R. (Roberto) Lo Conte, PhD

Roberto Lo Conte is an Assistant Professor at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials (Faculty of Science and Engineering) of the University of Groningen. He is one of the principal investigators (PI) in the research group Surfaces and Thin Films, studying the physical properties of atomically thin magnetic layers, superconducting materials and the interplay between magnetism and superconductivity in magnet-superconductor hybrid systems.

Roberto Lo Conte studied at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, where he obtained a Bachelor and Master degree in Engineering Physics. As a participant of a Double Degree program, Roberto also obtained a Master degree in Engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. At KTH he worked on his Master thesis, which focused on the design, fabrication and investigation of spintronic devices aimed to generate coherent light emission. Roberto received his PhD degree in 2015 from the Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz, Germany. His PhD project was centered on the study of the interaction between electrical currents and magnetic spin textures in metallic multilayers with broken structural inversion symmetry. In 2016, Roberto moved to the USA for a Post-doctoral research position at the EECS Department of the University of California, Berkeley, where he explored the possibility to control the magnetic state of thin film microstructures via electric fields in composite multiferroics. In 2017 Roberto was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission, which allowed him to lead an international research project involving the University of Hamburg in Germany, the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During his Marie Curie project, Roberto expanded his research focus to complex magnetic multilayers hosting topologically protected spin textures, using a very unique experimental technique: the spin-polarized low energy electron microscope (SPLEEM). In January 2020 Roberto returned to Europe, joining the University of Hamburg, where he started his journey in the exploration of the emergent quantum properties of magnet-superconductor hybrid systems via low-temperature spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy (SP-STM) and spectroscopy (STS). In August 2023 Roberto joined the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials as an Assistant Professor. The Lo Conte group focuses on the study of the magnetic and superconducting properties of ultrathin films and hetero-structures down to the atomic scale, via SP-STM, STS and SPLEEM.

Academic Background

 Grants