About
Roberto Cerbino (born 1975, Italy) is Professor of Experimental Soft Matter Physics at the University of Vienna, where he leads the SoMeX (Soft Matter Experiments) laboratory. He studied physics at the University of Milan, where he obtained his Laurea in 2001 and his PhD in 2004, with work on convective instabilities and non-equilibrium fluctuations in complex fluids. After two years as a postdoctoral researcher in Milan, he held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship at the University of Fribourg (2006-2007), developing new optical approaches to non-equilibrium soft matter.
He returned to the University of Milan in 2007 as Ricercatore Universitario, a permanent faculty position, in the field of applied and medical physics, became Associate Professor in 2015, and moved to Vienna in 2021. Along the way he spent research periods at the University of Ottawa (2010), ENS Lyon (2018) and ESPCI Paris (2025).
His research combines new optical instruments with quantitative analysis to understand soft and biological materials. He is best known for Differential Dynamic Microscopy (DDM), introduced with Veronique Trappe in 2008, which extracts scattering-type information about motion at many length scales from ordinary microscope movies and is now used in laboratories worldwide. His work spans colloids, gels and foams under deformation, active and living matter such as migrating epithelial and cancer cells, and non-equilibrium fluctuations studied on the ground and in space.
He is an Associate Editor of Soft Matter, Series Editor of the Springer book series Soft and Biological Matter, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He chairs the Board of the Liquid Matter Division of the European Physical Society and serves on the European Space Agency's Human Spaceflight and Exploration Science Advisory Committee and on the European Space Sciences Committee. At the University of Vienna he is Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Physics, for Teaching and International Affairs.
Positions
- 2021-
- Professor of Experimental Soft Matter Physics
Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Austria - 2015-2021
- Associate Professor (permanent faculty position)
University of Milan, Italy - 2007-2015
- Ricercatore Universitario (permanent faculty position)
University of Milan, Italy - 2006-2007
- Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellow (host F. Scheffold)
University of Fribourg, Switzerland - 2004-2006
- Postdoctoral researcher
University of Milan, Italy
Education
- 2004
- PhD in Physics
University of Milan, Italy - 2001
- Laurea in Physics
University of Milan, Italy
Selected research stays
- 2025
- Visiting researcher, ESPCI Paris, France
- 2018
- Visiting researcher, ENS Lyon, France
- 2010
- Visiting researcher, University of Ottawa, Canada
Selected honours
- 2023
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC)
- 2006-2007
- Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European Fellowship (EU, FP6)
Selected service and roles
Editorial work
- 2023-
- Associate Editor, Soft Matter (Royal Society of Chemistry)
- 2024-
- Series Editor, Soft and Biological Matter (Springer book series)
- 2020-
- Section Editor, Papers in Physics
- 2021-2023
- Associate Editor, Frontiers in Physics, Soft Matter Physics section
European space science
- 2024-
- Member, Human Spaceflight and Exploration Science Advisory Committee, European Space Agency
- 2025-
- Member, European Space Sciences Committee
- 2023-2024
- Coordinator, ESA Facility Definition Team for Soft Matter and Biophysics
Scientific societies (offices held)
- 2024-2027
- Chair of the Board, Liquid Matter Division, European Physical Society
- 2025-
- Committee member, Particle Characterisation Interest Group, Royal Society of Chemistry
- 2025-
- Deputy Treasurer, Austrian Society for Rheology (OeGR)
- 2024-
- Vice-Treasurer, ASSAI, Associazione per gli Scambi Scientifici Austria Italia (Austrian-Italian association for scientific exchange)
University of Vienna
- 2026-2028
- Vice-Dean for Teaching and International Affairs, Faculty of Physics
- 2024-2026
- Vice-Dean for Finance and International Affairs, Faculty of Physics
- 2024-
- Member for the Faculty of Physics, Internationalisation Council of the University
- 2021-
- Faculty member, Vienna Doctoral School in Physics
University of Milan
- 2017-2018
- Rector's Delegate for the development of innovative teaching methodologies
- 2020-2021
- Leader of Work Package 2, Innovative Education, of the 4EU+ European university alliance
- 2019-2020
- Co-leader, with Milena Králíčková (Charles University) and Ulrike Gerhard (Heidelberg University), of Flagship 1 "Health and demographic change in an urban environment", 4EU+ European university alliance
- 2016-2021
- Steering Committee, NOLIMITS imaging platform
- 2015-2021
- Direction Board, University Linguistic Centre (newly founded)
- 2010-2012 and 2015-2021
- Steering Committee, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery
Conferences
- 2027
- Chair of the International Programme Committee, Liquid Matter Conference 2027, Barcelona
- 2027
- Chair and host, 17th International Meeting on Thermodiffusion (IMT17), Vienna
- 2029
- Chair and host, Annual European Rheology Conference (AERC), Vienna
In numbers
- 120publications since 2002
- 6,588citations
- 45h-index
Citations and h-index from Google Scholar, Nov 2026.
Short biography
Roberto Cerbino is Professor of Experimental Soft Matter Physics at the University of Vienna, where he leads the SoMeX laboratory. He co-invented Differential Dynamic Microscopy and works on the dynamics of soft and living matter, from colloids and gels to migrating cells, including experiments in microgravity. He is an Associate Editor of Soft Matter, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Physics.
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