Gianfranco Pacchioni is Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Milano Bicocca. He received the degree in Chemistry at the University of Milano (1978) and the Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the Free University of Berlin (1984). He has been working at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California (1987) and at the Technical University of Munich (1993). Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Milano (1988), he is now Full Professor of Solid State Chemistry at the University of Milano Bicocca (since 2000).

He received various awards including the Nasini Medal (1994) and the Pisani medal (2017) of the Italian Chemical Society, the National Price “Federchimica” (1996), the Alexander von Humboldt Award (2005), the Blaise Pascal Medal of the European Academy of Sciences (2016), the Chini Medal of the Division of Industrial Chemistry (2018). He is Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2014), the Academia Europaea (2012), and the European Academy of Sciences (2009). He has been Chairman of the Department of Materials Science at the University of Milano Bicocca (2003-2009); of the COST Action “Inorganic oxide surfaces and interfaces” (2006-2010); of the Panel PE5 of the European Research Council for the Advanced Grants (2008-2012); of the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society (2011-2013).

He is member of the Scientific Council or of the Board of several national and international institutions (Tronchetti Provera Foundation 2008-now; Consorzio CORIMAV for Advanced Materials 2004-now; EnergyLab Foundation 2009-2016; Lake Como School for Advanced Studies, 2015-now; KIC Raw Materials 2015-2018; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 2016-now). His main interests are theory and electronic structure of oxides (bulk, surface, thin films, nanostructures), supported metal clusters, materials for catalysis, photocatalysis and energy production. Gianfranco Pacchioni is co-author of about 500 papers with more than 24000 citations (h-index WoS: 81) and has given about 400 invited talks at international conferences and research institutions.

He has also been active in popularizing science and has published some books: “Scienza, quo vadis?” (Il Mulino, 2017), English edition by Oxford University Press under the title: “The Overproduction of Truth” (OUP, 2018); “Quanto è piccolo il mondo – Sorprese e speranze dalle nanotecnologie” (Zanichelli, 2007); “Idee per diventare scienziato dei materiali” (Zanichelli, 2005).