Our Mission
Plasmonica was kickstarted in 2013 by a collective of young Italian physicists to provide a forum for researchers in nano-plasmonics – back then still a pioneering endeavor within the Italian landscape. After a decade, this community has thrived and vastly expanded its reach also internationally; its scope has correspondingly broadened to cover many active areas of nanophotonics, including nanoresonators, meta-optics, thermo- and magneto-plasmonics, ultrafast and nonlinear processes, chiral properties, and biological sensing.
Since 2015 Plasmonica is affiliated to the Italian Society of Optics and Photonics (SIOF) as the Plasmonics and Nano-Optics Working Group. Nonetheless, its core mission remains the same: gathering the nanophotonics community in Italy – which is naturally spread over different disciplines such as physics, engineering, chemistry, and biology – as well as facilitating scientific collaborations, personnel exchange, dissemination events (seminars and workshops), and outreach initiatives. Another distinctive feature of this group is its pledge to cater to early-stage researchers, by encouraging their scientific maturation and providing a platform to showcase their research.
These values shape the two principal activities of the group, namely the organization of a yearly workshop and a residential school every two years. These in-person events are conducted in English, to foster the engagement with the wider international community.
