Matteo Bertolini

Biography

I'm a theoretical physicist at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA/ISAS) of Trieste. I'm employed as Associate Professor in the Elementary Particle Physics Sector. I work on quantum field theory and string theory. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Turin, where I got my Laurea in Physics (equivalent to a Master) in 1994. After two years spent between the Physics department of Turin Politecnico and the Theory division of CERN, in the Fall 1996 I took up a PhD place in the elementary particle physics sector of SISSA in Trieste. I received my Ph.D. in 1999. I spent four years as a postdoc in Copenhagen, Denmark, at NORDITA, the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics. From 1999 to 2001 I was awarded an Italian INFN fellowship. From 2001 to 2003 I was a EU Marie Curie Research fellow. My stay in Copenhagen has been very fruitful, given also the very close collaboration between the High Energy groups of NORDITA and NBI, the Niels Bohr Institute. During my long stay in Denmark, I spent some time abroad for collaborations, in particular in the UK, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy and The Netherlands. In the Fall 2003 I came back to Italy and was employed at SISSA as Assistant Professor thanks to a fellowship from the Program Rientro dei Cervelli. I became Associate Professor at the beginning of 2008.

Research Interest

My field of research is theoretical high-energy physics, with main focus on string theory, supersymmetric quantum field theories and the AdS/CFT duality. In recent years I have been mostly interested in supersymmetry breaking, both in field theory and in string theory, and on applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence on both formal and phenomenological aspects of quantum field theories. These include, for example, the use of holography to understand properties of conformal field theories (like spectrum operators, bounds on central charges, etc...) at strong coupling, or to study RG-flows in strongly coupled supersymmetric field theories.