Francesca Ferlaino is currently professor for experimental physics at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), and scientific director at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), which is one of the most active centers for quantum science worldwide.

Born in 1977, Francesca Ferlaino studied physics at the University Federico II of Naples, and obtained her PhD in physics in 2004 from the University of Firenze and LENS (Italy). She arrived to Innsbruck in 2007, after holding a post-doc position at LENS.

Her research activity explores quantum phenomena in atomic gases at ultralow temperatures with contributions spanning from quantum matter of atoms and molecules and few-body and scattering physics. Over the last years, she focuses specifically on many-body quantum physics with exotic and strongly magnetic atomic species, realizing in 2012 world's first quantum gases of Erbium atoms, in 2018 the first dipolar quantum mixture of Erbium and Dysprosium, and in 2019-21 long-lived dipolar supersolid states in one and two dimensions.

Francesca Ferlaino is member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Physical Society. She is recipient of several awards, including the prestigious Feltrinelli Prize, the Grand Prix de Physique "Cécile-DeWitt Morette/École de Physique des Houches" from the French Academy of Sciences, the Junior BEC Award, and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize, the highest award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.