Team Members

Filippo Menczer is a university distinguished professor, the Luddy professor of informatics and computer science, and the Director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has courtesy appointments in cognitive science and physics. He holds a Laurea in Physics from the Sapienza University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Menczer is a Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of the Center for Computer-Mediated Communication, a Senior Research Fellow of The Kinsey Institute, and a member of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS). He previously served as division chair in the IUB School of Informatics and Computing, director of CNetS, visiting scientist at Yahoo Research, Fellow of the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation in Torino, Italy, and Fellow-at-large of the Santa Fe Institute. He has been the recipient of Fulbright, Rotary Foundation, and NATO fellowships, a Career Award from the National Science Foundation, and the ICWSM Test of Time Award from AAAI.

His research interests span Web and data science, computational social science, science of science, and modeling of complex information networks. In the last fifteen years, his lab has led efforts to study online misinformation spread and to develop tools to detect and counter social media manipulation.

This work has been covered in many US and international news sources, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, CNN, BBC, Economist, Guardian, Atlantic, Reuters, Science, and Nature. Menczer received multiple service awards and currently serves as associate editor of the Network Science journal and on the editorial boards of EPJ Data Science, PeerJ Computer Science, and HKS Misinformation Review.

Giulia Galli is the Liew Family Professor of Electronic Structure and Simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. She also holds a senior scientist position at Argonne National Laboratory, where she is a group leader and the director of the Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials. She is an expert in the development of theoretical and computational methods to predict and engineer material and molecular properties from first principles. Her research focuses on problems relevant to the development of sustainable energy sources and quantum technologies.

Prior to joining UChicago, she was professor of chemistry and physics at the University of California, Davis (2005-2013) and the head of the Quantum Simulations group at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL, 1998-2005). She holds a PhD in Physics from the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy.

Prof. Galli is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science, as well as a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Materials Research Society Theory Award, the American Physical Society David Adler Award in Materials Physics, the Feynman Nanotechnology Prize in Theory, the medal of the Schola Physica Romana and the Tomassoni-Chisesi award by La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy.

Dr. Sette is currently a Professor at the La Jolla Institute’s Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Discovery, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine, of the University of California San Diego. Dr. Sette he studied in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome and did postdoctoral work at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado. In 1988, Dr. Sette joined Howard Grey, M.D. at the newly founded Cytel, in La Jolla, and was also appointed as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute. He founded Epimmune in 1997, where he served both as Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer until 2002, when he joined LJI.

Federico Capasso holds a Doctor of Physics degree from the University of Roma, La Sapienza. He is the Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after 27 years at Bell Labs where his career advanced from postdoctoral fellow to Vice President for Physical Research. He has made wide ranging contributions to optics and photonics, nanoscience, designer materials  leading to his invention of the quantum cascade laser; he pioneered metasurfaces,  discovering their generalized laws of refraction and reflection,  and metaoptics,  such as  high performance metalenses. He is a co-founder and board member of Metalenz Inc. (https://www.metalenz.com/), which is focused on commercializing metaoptics for high-volume markets.

Prof. Capasso is Clarivate citation laureate for physics in 2023 which recognizes an exceptional citation record within the Web of Science™.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Academia Europaea, the Accademia dei Lincei, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). His awards include the Balzan Prize in Applied Photonics, the King Faisal Prize, the AAAS Rumford Prize, the IEEE Edison Medal, the American Physical Society Arthur Schawlow Prize, the Yves Medal of Optica,  the Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society,  the Matteucci Medal, the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Materials Research Society Medal and the Jan Czochralski Award for lifetime achievements in Materials Science. He holds honorary doctorates from Lund University, Diderot University, the University of Bologna and University of Roma, Tor Vergata.