Jacopo Movilli is a chemist by training. He is interested in controlling the processes happening at the interface of man-made systems, ranging from biosensors to adaptive materials, in order to modulate their responses and properties across length scales. Jacopo obtained his bachelor’s degree at the University of Siena (Italy), with a joint thesis project conducted at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), and his master’s degree at the University of Padua (Italy). He then moved to the Netherlands to pursue his PhD in molecular biorecognition at the University of Twente, where he developed a universal functionalization strategy to engineer interfaces for DNA detection, as well as an artificial platform to mimic and quantify the dynamic behaviour of influenza viruses. As a postdoc at the University of Groningen, he investigated how nanoscopic changes at the interface of microscopic objects induce the emergence of life-like characteristics such as motility and shape-morphing in artificial systems like liquid crystals (LC).

With his MSCA brightLINK project, he will work at the Universities of Harvard (US) and Padua to design bioinspired macroscopic objects that express propulsion, self-aggregation and communication upon light irradiation. By exploiting photoresponsive molecules embedded in LC-based architectures, brightLINK will help advance the development of soft robotics and intelligent materials that perform work continuously under a constant input of energy