Andrea Schirato is Junior Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano since May 2023, and currently Marie Curie Fellow at Rice University - Houston (TX), U.S. - with the project PATHWAYS.

Andrea received his Ph.D. in Physics with note of merit in 2022 from Politecnico and the Italian Institute of Technology (Genoa, Italy) under the supervision of Profs. G. Della Valle and R. Proietti Zaccaria, after having obtained his double-MSc degree cum laude in Engineering Physics across Politecnico and École Centrale Paris (France) in 2019, and his BSc across Politecnico and Paris-Sud University (France) in 2018. He later worked as a postdoctoral research associate across Politecnico and Rice University (in the group of Prof. Peter Nordlander) with positions fully funded by the EU H2020 FET-OPEN METAFAST (Metasurfaces for ultrafast light structuring) and the National Programme PNRR Research Infrastructure I-IPHOQS (Integrated Infrastructure Initiative in Photonic and Quantum Sciences).

Andrea's research activities focus on the theoretical study and numerical modelling of ultrafast photothermal phenomena driven by light-induced hot carriers for controlling and harvesting light, including out-of-equilibrium electronic nonlinearities and energy transfer in nanostructured materials and metasurfaces. He has published >30 peer-reviewed papers, and his scientific achievements have been recognised internationally by the European Physical Society, Quantum Electronics and Optics Divisions, with the 2023 EPS-QEOD Thesis Prize, and the Best Thesis award awarded from the international journal Nanomaterials (published by MDPI).