Alfonso Franciosi

Senior Associate, CNR-IOM; Professor of Physics (ret'd), University of Trieste; Former President and Chief Executive Officer, Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste.

Alfonso Franciosi and His Holyness Bartholomew I at Elettra

Alfonso Franciosi, Senior Associate, CNR-IOM.

Alfonso Franciosi was born in 1955 and obtained his laurea degree in Physics from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1978. He was a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1980 to 1981, mostly focusing his work on the electronic properties on transition metal silicides and metal/silicon interface chemistry. In 1982 he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis as an Associate Scientist. In 1983 he became an Assistant Professor with the same Department, establishing a research program in the area of electronic materials growth and characterization.

During his years in Madison and Minneapolis he had the privilege of working on some of the first dedicated synchrotron radiation sources - the 240 MeV Tantalus storage ring, now at the Smithsonian Institute, and the 1 GeV source Aladdin - at the Physical Sciences Laboratory of Stoughton, Wisconsin. He was promoted to tenured Associate Professor of Materials Science at the University of Minnesota in 1988. In the U.S. he has been Principal Investigator of numerous research projects funded by NSF, ARO, ONR, 3M, Honeywell, Sperry, Control Data Corporation, etc.

From 1993 to 1999 he held concurrent appointments as Director of the TASC National Laboratory of the Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia (INFM) in Trieste, Associate Professor of Physics with the University of Trieste, and Associate Professor of Materials Science with the University of Minnesota. As Director of TASC-INFM he was responsible for the activities of a research staff of 60, organized in 5 Divisions (Materials, Quantum Devices, Surface Structure, Chemisorption, and Analytical).

From 2000 through 2004 he chaired the INFM National Committee for Synchrotron Radiation Research and served on the Board of Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., the company responsible for the operation of the Elettra Laboratory, which includes the homonymous third generation synchrotron radiation source. In 2000 he became Professor of Physics with the University of Trieste and continued to lead the Materials Division of the TASC-INFM Laboratory.

From 2004 through 2026 he served as Chief Executive Officer of Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A, in his capacity of managing director on the company's Board. In addition, from 2014 through 2026 he also served as President of the company, with a staff of about 400 and over 1000 international users per year. He has been Principal Investigator of numerous research projects funded by the Italian government, the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia regional government, and the European Union.

Professor Franciosi has published more than 300 articles in refereed international journals on the physics and materials science of semiconductors, semiconductor heterostructures, superlattices, quantum wells, metal/semiconductor contacts, thin film nucleation and growth, lasers and optical modulators, synchrotron radiation spectroscopies and microscopies, and holds 3 U.S. patents in such fields. In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society “for his contribution to the understanding of the properties of interfaces, including semiconductor heterojunctions and metal/semiconductor contacts, and his efforts to bridge the gap between basic interface science and applications”.

His 21 years at the helm of Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste saw the implementation of the matrix organisation of the company still in place (2004), the beginning of the construction of FERMI (2004), the realisation of the booster (2008) and the top-up operating mode of Elettra (2020), the opening to the users of FERMI FEL-1 (2012) and FEL-2 (2013), the launch of the Elettra 2.0 upgrade (2017) and of the Green Energy project (2025). He retired from the University of Trieste in November 2025 and from Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste in June 2026, when he joined the CNR-IOM Institute as Senior Associate. At CNR-IOM he will collaborate with the CNR beamline upgrade project for Elettra 2.0.