Franco V. A. Camargo is a tenured researcher at IFN-CNR based in Milan. His research comprises of developing and applying new experimental methods to the study of the fundamental physical processes involved in the harvesting of sunlight its subsequent conversion into usable energy, especially focusing on femtosecond timescales. He graduated in physics at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in his native Brazil, after which he moved to the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) to do his PhD in Steve Meech’s group (2013-2017). There, he worked on the development of two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy, studying the physics of coherent oscillatory signals and molecular motors. He then moved to Italy as a post-doc in Giulio Cerullo’s group in Politecnico di Milano, where he applied 2D spectroscopy and other ultrafast techniques to study processes involved in the conversion of sunlight into usable energy for different systems, including new materials for photovoltaics, photocatalysis and natural photosynthesis.
He joined IFN-CNR in 2020 and besides applying femtosecond spectroscopy to energy conversion problems he is also developing the new technique of ultrafast transient holographic microscopy, which is the first pump-probe microscope that can operate with high sensitivity in widefield operation, offering ultrafast time resolution and spatial resolution over large sample areas. This techniche can be used either to image several single nano-objects in a large area, but also in three dimensions thanks to the holographic nature of the technique, which offeers amplitude and phase information. Furthermore, it can also be modified to study carrier and exciton diffusion dynamics in materials on ultrafast timescales. An updated list of publications is available on Google Scholar. News can be found on Twitter.