Emanuela Del Gado

Emanuela Del Gado is a Professor and Director of the Institute for Soft Matter Synthesis and Metrology at Georgetown University. She earned her Laurea in Physics (cum laude) from the University of Naples “Federico II” (Italy) and a PhD in Physics from the same institution in 2001. Del Gado held prestigious fellowships, including a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Montpellier (France) and a Swiss National Science Foundation Assistant Professorship at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), before joining Georgetown in 2014 as a tenured Associate Professor.

• Education:
  • Laurea in Physics, cum laude (University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy)
  • PhD in Physics (University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy, 2001)

Her research spans statistical mechanics, computational physics, and rheology of complex materials like amorphous solids, gels, glasses, and cement. She investigates how microstructural features govern nonlinear mechanical responses and aging dynamics in soft materials, with applications in sustainable cement design and biomimetic coatings. Recent work includes studies on gel network topology, stress transmission in biological tissues, and interfacial nanoparticle assembly.

Notable awards include Fellowships from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2018) and American Physical Society (2020), the Chair Joliot (2016), and the Paris Science Chair (2018). Her lab at Georgetown includes graduate and undergraduate students, postdocs, and international collaborators, focusing on interdisciplinary projects bridging theory, simulations, and experiments.

• Scientific Awards:
  • Chair Joliot (2016)
  • Paris Science Chair (2018)
  • Georgetown University Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor (2017)
  • MIT – CEE C.C. MEI Distinguished Speaker (2017)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2018)
  • Fellow of the American Physical Society (2020)