Alessandro Torcini
Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi - CNR - Firenze, Italy
Curator and author
Recognized contributor
Since 2012 he coordinates the research group on Nonlinear Dynamics at ISC-CNR in Florence, Italy and the italian activity of the Joint Italian-Israeli Laboratory on Neuroscience.
He is the principal investigator of the ISC-CNR group partecipating in the EU-FP7 ITN project Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies NETT 2012-2016 on neuro engineering, and on the italian project MIUR 2012-2015, CRISIS Lab on complex networks dynamics.
He is member of the Steering Committees of the Complex Dynamics Inter-Departmental Center and of the PhD course in Complex Dynamics of the University of Firenze, as well as of the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience at ISC-CNR in Florence.
Academic Career
Alessandro Torcini obtained the MSc (1990) and the PhD (1994) titles in Theoretical Physics at the University of Firenze (Italy). He received postdoctoral training at Wuppertal (Germany), Marseille (France), Firenze and Roma (Italy).
Since 2004 he is researcher at the Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi (CNR) in Firenze, where he pursues his research activity on nonlinear dynamics of complex systems and on biologically inspired models of proteins and neuronal systems.
He has been visiting scientist/invited professor in the following institutes : Max Planck Institut fuerr Physik komplexer Systeme - Dresden (Germany), Ecole Normale Superieure - Lyon (France), Erwin Schr¨odinger Institut - Wien (Austria), University of Aix-Marseille - Centre of St. Jerome (France), Institute for Nonlinear Science - La Jolla - California (USA), Centre de Physique Theorique, Universit´e de Marseille, Luminy (France), Weierstrass Institute (Berlin), Aarhus University, Aarhus (Denmark), Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) Institute, Berlin (Germany).
Administrative Duties and Collective Responsibilities
He is serving as referee for 22 scientific journals and for the national research funding agencies in The Netherlands, France and Chile. He has been appointed Outstanding Referee in 2008 and member of the editorial board of Physical Review E in 2013 by the American Physical Society.
He has organized 13 international workshops on subjects ranging from pattern formation to protein folding, from out-equilibrium phase transitions to information propagation in extended systems, from neuroscience to mechanical manipulation of biomolecules. He has coordinated a series of talks in Statistical Mechanics and Nonlinear Dynamical Systems in Florence in the period 1997-2002 and more recently a Journal Club in Neuroscience (2007-).
International awards
1994 -- Awarded by the European Community of a 2 years Marie-Curie Post-Doc Fellowship in Physics within Human Capital & Mobility Programme (Individual Fellowship) to be spent at University of Wuppertal (Germany)
2008 --- Appointed Outstanding Referee by the American Physical Society. Selected together with other 534 scientists (only 6 within Italy) over 42,000 international referees
2011 --- Awarded by the VELUX Foundation of a 2 months visiting professorship to be spent within Denmark
2013 --- Appointed Member of the Editorial Board of Physical Review E by the American Physical Society.
Didactic Activities
He has been supervisor for 2 BSc Thesis, 4 MSc thesis, and 2 PhD thesis in Physics and Engineering in Firenze and Roma on subjects ranging from protein dynamics to neural dynamics,from novel integration schemes to out-of-equilibrium phase transitions.
He has given courses on non linear dynamics, on biological models (250 hours, Firenze, 1995-2013 — 8 hours, Paris 2010 – 14 hours, Aarhus 2011) and on integration methods of differential equations (4 hours, Aix-Marseille, 2002). Morover, he was teaching physics for roughly 1,100 hours at the high school in Italy in the period 1993-2002.
Publications
He has authored more than 100 papers published in peer reviewed journals on subject ranging from dynamics of liquids to computational neuroscience, from dynamics of biomolecules to spatio-temporal chaos, from out equilibrium phase transitions to pattern formation. More details can be found on his Googlescholar Page.
For a list of publications see Publication List
Personal Web Page
For more information see my personal Personal Web Page
