Congratulations to Jacopo Fregoni on being awarded with the “Premio Primo Levi 2020” by the Italian Chemical Society! The Primo Levi prize is yearly awarded by the “Gruppo Giovani” of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI) for the best scientific work in the field of Chemical Sciences, produced by an under-35 scientist affiliated to an Italian university.

Jacopo recieved the prize for his contribution: Strong coupling with light enhances the photoisomerization quantum yield of azobenzene, published in the international journal Chem. The awarded reserach was produced during Jacopo’s PhD at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and CnrNano, in collaboration with the University of Pisa and the University of Padova, in the framework of the ERC TAME Plasmons project.

In particular, the work presents an atomistic quantum chemical approach to simulate photochemical reactions when the quantum states of light and molecule become hybrids between light and matter (polaritons). This can be achieved by confining the plasmonic electromagnetic field and molecules in nanometric volumes, such as in plasmonic nanocavities. The work makes use of such method to explore the capability of selectively enhancing photochemical reactions of dye molecules. Jacopo presented the work in a popular way in a video (in Italian).

Jacopo Fregoni is currently Post-Doctoral research fellow at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid in the group of Dr. Johannes Feist. Before that he graduated in Chemical Sciences (University of Ferrara) and then obtained his PhD (2020, at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) under the supervision of Prof. S. Corni (University of Padova and CnrNano). His main research activities concern the development of quantum methods to study the dynamics of molecules in nanocavities, together with the techniques to quantise the electromagnetic field of nano-photonics setups.