Born in Milan on December 12, 1964. Married with Maria Carla Tesi; one son, Alessandro.
Education
1988 Laurea in Fisica 110/100 summa cum laude, Università di Bologna, Italy
1993 PhD in Physics, Università di Bologna, Italy
Career path
2004 on: Associate Professor of Theoretical Matter Physics, Università di Padova
2001-2004 First Researcher INFM, Sezione di Padova
1999-2001 Researcher INFM, Sezione di Padova
1998-1999 INFM Post doctoral fellow ” Giovani Valenti”, Università di Padova
1996-1998: Post doctoral fellow at the Service de Physique Theorique, CEA, Saclay, France
1994-1996: Marie Curie Post doctoral fellow at the Sub-Dept of Theoretical Physics, Oxford University,UK
1993-1994: Post doctoral fellow at the Theoretical Chemistry group of the University of Toronto, Canada
Scientific Activity
In the last 10 years the scientific activity has been focused on the following arguments:
1. Non-equilibrium properties of active fluids and collective motions and patterning of self-propelled particles such as bacteria, cells and birds.;
2. Topological properties of polymers, DNA and proteins;
3. Rheological and dynamical properties of liquid crystals and colloidal dispersions;
4. Self-assembly of topological structures.
Summary of scientific production
Since 1991 author of about 180 (80 since 2007) scientific papers and about 20 contributions to proceedings and books.
Major ongoing scientific collaborations:
Prof. Mike Cates, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Cambridge, UK
Prof. Giovanni Dietler, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland
Prof. Davide Marenduzzo, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edimburgh
Prof. David Mukamel, Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel
Prof. De Witt Sumners, Department of Mathematics, Florida State University, USA
Prof. Matthew Turner, Department of Physics and Centre for Complexity Science, Warwick, UK
Prof. Stu Whittington, University of Toronto, Canada
Prof. Julia Yeomans, Professor of Physics and fellow of Royal Society, Oxford University, UK
Coorganizer of the following workshops:
Workshop “Knots and Links in Biological and Soft Matter Systems I”, ICTP, 26-30 Sep 2016, Trieste
Workshop “Polymer with spatial and mechanical constraints”, IVSLA, 7-9 Jul 2016, Venice
Workshop “Physics of Complex Systems II”, Dip. Fisica, 17 Dic 2014 Padova
Workshop “Physics of Complex Systems”, Dip. Fisica, 20 Dic 2012, Padova
Workshop “Interdisciplinary Topics in Statistical Mechanics”, Centro Artigianelli, 16-18 Apr 2009, Venezia
Workshop “Knots and Macromolecules II”, IVSLA, 6-8 Mar 2008, Venezia
Workshop “Knots and Macromolecules”, IVSLA, 16-18 Mar 2006, Venezia
Conferenza CECAM “Statistical Mechanics of Random Polymers”, 22-26 Sep 2001, Lyon.
Institutional responsibilites
2017- Local (Padova) manager of the National INFN project PLEXNET
2014-2016 Local (Padova) manager of the National INFN project PIECES
2014-2016 PI of the University Project “Living active matter under confinement: theory and experiments
2011-2015 Member of the Department Committee
2008-2012 Member of the Scientific Area Committee of the Department of Physics
2004-2008 Member of the Committee for the Batchelor and Master degree Exams of the Department of Physics.
Invited lectures at international conferences and workshops (since 2007)
About 20 invited talks at international conferences. Some of them are
1. “Self-assembling topological structures” STATPHYS 26th , Lyon, 18-22 July 2016
2. “Topological and metric properties of linear and circular DNA chains in nano-slits and nano-channels”, APS March Meeting, Denver, Colorado USA, 3-7 March 2014
3. ” DNA organisation under confinement: hints from topology” ICTP Workshop on Physical Virology, ICTP, Trieste, Italy 24-28 September 2012.
4. “Modelling DNA organization in confined geometries: hints from topology” CMD-24 24th General Conference of the Condensed Matter Division of the European Physical Society,
Ediburgh, Scotland, UK, 3-7 September 2012
5. “Polymer with spatial and topological constraints: theoretical and computational results” Workshop: in Numerical Knots: Models and Simulations, Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Pisa 6-10 June 2011
6. “Knotting probability for models of stretched polymers”, Special Session on Knotting and Linking of Macromolecules AMS meeting, Vancouver, Canada, October 4-5, 2008
7. “Hydrodynamics and rheology of active liquid crystals: an hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulation”, ECLC 2007: 9th European Conference on Liquid Crystals, Lisbon, Portugal, July 2-6, 2007.
