Rate My Professor Giovanni Volpe

Giovanni Volpe is Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Gothenburg, where he has served as Full Professor since 2020 and leads the Soft Matter Lab since 2016. He earned his PhD summa cum laude in applied physics and simulation from ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona in 2008, under the supervision of Prof. Dmitri Petrov, with a thesis on novel applications of photonic force microscopy. Prior to that, he obtained a Master's degree in telecommunication engineering from the University of Padua in Italy in 2004, graduating 110/110 cum laude. His career includes a postdoctoral fellowship from 2008 to 2011 in the group of Prof. Clemens Bechinger at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems and Stuttgart University in Germany; Assistant Professor positions from 2012 to 2019 at the Physics Department and UNAM-National Nanotechnology Research Center at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey; and progressive roles at the University of Gothenburg starting as Associate Senior Lecturer in 2016, Associate Lecturer in 2019, and Docent in Physics in 2018.

Volpe's research focuses on active matter, optical trapping and manipulation, critical phenomena, multiplicative noise, and neurosciences, integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence for advanced microscopy and spectroscopy of living systems and artificial living matter. He has developed key software tools such as DeepTrack for deep-learning-based optical tracking of micro- and nano-particles and Braph for brain connectivity analysis using graph theory. Notable publications include the highly cited review 'Active particles in complex and crowded environments' (Reviews of Modern Physics, 2016), the book 'Optical Tweezers: Principles and Applications' (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 'Machine learning for active matter' (Nature Machine Intelligence, 2020), and 'Optical trapping and manipulation of nanostructures' (Nature Nanotechnology, 2013). His achievements have earned prestigious awards such as the Göran Gustafsson Prize in Physics (2024, 6.3 million SEK), the University of Gothenburg Faculty of Science Research Award (2023, 250,000 SEK), ERC Consolidator Grant MAPEI (2021-2026), and ERC Starting Grant ComplexSwimmers (2016-2021). Volpe has secured over 6 million euros in external funding, co-founded startups Lucero BIO AB and IFLAI AB, and contributes as a mentor, educator, and public communicator in physics.