Pietro Tierno is full professor at the condensed matter physics department in the university of Barcelona (UB) since 2021. He received his PhD in natural science from the University of Ulm in 2005. After two post-doctoral stages at Florida State University and at the UB, he become “Ramon y Cajal” researcher at UB in 2011, and associate professor in 2017.  He is the PI of the magnetic soft matter group which is currently composed of 3 postdoctoral fellows and 4 PhD students. The group subsists from European funding (ERC CoG, StG, FetOpen), Spanish (MEC) and Catalan one (SGR). He has equipped two research laboratories and supervised the work of several researchers at both PhD and postdoctoral levels. He has more than 120 publications in high impact factor journals including Reviews of Modern Physics, Nature Communications and PNAS.  

Research interests

The research interest of Dr. Tierno involves experimental and theoretical approaches to scientific inquiry fundamental processes occurring in Soft Matter systems, including colloids, monolayers, polymers, and liquid crystals. His research group is focused on four broad areas: 1) Active particles and self-propelling systems driven both by external and chemical fields, 2) Non linear transport phenomena including ratchet effects, 3) Driven colloids via combined magnetic and optical forces and 4) Geometric frustration phenomena. Besides the basic advances, these research activities lead also to new applications in emerging technologies like micro-fluidics and drug-delivery in lab-on-a-chips.

Keywords

Soft Matter, Colloids, Magnetism, Microfluidics