Francesca Calegari

Francesca Calegari (born 11 January 1981) is an Italian physicist who is lead of the Attosecond Science division at the Center for Free Electron Laser Science at DESY. She is a professor at the University of Hamburg. Calegari is interested in the electron dynamics of complex systems. She was awarded the International Commission of Optics (ICO) Prize and the Ernst Abbe Medal.

Early life and education
Calegari studied physics at the University of Milan. She moved to the Polytechnic University of Milan for her doctoral research. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia (INFM), where she spent a year before moving back to the Polytechnic University of Milan.

Research and career
In 2011, Calegari was made a staff scientist in the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnology. She held a joint position at the Polytechnic University of Milan. In 2016, she moved to DESY and was made professor at the University of Hamburg. She was made chair of the PIER (the partnership between Hamburg and DESY) Executive Board.

Calegari studies electron dynamics in complex systems, ranging from molecules to biomaterials and functional nanostructures. She has developed table top light sources for precise time dependent measurements across multiple different energy ranges. In particular she has developed attosecond approaches to understand the processes that occur in biomolecules (e.g. DNA).

Awards and honours

 * 2017 International Commission for Optics (ICO) Prize
 * 2017 Ernst Abbe Medal
 * 2018 Zdenek Herman Molec Young Scientist Prize
 * 2020 Elected Fellow of the Optical Society