Margherita Maiuri is an Associate Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Politecnico di Milano and a Visiting Professor at Princeton University. Her research lies at the interface of physics, ultrafast photonics, and physical chemistry, focusing on understanding and controlling light–matter interactions on femtosecond timescales.
After graduating in Engineering Physics and receiving her PhD in Physics from Politecnico di Milano, in 2015 she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship, carrying out part of her research at Princeton University, where she worked on the development and application of multidimensional electronic spectroscopy. Throughout her career, she has developed advanced ultrafast laser spectroscopy methods to investigate photoinduced processes in biomolecules, photosynthetic complexes, and nanostructured materials.
After returning to Politecnico di Milano, she established an independent research line combining ultrafast spectroscopy, molecular photophysics, and nanophotonics to investigate and dynamically control the properties of matter and light. Her work has addressed ultrafast exciton dynamics and dissociation in organic photovoltaic materials, energy and charge transfer in molecular and photosynthetic systems, and interactions between excitons and photonic or plasmonic modes. More recently, her group has extended these approaches to the ultrafast control of optical properties in photonic materials and nanostructures, including active metasurfaces, two-dimensional materials, and hybrid organic–photonic systems.
In 2022, she was awarded the ERC Starting Grant ULYSSES, devoted to developing new approaches for the coherent control of photoinduced processes in complex systems, followed by an ERC Proof of Concept in 2026. She has authored over 80 publications in international journals, including Science, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, and Nature Chemistry. Her research has received several international recognitions, including the European Physical Society Fresnel Prize, the European Optical Society Early Career Women in Photonics Award, and the Women in Ultrafast Science Global Award.
She also serves as a reviewer for European funding programmes, including the ERC and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, and for international scientific journals, and is actively engaged in the training and mentorship of early-career researchers.