CHIARA DERIU
PhD in Chemistry from Florida International University (FIU), Miami, USA, in 2020
Chiara Deriu obtained her PhD in Chemistry from Florida International University (FIU), Miami, USA, in 2020, where she worked on tailoring the stabilization of nanomaterials for the detection of drugs by SERS. Following, she received a postdoctoral appointment at FIU to work on the computational modeling of adsorbates on bimetallic clusters. She then joined Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in September 2021, where she is an ERC-funded postdoctoral researcher. Her scientific interests lie at the intersection of physical chemistry and the analytical sciences, with particular attention to nanoscale surface chemistry and its effects on both nanofabrication and SERS analytical performance.
Chiara’s hobbies include practicing sports, going to concerts unreasonably early, and entertaining her cat with bad flute playing!
SHAILA THAKUR
PhD in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur in 2017
Shaila Thakur obtained her PhD in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India in 2017. She worked as a postdoctoral scholar at National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Bangalore (India) from 2020–2021. She joined Politecnico di Torino (Italy) as a postdoctoral fellow in 2022. She currently works on an ERC-funded project based on the utilization of plasmonic nanostructures for probing prostate cancer biomarkers. Her research interests include nanomaterial synthesis, biosensing, and interaction of nanomaterials with cells, DNA and RNA.
In her free time, Shaila likes to read about the health benefits of herbal and natural components, and spend time with her little son and daugther!
Ashwani Verma
Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), India, in 2023
Ashwani Verma completed his M.Tech. (Solid State Materials) from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), India. He obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), India, in 2023. During his Ph.D., he focused on the study of the plasmonic properties of nanomaterials towards the development of highly efficient SERS platforms based on anisotropically engineered nanostructures using chemical synthesis and pulsed laser ablation approaches. He joined Politecnico di Torino (Italy) as a postdoctoral fellow in February 2024. His research activities include on the fabrication of anisotropic nanostructures, SERS-based molecular detection, UV-excited SERS, and the study of the interaction of adsorbed analytes with plasmonic nanostructures.