Sept. 27 - Roberto Fornari is President of the International Organization for Crystal Growth and until today the director of one of the most prestigious German research centers on advanced materials. The professor declares himself ready to return to the University of Parma, a herald of Italian excellence in the world. The university will welcome him in October as he prepares to leave the Leibniz Institute for Crystal Growth in Berlin. In the German capital, Professor Fornari with a staff of over a hundred people promoted and conducted research on new crystalline materials for advanced technologies. These new materials are the basis for technological innovation: thanks to them it is possible to transfer information in fractions of a second, turn the sun's energy into electrical energy and then convert it back into a low light by Led consumption, take pictures without using film, make safer planes and cars with sensors that facilitate the parking or operate the airbag better. With the arrival of Fornari, the Department of Physics and Earth Sciences at the University of Parma, from which he graduated cum laude, is thus enriched by an important new figure. The University Parma enhances its research activities within its Physics Department and the Imem Institute-CNR, recognized at the international level for their work. In Parma, Professor Fornari intends to continue working on the next generation of semiconductor oxides, involving other groups of DiFeST and the National Research Council, to fully exploit the local talents.

ROBERTO FORNARI: A PROFILE
Prof. Fornari graduated with honors in Physics in Parma and then began his scientific career at the prestigious IMEM-CNR Institute (at the time named Maspec). In the twenty years at the National Research Council , Fornari conducted research on the preparation and study of compound semiconductor materials, becoming director of research in 2001. In 2003 he was appointed director of the IKZ of Berlin and, simultaneously, chair of "Kristallwachstum," initially located at the Technical University of Brandenburg and then at Humboldt. He has a wide scientific production and has coordinated several research projects of industrial impact. He actively promotes the development of new processes to obtain higher-quality solar silicon, the growth of single crystals of nitrides, oxides of semiconductors and dielectrics, and the deposition of thin ferroelectric oxides and semiconductor films. These materials have applications primarily in the field of electronics, energy, optics and sensors.