Elena Missale

Elena Missale holds a degree in physics from the University of Rome – Tor Vergata, where she specialised in spectroscopy and materials science. She was awarded her PhD in 2021 from the University of Trento in Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, with a thesis focusing on the study of friction in polymers.
Following her PhD, she undertook postdoctoral research, focusing on the mechanical properties of nanomaterials. She currently holds the position of research fellow at the Bruno Kessler Foundation, within the MTSD unit of the Sensors and Devices Centre. Her research focuses on wide-bandgap semiconductors, particularly diamond, and on the fabrication and analysis of defects known as colour centres in these materials for quantum devices.
Her expertise includes Raman spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL), alongside structural and morphological characterisation techniques such as SEM, AFM, SPM and FT-IR. Elena’s research integrates optical spectroscopies and scanning probe microscopy, applied to nanotechnology and quantum technologies, with the aim of understanding and optimising the properties of materials for advanced applications.