Carlo Enrico Bottani was a full professor of the Physics of Matter. He graduated in Nuclear Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano. After a brief period of research in Brookhaven (USA) he returned to the Politecnico di Milano, where he pursued his teaching, research and institutional career with great passion and enthusiasm in the departments of Nuclear, Chemical and Materials Engineering and Chemical Engineering and Energy.

He was one of the founders of the current degree course in Materials Engineering and Nanotechnology. He has taken on important institutional roles at the Politecnico di Milano, including President of the Study Programme Board in Nuclear Engineering, Director of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Coordinator of the PhD in Energy and Nuclear Science and Technology. He has been a member of the Politecnico di Milano Ethics Committee since 2022.

Carlo Bottani's research initially focused on the microdynamics of dislocations in crystals, later moving on to light scattering by acoustic and optical phonons in low-dimensional solids, thin films, nanoparticle systems and carbon nanostructures, soon making him a leading expert in the national and international scientific community. In the early 2000s, he founded Nanolab (Micro and Nanostructured Materials Laboratory), thus extending his research to the manufacture of nanostructured materials and to novel research techniques, such as atomic force microscopy and scanning tunnelling  microscopy and spectroscopy. Today, Nanolab - which brings together Bottani's areas of expertise - is a leading laboratory for nanotechnology research.

Bottani boasts numerous prestigious national and international collaborations, including with the Nobel Prize winner for chemistry Richard Smalley. He has been both scientific director and coordinator in numerous research projects, including internationally; in 2003, in particular, he became coordinator of NEMAS, the Centre of Excellence for Nano Engineered Materials and Surfaces, accredited by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR). His scientific production and publications are extensive and invaluable; he is ranked among the Top Italian Scientists. He is an associate member of the Istituto di Studi Superiori dell'Insubria Gerolamo Cardano and a full professor member of the Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, of which he also sits on the Presidential Committee as Secretary of Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

Extract from the 2022 nomination statement