IRENE ROSANA GIARDINA

Teaching

https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina/teaching

Position
Full Professor – Dipartimento di Fisica
 

Contact details
Dipartimento di Fisica, Building Fermi, 5th Floor, Room 504
Università di Roma
Piazzale Aldo Moro 2
00185 Roma, Italia
Telephone: 0039-06-49913515
 

irene.giardina[at]uniroma1.it

https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina

www.cobbs.it

Main research activities
Physics of living systems, collective behaviour in biological systems, statistical physics of disordered and complex systems

Brief profile

Irene Giardina is Full Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Rome La Sapienza, and associate member of the Institute for Complex Systems of the National Research Council (ISC-CNR). She has a background in theoretical statistical physics, and worked for several years on problems related to glassy and non-equilibrium behavior in condensed matter systems (spin glasses and structural glasses) and interdisciplinary applications.  In 2005 she started working on biological systems and founded with Andrea Cavagna, the COBBS Lab (Collective Behaviour in Biological Systems - www.cobbs.it), the first lab to collect 3D large-scale experimental data in the field on flocking and swarming behavior, and to build theory starting directly from the data. In her research, she applies a statistical physics approach to understand how collective behaviour emerges in animal groups and – more broadly – in biological systems. Her aim is to provide empirical basis and to theoretically develop a statistical physics of living matter, up to the behavioral scale. The COBBS group uses experiments in the field and in the lab, computer vision and imaging techniques, numerical modelling and field theory approaches to investigate collective and response behavior, scaling and universality in a variety of living systems at the micro and macro scale (cells, flocks and swarms).

In 2010 she was awarded an ERC-Starting Grant Consolidator funded by the European Research Council for her project SWARM on collective behaviour in animal groups  and later in 2015 an ERC-Proof of Concept grant - PROCEEDS. She is also recipient of several other grants at national and international level. In 2021 she was awarded, together with Andrea Cavagna, the Delbruck prize in Biological Physics of the American Physical Society.

Irene Giardina si e’ laureata in Fisica all’Universita’ degli Studi di Pavia nel 1994, e ha ricevuto il PhD in Fisica Teorica presso l’Universita’ di Roma La Sapienza nel 1998. Tra il 1999 e il 2001 ha lavorato come postdoctoral fellow al Department of Theoretical Physics dell’Universita’ di Oxford e al Laboratorio di Fisica Teorica del Centre Energie Atomique di Saclay-Parigi. Nel 2001 e’ diventata ricercatrice presso l’Istituto per i Sistemi Complessi del CNR, sede Sapienza, dove ha messo su un laboratorio dedicato ad applicare metodologie della fisica statistica allo studio teorico e sperimentale di comportamenti collettivi in sistemi biologici e gruppi animali. Dal 2013 e’ stata prima Professore Associato e poi Ordinario presso il Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita’ di Roma La Sapienza. Nel 2013-14 e’ stata Visiting Professor all’Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences, CUNY, New York. E' stata Principal Investigator di numerose grant nazionali e internazionali, tra cui un ERC consolidator e un ERC PoC. Nel 2021 ha ricevuto il Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics dell'American Physical Society.

https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina
http://www.cobbs.it
CV dettagliato: https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina/research/cv?authuser=0

Irene Giardina received a Master degree in Physics from University of Pavia in 1994, and a Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1998. From 1999 to 2001 she worked as post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and at the Laboratoire de Physique Theorique, CEA Saclay, where she studied a variety of problems in disordered and complex systems. In 2001 she was appointed research scientist at the Institute for Complex Systems, of the National Research Council, in the department of Physics Sapienza in Rome. Here, she set up a
new lab dedicated to apply methods from statistical physics to study collective behaviour in animal groups (flocking, swarming) and biological systems. From 2013 she has been Associate Professor and then Full Professor at the Department of Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza. In 2013-2014 she was Visiting Professor at the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences, Graduate Center –Cuny, New York. She is the recipient of numerous national and international grants, including a consolidator ERC grant and an ERC PoC. In 2021 she was awarded the Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics of the American Physical Society.

https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina
http://www.cobbs.it
Detailed CV: https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/irene-giardina/research/cv?authuser=0