Roberta Sessoli, Professor at University of Florence, Italy, celebrates her 60th birthday on June 23, 2023. Renowned as a pioneer in the field of magnetic bistability and quantum effects in mesoscopic materials, her research centers around investigating the magnetic properties of molecular clusters and chains, with a keen focus on designing and characterizing molecular magnetic materials.
Her current research is focused on the control of quantum effects on the dynamics of the magnetization through chemical design as well as through the interaction with conducting and magnetic substrates. Organization of molecules, magnetic molecules for quantum information science, and the interplay between spin and chirality are her current interests. She uses a range of characterization techniques such as magnetometry, electron paramagnetic resonance, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray absorption.
Roberta Sessoli, born in Florence, Italy, on June 23, 1963, graduated in chemistry from the University of Florence in 1987. She obtained her Ph.D. from the same university in 1992, conducting part of her studies at the Institut d’Electronique Fondamentale – Université Paris-Sud, France. In 2000, she became associate professor of chemistry at the University of Florence, and since 2012, she is a full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry “Ugo Schiff” at the same institution.
She has been invited professor at Pierre & Marie Curie University, Paris, in 2001, and at Otago University, New Zealand, in 2017. From 2018 to 2019, she was awarded a visiting professorship at Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.
Among numerous other awards, Roberta Sessoli was awarded the Centenary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2019, the Distinguished Woman in Chemistry award from IUPAC and the Lecoq de Boisbaudran award from the European Rare Earths Society in 2015, the Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize for developing the field of quantum dynamics of nanomagnets in 2002, and the Medaglia Nasini Award from the Italian Chemical Society for the best young inorganic chemist of the year 2000.
Furthermore, she holds the title of ChemPubSoc Europe Fellow Class 2016/2017 and is a member of prestigious scientific organizations such as the European Academy of Science, Academiae Europaeae, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Selected Publications
- Magnetic bistability in a metal-ion cluster
R. Sessoli, D. Gatteschi, A. Caneschi, M. A. Novak,
Nature 1993, 365, 141-143.
DOI: 10.1038/365141a0 - Quantum Phase Interference and Parity Effects in Magnetic Molecular Clusters
W. Wernsdorfer, R. Sessoli,
Science 1999, 284, 133-135.
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5411.133 - Quantum Tunneling of Magnetization and Related Phenomena Inmolecular Materials
D. Gatteschi, R. Sessoli,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, 268-297.
DOI: 10.1002/anie.200390099 - Magnetic Memory of a Single-Molecule Quantum Magnet Wired to a Gold Surface
M. Mannini, F. Pineider, P. Sainctavit, C. Danieli, E. Otero et al.,
Nature Mater. 2009, 8, 194-197.
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2374 - Quantum tunnelling of the magnetization in a monolayer of oriented single-molecule magnets
M. Mannini, F. Pineider, C. Danieli, F. Totti, L. Sorace et al.,
Nature 2010, 468, 417-421.
DOI: 10.1038/nature09478 - Magnetic Anisotropy in a Dysprosium/DOTA Single-Molecule Magnet: Beyond Simple Magneto-Structural Correlations,
Giuseppe Cucinotta, Mauro Perfetti, Javier Luzon, Mael Etienne, Pierre-Emmanuel Car, Andrea Caneschi, Dr. Guillaume Calvez, Kevin Bernot, Roberta Sessoli
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012.
https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201107453 - Magnetic molecules as local sensors of topological hysteresis of superconductors,
Giulia Serrano, Lorenzo Poggini, Giuseppe Cucinotta, Andrea Luigi Sorrentino, Niccolò Giaconi, Brunetto Cortigiani, Danilo Longo, Edwige Otero, Philippe Sainctavit, Andrea Caneschi, Matteo Mannini, Roberta Sessoli,
Nature Communic. 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31320-5 - Quantum dynamics of a single molecule magnet on superconducting Pb(111),
G. Serrano, L. Poggini, M. Briganti, A. L. Sorrentino, G. Cucinotta, L. Malavolti, B. Cortigiani, E. Otero, P. Sainctavit, S. Loth, F. Parenti, A.-L. Barra, A. Vindigni, A. Cornia, F. Totti, M. Mannini, R. Sessoli,
Nat. Mater. 2020, 19, 546–551.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0608-9 - Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity: An Enabling Technology for Quantum Applications,
A. Chiesa, A. Privitera, E. Macaluso, M. Mannini, R. Bittl, R. Naaman, M. R. Wasielewski, R. Sessoli, S. Carretta,
Adv. Mater. 2023, 2300472,
https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202300472
Also of Interest
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Women in Chemistry — Interview with Roberta Sessoli,
Vera Köster, Roberta Sessoli,
ChemistryViews 2011.
Roberta Sessoli, University of Florence, Italy, is a pioneer in the field of magnetic bistability and quantum effects in mesoscopic materials
https://doi.org/10.1002/chemv.201000103
