Professor Carla Molteni is Professor of Physics at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Her research uses computational and theoretical approaches to investigate materials and biological systems at the atomic and molecular scale, working at the interface of physics, chemistry, materials science and biology.

Before joining King’s, Carla held an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, together with a College Research Fellowship at New Hall (now Murray Edwards College). She previously worked at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and was an EU Human Capital & Mobility Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory. She obtained her Laurea and PhD in Physics from the University of Milan.

Carla is Co-Director of the Thomas Young Centre for the Theory and Simulation of Materials and Molecules, and Director of the JCMaxwell node of CECAM. She chairs the “Molecules, Macromolecules and Biomolecules” working group of the European Psi-k network.

She is President of AISUK, the Association of Italian Scientists in the UK, and a member of the Scientific Council of the Embassy of Italy in London.

Research 

• Electronic structure and atomistic simulations of materials and biomolecular systems
• Biomolecular simulations, ligand-gated ion channels and polyphenols
• Molecular photophysics, excited states and fluorescent probes
• Ice surfaces and crystal growth
• Nanomaterials and materials for energy and battery applications
• Quantum computing for molecular simulations

Carla’s research uses computer simulations to understand and predict complex processes in materials and biomolecular systems at the atomic and molecular scale. Her group investigates how structure, dynamics and interactions determine the properties and behaviour of complex systems and their response to external stimuli such as light, pressure and changes in their environment.

Her research combines electronic-structure calculations, classical and first-principles molecular dynamics, enhanced-sampling and free-energy techniques, and methods for electronic excited states. Current projects include ligand-gated ion channels, polyphenols and their interactions with biomolecules, fluorescent molecular rotors, ice surfaces and crystal growth, and materials for energy applications.