Riccardo was born in the province of Perugia, central Italy. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry at the University of Perugia. He then moved to the University of Groningen (Netherlands) with an Erasmus Mundus Scholarship from the European Union to obtain a Master's degree in Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Modeling (TCCM). He was then awarded a Graduate Fellowship from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) to pursue his PhD in the Molecular Dynamics group of Prof. Siewert-Jan Marrink at the same institution, working on multiscale modeling of organic semiconductors and Martini coarse-grained model development. Riccardo joined the de Pablo group in the fall of 2020. In 2021, he was awarded a Rubicon Fellowship from NWO to work on the design of soft materials for energy storage via simulation and machine learning. Outside of research, Riccardo enjoys hiking, backpacking, listening to music, and doing sports.
Riccardo's research involves the development and applications of multiscale simulation techniques for the design of organic materials. His work can be categorized along the following three research lines:
1. (Coarse-grained) modeling of the morphology of soft materials
2. Multiscale modeling of soft materials: bridging morphology and electronic properties
3. Development of coarse-grained models
In the de Pablo group, he is combining his simulation expertise with machine learning techniques.