Raffaella is a Full Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Head of the Laboratory of Nanochemistry for Energy (LNCE) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She leads a multidisciplinary research program in which the synthesis of well-defined and tunable catalytic materials enables a fundamental understanding of catalytic phenomena and guides the development of design principles for selective and stable electrocatalysts.

She received her Laurea in Chemistry from the University of Bari in 2005 and earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Lecce in 2010. She subsequently spent 6 years in US. She joined the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) first as a postdoctoral researcher from 2010 to 2012 and then as a project scientist from 2012 to 2013. From 2013 to 2015, she was a tenure-track staff scientist at LBNL where she started her own research program within the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), In 2015, she joined EPFL as a tenure-track Assistant Professor.

Raffaella's research has been recognized with several awards, including the Swiss Chemical Society Werner Prize (2021), the Eastman Lecture in Catalysis at the University of California, Berkeley (2023), the Russel Lecture at Queen's University, Canada (2024), and the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award (2024). She also serves as an Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis since 2021.

It is our pleasure to welcome Raffaella to PodCAT!