, her research has focused on the engineering of thermal radiation, leading the ERC Starting Grant project TREAT – Taming Radiative Heat Emission in Anisotropic and Time-Varying Media.
Pogna serves on the Editorial Boards of Optics Continuum, Applied Physics Letters, and Scientific Reports. She is Co-chair of the Terahertz & Millimeter-Wave Technical Group of Optica and serves on the scientific committees of major international conferences in photonics, including CLEO and ICOP. Since 2025, she has been a Mercator Fellow of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1277 at the University of Regensburg, devoted to emerging relativistic effects in condensed matter.
In recognition of her scientific activity, Pogna has received the Marcello Sgarlata Award, was named a Rising Star in Optics by the Journal of Optics, and was included in the Photonics100 list, which recognizes one hundred of the world's most innovative personalities in photonics.