Milena Arciniegas

Milena Arciniegas is a Senior Researcher on Tenure Track and Principal Investigator leading the Automated Nanomaterials Engineering Research Unit at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy since 2024. She also maintains an affiliation with The Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2018. Previously, she served as a Researcher in Nanochemistry at IIT (2018-2023) and as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Nanochemistry Research Unit (2013-2018).

Dr. Arciniegas earned her PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) in 2008, following a Postgraduate Certificate in Materials Engineering from Ghent University (2004) and an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla, Colombia) in 2002.

Her research focuses on organic-inorganic low-dimensional nanomaterials, particularly perovskite structures, with an emphasis on integrating automation, robotics, and data science into materials discovery. She investigates structural, optical, and mechanical properties of emitting organic-inorganic 2D layered structures to develop functional nanomaterials with tunable properties. Her recent work has centered on automated synthesis methods for perovskite nanocrystals and understanding how organic cations affect emission properties in two-dimensional materials.

Dr. Arciniegas has received numerous prestigious awards, most notably the ERC Consolidator Grant in 2024. She was selected by ACS Energy Letters as one of the Women Scientists at the Forefront of Energy Research (2023) and highlighted by Advanced Materials among the top Women in Materials Science (2021). Her research has also been featured in Nature Italy and Nanoscale.

She currently leads multiple major research projects with over €5 million in active funding, including the ERC Consolidator Grant 'EVA' (2024-2029), MSCA Doctoral Network 'Track the Twin' (2024-2028), and MSCA Staff Exchange project 'Delight' (2024-2028). Dr. Arciniegas supervises a growing research team including PhD students and postdoctoral fellows, and is currently designing and developing the forthcoming Automated Synthesis Lab at IIT.