Matteo Cantoni was born in 1974 in Milano, Italy. He graduated in Nuclear Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in 1999, with the mark of 100/100 s.c.l. After the military service, from 2001 to 2002 he worked in Corning Optical Technologies Italy (Milano) as R&D Process Engineer in fabrication and characterization of special optical fibers. He obtained the PhD degree in Physics at the Politecnico di Milano in 2005, with the thesis work "Interfaces ferromagnet/semiconductor for spin electronics". From 2005 to 2008 he worked as a post-doc fellow in the L-NESS center at the Polo Regionale di Como of Politecnico di Milano, and xince 2005 he is responsible of the Laboratory for magneto-optical and magneto-transport characterization in the LNESS centre. From 2008 to 2014 he was assistant professor in fundamental physics at the Politecnico di Milano, and from 2014 he is associate professor at the same University. In 2009 he spent some months in the group of Prof. Paulo Freitas at INESC MN (Lisbona, Portugal) for the development of magneto-resistive sensors for biomolecular recognition.

The research activity of Matteo Cantoni is mainly devoted to the realization and characterization of magnetic heterostructures and devices, with applications in the field of spin electronics and nano-medicine. His activity was carried on at the LNESS centre in the Polo Regionale di Como of Politecnico di Milano until november 2014, and then he moved to PoliFab, the new facility of micro and nano-fabrication of Politecnico di Milano. His main expertises are: growth (molecular beam epitaxy, sputtering) and characterization (electron spectroscopies and diffraction, magneto-optical Kerr effect) of thin films and heterostructures; realization (by optical lithography and ion milling) and characterization (by magneto-transport measurements and Kerr effect) of prototypal devices; development of instrumentation for surface science.

He participated in many schools and conferences with contributed talks and papers. He is author of 65 publications on international journals and 4 patent applications, and he is referee of international journals. Since February 2009 he gives annual courses of classical physics (mechanics, wave physics), and he is author of a book on wave physics.