3DnanoGiant
The Team
3DnanoGiant will benefit from the constructive collaboration of researchers of a team with interdisciplinary expertise that will work at INRiM, Torino and Florence and LENS/UniFi in Florence.
The Research Team between 3DnanoGiant
The PI, Sara Nocentini is a physicist with a well-established expertise in material science.
She will work with a post-doc focused in the simulation and characterization of the nonlinearity of dye-doped liquid crystal and polymer stabilized liquid crystals and a post-doc with a background in chemistry focused on the synthesis, formulation and fabrication via 3D nanoprinting. Two PhD students will join the team along the project.
Meet the team members:
Sara
Sara Nocentini got her International PhD in Atomic and Molecular Photonics at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS) in Florence in 2017, where she was a Post-Doc for 2 years. Since 2019, she has been a researcher at the National Metrology Institute of Italy (INRiM) in Turin in the Metrology of Innovative Materials and Life Sciences Division. She is the author of more than 25 articles in international journals and the coordinator of a metrology project and a national PRIN 2022 project ‘Photag’. In 2024 she was awarded funding for the ERC Starting Grant project ‘3DnanoGiant’. Her research interests and activities include smart polymers for photonics, microrobotics and cryptography.
Mohd
Mohammad Mehkoom received his Ph.D. in Physics from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India, in 2022, specializing in ultrafast laser spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), University of Florence, Italy, where he joined in July 2025 as part of the ERC Starting Grant project 3DnanoGiant. Prior to this, he held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, India. His research focuses on high-energy materials and their interactions with ultrashort laser pulses, ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy, nonlinear optical phenomena, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. He has authored over 15 research articles published in leading international peer-reviewed journals.
Daniele
Daniele Filippi obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the University of Florence and then moved to the University of Pisa for the Master’s degree in Condensed Matter Physics.
He is currently a PhD student in Atomic and Molecular Photonics at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), University of Florence under the supervision of Dr. S. Nocentini and Prof. D. S. Wiersma.
In 3DnanoGiant, he will focus on the design, 3D printing and characterization of 2D integrated nonlinear photonic devices.
Farhad
Farhad Zarif earned his M.Sc. degree in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Iran, with a master thesis on second-harmonic generation from molybdenum disulfide monolayers embedded in Fibonacci quasiperiodic 1D photonic crystals. He has worked as a researcher at the Laser Spectroscopy Research Laboratory and as a teaching assistant at the FUM until the end of 2025. His research has yielded six peer-reviewed journal publications.
He is currently a PhD student at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS), University of Florence, within the 41st Cycle Ph.D. Program in Atomic and Molecular Photonics, under the supervision of Dr. S. Nocentini and Prof. D. S. Wiersma. In 3DnanoGiant, his research will focus on the development of advanced liquid-crystal-based nonlinear photonic crystals.
Open positions
Opportunities to join the project
A PhD student position will be opened soon in Florence: European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy, LENS, International Doctorate in Atomic and Molecular Photonics. Other positions will open in the next years!
