Rinaldo Cubeddu

Professor emeritus of Politecnico di Milano

"After graduating in Physics from the University of Pavia in 1967, he joined Politecnico di Milano, where he became a full professor in 1987. During his academic career, he was elected to institutional positions as a member of the Academic Senate (1998-2006) and Head of Department (1993-1998). In his second term (2006-2012), he served in both roles. After his retirement in 2014, he was appointed Professor Emeritus.

In Politecnico's Department of Physics he was head of the research line 'Photonics for Health, Agri-food and Cultural Heritage', an area in which he was the founder. His research work has been mainly in the field of biophotonics, where he was among the first to propose and use innovative laser systems operating in the time domain in the picosecond and femtosecond regime. His studies have also led to the development of instrumentation for clinical use, such as a FLIM (Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging) system for the diagnosis of skin tumours, an optical mammograph for the characterisation of breast tumours and a pulsed oximeter for the functional study of the brain. The instruments have been used in hospitals for clinical studies in the framework of various research projects.

Research in the biomedical field has also been extended to applications in other fields, such as the evaluation of fruit quality in the agri-food industry and the diagnosis of artistic objects of Cultural Heritage, such as Michelangelo's David and Pietà Rondanini."

Career highlights kindly provided by professor Cubeddu in 2023