Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Roberto Cerbino

Roberto Cerbino is Professor of Experimental Soft Matter Physics at the University of Vienna, where he heads the SoMeX laboratory. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of Milan in 2004 and was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Fribourg. In 2007 he returned to the University of Milan as a member of the Faculty of Medicine, and he moved to Vienna in 2021. He has had visiting appointments at the University of Ottawa (2010), ENS Lyon (2018) and ESPCI Paris (2025).

His research concerns soft and biological materials out of equilibrium, from colloidal suspensions and gels to the cytoskeleton, biomolecular condensates and collectively migrating cells. He has developed methods to extract quantitative information on dynamics from microscope images, most notably Differential Dynamic Microscopy, which he co-invented and which is now widely used in soft matter and biophysics. His group combines these imaging methods with rheology, often in custom-built instruments, to link microscopic dynamics to the mechanical response of the material. He has long been active in microgravity research: he coordinated the European Space Agency's Facility Definition Team for Soft Matter and Biophysics, and he leads the Sedimenting Colloids experiment on the International Space Station.

He is the author of more than 100 papers. He is Associate Editor of Soft Matter, Series Editor of the Springer series Soft Matter and Biophysics, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He chairs the Liquid Matter Division of the European Physical Society and serves on the European Space Agency's Human 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 and a member of the Internationalisation Council.

Alongside his research, he has a long-standing commitment to teaching and learning in higher education. At the University of Milan he was the Rector's Delegate for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. In that role he was responsible for setting up the university's new Faculty Development program. He also represented the University of Milan in the 4EU+ European University Alliance, where he coordinated the Alliance's Teaching and Learning Working Group. In Vienna, beyond teaching topical courses, he has developed courses on transferable skills for master's and doctoral students. He is also involved in developing new approaches to teaching and learning based on artificial intelligence.