Marco Rolandi, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He started his independent academic career as an Assistant (2008-2014) and Associate Professor (2014-2015) of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also the scientific founder of KitoTech Medical (2012-) and an Associate Editor for RSC Advances (2015-). He was born and raised in Savona, Italy. After graduating from Italian Liceo Scientifico, he moved to the UK to study for an MSci in Physics at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London (now Queen Mary University of London) where he started performing research in the laboratories of Professor E. Guy Wilson. He then moved to the US and joined the research group of Professor Hongjie Dai while pursuing a PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University. In 2005, he became a postdoctoral fellow in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley working in the laboratories of Professor Jean M.J Fréchet.

His research focuses on micro- and nano- biological and bioinspired structures, their integration in biocompatible devices, and their translational applications. His work on bioprotonic transistors was highlighted in The New York Times, New Scientist, MRS 360, IEEE Spectrum, Materials Views, Engadget, Popular Science, and several other sites. His work on microneedles for TB testing was highlighted on BBC Horizons and Komo News. He is also interested in visual communication in science and engineering and his essay on how to prepare scientific figures was the most downloaded article in Advanced Materials during the fall of 2011 (> 10,000 times). He received a Strazzabosco Award for Young Engineers (2015), an Innovator Award from the College of Engineering (2014), an NSF-CAREER award (2012), a 3M Untenured Faculty Award (2010) and he was selected as one of the TR-35 GI by the MIT Technology Review (Italy, 2012). He was also voted “Faculty of the Year” by his department’s junior undergraduate students (2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015).