Alberto  Salleo is Full Professor of Materials Science &  Engineering and Department Chair at Stanford University. Alberto Salleo  holds a Laurea degree in Chemistry from La Sapienza and graduated as a  Fulbright Fellow with a PhD in Materials Science from UC Berkeley in  2001. For his PhD Alberto studied the origins of high-power laser damage  in synthetic silica, a fundamental hurdle in the development of the  National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. From 2001 to 2005 Alberto was first post-doctoral research fellow and  successively member of research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research  Center, the famed innovation centers in the Silicon Valley. At PARC  Alberto conducted research on the fabrication and characterization of  plastic-based electronics and printing of optoelectronic components for  displays. In 2005 Alberto joined the Materials Science and Engineering  Department at Stanford as an Assistant Professor.

While  at Stanford, Alberto won the NSF Career Award, the 3M Untenured Faculty  Award, the SPIE Early Career Award, the Tau Beta Pi Excellence in  Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the Gores Award for Excellence in  Teaching, Stanford’s highest teaching honor. Alberto is Associate Editor  of MRS Communications since 2011 and has published over 200  peer-reviewed articles in addition to editing 2 books. He has been a  Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher since 2015, recognizing that he  ranks in the top 1% cited researchers in his field. In 2020 he was  knighted as Cavaliere Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana for his  service to Italy and the Italian scientific community in the Bay Area.