Teaching activity:
2013 – 2017: Corso di Meccanica Statistica II, Laurea Magistrale di Fisica, Padova
2013 – 2016: Corso di Fondamenti di Termodinamica, Scuola Galileiana, Padova
1998 – 2013: Corso di Fisica Statistica dei Sistemi Complessi
Oct 2009: PhD corso in Polymer Physics presso EPFL, Lausanne
2003 – 2014: Corso di Dottorato di Meccanica statistica avanzata, PhD Fisica, Padova
2004 – 2017: Corso di Fisica generale, Laurea Triennale di Biologia Molecolare
2004 – 2008: Corso di Metodi Computazionali per la Fisica, Laurea in Fisica, Padova
2001 – 2002: Corso di Metodi matematici della Fisica, Laurea in Scienze dei materiali, Padova
Supervisor activity (2004-on)
Supervisor and co-advisor of 5 post-doc fellows, 10 PhD students and more than 30 master and undergraduate thesis.
Achievements since 2007
The most important 5 achievements in my scientific work in the last 10 years have been:
(i) the discovery of a non-equilibrium mechanism, based on oscillating electrical fields, to control and reconfigure the patterns of colloidal defects dispersed in liquid crystals. This mechanism if properly triggered could provide rapidly reconfigurable materials for optical applications (Ref 1)
(ii) the understanding of the mechanism through which the mobility of knotted DNA molecules in random gel and under strong fields depends non monotonically on the knot complexity (Ref. 2)
(iii) the understanding of the mechanism through which only chiral and torus knots are favoured within bacteriophage capsids and how knots affect the efficiency of viral DNA ejection from bacteriophages to the hosting cell (infection) [see Ref. 6 and PNAS 106,22269 (2009)] .
(iv) the proposal of a method to detect and measure the size of physical knots , i.e. regions of linear and circular filaments which host a knot. Note that the concept of a physical knot in fluctuating filaments was never proposed before but, since then, it has been the subject of many theoretical and experimental studies (Ref. 8,7, 10 and Journal of Physics A 38,L15 (2005))
(v) The understanding of how the occurrence frequency , size and dynamics of knots in long polymer chains can be affected and modulated by confining the polymers in micro (or nano) -sized slits and channels. These findings may have a useful impact in many micro-manipulation experiments involving DNA and in relevant applications such as genome barcoding and in DNA sequence analysis based on micro-fluidic devices (Refs. 4,5,7)
1. G. D’Adamo, D Marenduzzo, C. Micheletti, E. Orlandini, “Electric Field Controlled Columnar and Planar Patterning of Cholesteric Colloids”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 177801, (2015) (Selected for a Synopsis in Physics and Editor’s suggestion)
2. D. Michieletto, D. Marenduzzo, E. Orlandini, “Topological patterns in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis of DNA knots”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 112, E5471, (2015)
3. M. Caraglio, C. Micheletti, E. Orlandini, “Stretching Response of Knotted and Unknotted Polymer Chains”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 188301 (2015)
4. C. Micheletti, E. Orlandini, “Knotting and Unknotting dynamics of DNA Strands in nanochannels”, Macro Letters, 3, 876 (2014)
5. C. Micheletti, E. Orlandini, “Numerical study of linear and circular model DNA chains confined in a slit: metric and topological properties” Macromolecules, 45 , 2113 (2012)
6. D. Marenduzzo, C. Micheletti, E. Orlandini, D W Sumners, “Topological friction strongly affects viral DNA ejection”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 110, 20081, (2013)
7. C. Micheletti, D. Marenduzzo and E. Orlandini Polymers with spatial or topological constraints: theoretical and computational results Physics Reports, 504, 1-73 (2011)
8. B. Marcone, E. Orlandini, A. L. Stella and F. Zonta, “Size of knots in ring polymers”
Phys. Rev. E. 75 , 041105 (2007)
9. M. E. Cates, S. M. Fielding, D. Marenduzzo, E. Orlandini, J. M. Yeomans,
“Shearing active gels close to the isotropic-nematic transition”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 068102 (2008)
10. E. Orlandini, S.G. Whittington,”Statistical topology of closed curves: Some applications in polymer physics”, Rev. Mod. Phys. 79, 611, (2007)