My research topic is the dynamics of many-body quantum systems. During my graduate studies, I focused on the theoretical description of cold atomics gases: we proposed the realization of a new topological phase of bosons (the Haldane insulator) and a new type of nonequilibrium universality, where quantum fluctuations and classical noise blend on equal footing. During my post-doctorate fellowship, I entered the field of quantum optics, and I studied the universal properties of the Dicke model with trapped atoms. At the same time, I worked on high-temperature superconductors, by highlighting the importance of electronic standing waves in the interpretation of modern X-ray scattering experiments.  Since 2014, I lead a research group that extends these ideas in new directions and, specifically, in trying to understand the complex behavior of superconducting circuits and qubits, in the presence of noise.

My group collaborates with IBM, Rigetti, Amazon, and Microsoft, who gave us access to their quantum computers on the cloud, for free, so that we can test our algorithms on real devices. In two recent publications we used these computers to simulate interesting many-body quantum effects. For example, we used these devices to simulate topological quantum states and quantum phases of matter.