Professor Valeria Nicolosi is the Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy at the School of Chemistry in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and a Principal Investigator in the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres AMBER & I-Form.

She received a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Dublin, Trinity College in 2006. She moved to the University of Oxford in February 2008 as a Marie Curie Fellow, to work in the field of advanced electron microscopy. In April 2008 she was awarded with a Royal Academy of Engineering/EPSRC Fellowship.

In 2012 she returned to Trinity College Dublin as a Research Professor. In 2016 she was promoted to Chair of Nanomaterials and Advanced Microscopy. She is the first woman to have reached the position of Chair in the School of Chemistry since the foundation of Trinity College Dublin in 1592.

Prof. Nicolosi is the only 7 times ERC awardee in Europe (€1.5m Starting Grant in 2011, followed by 3 Proof-of-Concept top-up grants to bring results of frontier research closer to the market, a €2.5m Consolidator Grant in 2016, followed by 2 further PoC grants in 2019 and 2021).

Over the past years, Prof. Nicolosi has published more than 260 high-impact-papers in prestigious journals, including Science, Nature, Nature Energy, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials amongst others, and delivered more than 150 invited and plenary presentations at major conferences/institutions/public events. Prof. Nicolosi’s research has attracted more than €40 million funding over the last 10 years.

Notably, every year since 2018, she has been recognised as one of the world’s most influential researchers, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.

In 2004 she attended the 54th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting as a selected Young Scientist. She has won numerous awards: the RDS/Intel Prize for Nanoscience 2012, the World Economic Forum Young Scientist 2013, EU Woman in Technology Award 2013, SFI President of Ireland Young Researcher Award 2014, SFI Irish Early Stage Researcher 2016, TCD ERC Awardee 2017, Women Business Forum Women of the Decade in Science & Innovation 2018, and the Women in STEM Award 2024.

Prof. Nicolosi served as an Advisory Board member of the European Innovation Council (EIC) from 2019 to 2021.

As a recognition of her carrier achievements, in 2021 Prof. Nicolosi was conferred the honourary decoration of “Cavaliere” in the Order “Stella d’Italia” by the President of the Italian Republic, at the proposal of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In August 2024, the Irish Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Patrick O’Donovan TD appointed Prof. Nicolosi to the Board of the newly announced Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland founding agency with a four-year term. This new agency merges Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council and has the remit to fund research and innovation excellence in all disciplines across the spectrum of Arts, Engineering, Humanities, Mathematics, Science, Social Sciences, Technology and others.