PCCP profiles Professor Piergiorgio Casavecchia, new member of the PCCP editorial board

Professor Piergiorgio Casavecchia was born in 1950 in Marsciano (Perugia), Italy. He obtained the “Laurea in Chimica” from the Department of Chemistry of the University of Perugia in 1974 with Prof. V. Aquilanti. He did post-doctoral work in Perugia from 1974 to 1977, and then at the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California (USA) with Nobel Laureate Yuan T. Lee from 1977 to 1980. He returned to the University of Perugia in 1980 as a Research Associate and became Associate Professor in 1986, then Full Professor of Physical Chemistry in 2000. His main research interests can be classified as dynamics of elementary chemical processes. More specifically, he has worked extensively on the determination of intermolecular forces via scattering experiments and especially (his main current research interest since more than 15 years) on the dynamics of elementary chemical reactions by using the crossed molecular beams scattering technique. He is one of the world leaders in gas-phase chemical reaction dynamics, in which he has delivered more than 50 invited lectures at the main international conferences in the field, over the past 15 years. He has also organized several international conferences in the field. He serves as the Secretary of the International Symposium on Molecular Beams, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and member of several other scientific Societies. He has recently been “Professeur Invité” at Orsay (FR), Visiting Miller Professor at Berkeley (USA), and Visiting Erskine Professor at Christchurch (New Zealand). He has been the Coordinator of a EU network on Reaction Dynamics (2000–2004) and is currently involved in a EU network in Astrophysical Chemistry (Molecular Universe) and another one in Planetology (EuroPlanet). Prof. Casavecchia has published extensively in PCCP and Faraday Discussions.

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