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Valentina Tozzini

  • CNR Researcher
  • valentina.tozzini@nano.cnr.it
  • Pisa
  • +39-050-509433
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Short Bio

Education
1993: Laurea (Master Degree) in Physics, Università di Pisa, Italy
1993: Diploma di Licenza in Fisica, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
1997: PhD in Physics, Scuola Normale Superiore
1999: Medical Physics Specialization, Università di Pisa

 

Career
1997 - 1999: Post-Doc felloship (INFM-SNS, Pisa)
1999 - 2000: Visiting researcher at the University of Nijmegen (NL)
2000 - 2003: Scientist at NEST-INFM, SNS, Pisa
2003 - 2004: Visiting Scholar at the University of California - San Diego
2003 - 2009: Research Scientist at NEST-CNR-INFM, SNS, Pisa
2010 - 2021: Senior Research Scientist at Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, NEST-SNS, Pisa
2021 - present: Research Director at Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR, NEST-SNS, Pisa

 

Memberships, assignments, habilitations 

2025 - : Editorial board of “Analysis”, magazine of culture and politics of science
2024 - : INFN research associate, Section of Pisa
2024 - : Speciality Chief Editor of the section “Biological modeling and simulations” of Front Mol Biosci
2023 - : Member of the Scientific board of DSFTM Department of CNR
2021 - : Member of the Interdisciplinary Group on Science, Technology and Society of CNR (Area-Pisa)
2020 - : Member of the Institute Board of Istituto Nanoscienze - CNR
2018 - : Member of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA)
2017 - : National Habilitation as Full Professor of Applied Physics and Condensed Matter Physics (Theory)
2010 - : Panel member for grants of national research programmes of EU countries, Remote reviewer for ERC grants
2009 - : Adjunct prof of Biophysics, Numerical methods and Structure of matter dept of Physics Univ of Pisa
2007 - : Panel member for assignment of HPC resources within PRACE and ISCRA programmes
2000 - : PhD and Master degree committees

Research Interests

Multi-scale modelling, combining Density Functional Theory, Atomistic (reactive) Molecular Dynamics and Coarse Grained models developed with the aid of Machine Learning methods. Current applications are both to materials and biomolecular systems:

  • Study of graphene and reduced graphene oxide materials for green hydrogen cycle
  • Design of tritium trapping graphene based architectures for neutrinos studies
  • Nano-porous materials of bio-origin for pollution remediation 
  • Proteins aggregation and amyloids simulations 
  • Design of sensors for nucleic acids 
  • Proteins chimeric constructs for virus detection and inhibition
  • Intra-cell radiobiological effects: radicals production and diffusion and DNA damage evolution

 

See also https://green.nano.cnr.it and https://bio.nano.cnr.it/

Selected Recent Projects

Next Generation EU, Tuscany Health Ecosystem: Advanced radiotherapies and diagnostics in oncology
NEXT Generation EU, within ICSC: Innovation Grant (Leading Partner: ENI): Accelerating the pace of the energy transition through simulation-guided discovery of advanced green materials

Selected Publications

A. Casale, A. Esposito, G. Menichetti, and V. Tozzini. β-decay spectrum of Tritiated graphene: combining nuclear quantum mechanics with Density Functional Theory. Phys Rev C (2026).

 

M. Bini, G. Brancolini, and V. Tozzini.  Aggregation of Intrinsically Fluorescent Proteins: combining coarse grained molecular dynamics with AlphaFold predictions. ACSOmega  (2025).

 

F. Di Martino, E. Scifoni, V. Patera, P. Montay-Gruel, F. Romano, A. Darafsheh, and V. Tozzini. Editorial: Multidisciplinary approaches to the FLASH radiotherapy. Front Phys (2024).

 

L. Bellucci, F. Delfino, and V. Tozzini. In Silico design, building and gas adsorption of nano-porous graphene scaffolds. Nanotech (2021) .

 

G. Brancolini and V. Tozzini. Multiscale modeling of proteins interaction with functionalized nanoparticles. Curr Opin Coll Int Sci (2019).