Hi! I'm Luca, a scientist driven by a lifelong curiosity about the world and the universe which led me through an unconventional path. I spent my university years working in live television before committing fully to research. This brought me through a decade in academia, across Italy, the UK, and Germany, working alongside leading researchers in condensed matter physics and nanophotonics. Today, I carry that same curiosity into R&D at Linque, an integrated photonics startup, looking towards expanding my understanding of photonic technologies and bringing research ideas to manufacturable systems.

During the whole university career I have worked part-time with Endemol, the producion house of one of the most followed late-night style shows on national italian television. In the meantime, I obtained an MSc at the Material Science department at University of Bicocca Milan, Italy, in 2016. Here, I studied the optical properties of inorganic perovskite nano-crystals and began my exploration of optical spectroscopy techniques. I then moved to Sheffield to join the 2D material sub-group within the Low Dimensional Structures & Devices Group in the faculty of Physics. I earned my PhD in early 2020 at the University of Sheffield as part of the International Training Network (ITN) Spin-NANO, founded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. This opportunity allowed me to expand my research on quantum materials with 2D semiconductors, focusing on quantum optics and computing. My doctoral research primarily focused on excitonic physics in 2D materials and single-photon emitters, with an emphasis on experimental spectroscopy.

In October 2020, I started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher in the Chair of Hybrid Nanophotonics led by Prof. Stefan Maier at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, where I began to develop expertise in ultrafast spectroscopy, plasmonics, and optical metasurfaces. In May 2022, I embarked on a new journey in the same group with an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. Since May 2024 I joined the Functional Nanophotonics group led by Prof. Andreas Tittl, with a focus on dielectric nanophotonics, van der Waals materials, and exciton-polaritons.

At the end of 2025, I joined Linque, an AI and integrated photonics startup spun out of LMU Munich, where I now work as a Senior R&D Scientist. This move marked an exciting transition from fundamental research to applied photonics. My academic path brought me to explore the frontier of two converging fields: the novel physics of low-dimensional quantum materials - excitonic resonances, strong light-matter coupling, nonlinear optical responses in 2D semiconductors - and the most advanced design principles of nanophotonic structures, where resonant dielectrics and metasurfaces push the boundaries of how light can be confined, guided, and manipulated at the subwavelength scale. At Linque, the question driving my work is how to carry these advances out of the lab and into scalable, manufacturable photonic platforms.

Linque, my work sits at the intersection of these fields and integrated photonics: on the materials side, integrating 2D materials and van der Waals heterostructures into chip-compatible device architectures, leveraging their exceptional electro-optic and nonlinear optical properties; on the nanophotonics side, drawing on optical metasurfaces and high-index dielectric resonators to engineer light-matter interactions within fabrication-realistic constraints. The overarching challenge, and what makes this work compelling, is bridging the gap between the richness of nanoscale optical physics and the demands of scalable, chip-integrated systems. 

Download CV (04/26)