Physics
Professor
Di Ventra's research interests are in the theory of quantum transport in nanoscale and atomic systems, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, DNA sequencing/polymer dynamics in nanopores, and memory effects in nanostructures for applications in unconventional computing and biophysics.
Bio
Massimiliano Di Ventra obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics summa cum laude from the University of Trieste (Italy) in 1991 and did his PhD studies at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1993-1997. He was a Visiting Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University before joining the Physics Department of Virginia Tech in 2000 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2003 and moved to the Physics Department of the University of California, San Diego, in 2004 where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2006.
He has been invited to deliver more than 300 talks worldwide on these topics (including 15 plenary/keynote presentations, 10 talks at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, 5 at the Materials Research Society, 2 at the American Chemical Society, and 2 at the SPIE). He has published more than 200 papers in refereed journals (he was named 2018 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics), has 7 granted patents (3 foreign), published the textbook Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology (Springer, 2004) for undergraduate students, the graduate-level textbook Electrical Transport in Nanoscale Systems (Cambridge University Press, 2008), the trade book The Scientific Method: Reflections from a Practitioner (Oxford University Press, 2018), and the monographs MemComputing: Fundamentals and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Memristors and Memelements: Mathematics, Physics, and Fiction (Springer, 2023).
Di Ventra has been Visiting Professor at the Technion (2017), Technical University of Dresden (2015), University of Paris-Sud (2015), Technical University of Denmark (2014), Ben-Gurion University (2013), Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2012, 2011), and SISSA, Trieste (2012). He has been serving on the editorial board of several scientific journals and has won numerous awards and honors, including the Feynman Prize for theory in Nanotechnology, IEEE Nanotechnology Council Distinguished Lecturer, the NSF Early CAREER Award, the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award, fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and the IEEE, and election as foreign member of the Academia Europaea. He is the co-founder of MemComputing, Inc.