Francesco Merola

Francesco Merola received the M.S. degree in physics (cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree in fundamental and applied physics, from University of Napoli “Federico II,” Italy, in 2006 and 2009, respectively. In 2007, he joined the National Council of Research (CNR) in Napoli, where he is currently a Permanent Researcher with the Institute of Applied Science $\&$ Intelligent Systems (ISASI). He has published several works with IEEE Society, among which the highly cited “F. Merola et al. Proc. of the IEEE 103, 192-204 (2015),” Invited for the Special Issue Global Healthcare (I.F.=10.252). His research interests include Optical Tweezers, Digital Holographic Microscopy, Tomography and Lab-On-Chip technologyand other intersets covered the circulating tumor cells identification and 3D imaging by in-flow tomography as a liquid biopsy, microplastics analysis in marine samples and identification/counting by digital holography and machine learning techniques; patterning and self-assembling of liquid crystal nanodrops, deposited or embedded in polymer-coated micro-engineered substrates. In this regard, he is involved in two funded projects (PRIN “MORFEO” - MORphological biomarkers For Early diagnosis in Oncology and PON “SiRiMaP” - Innovative Detection Systems for the Marine Plastic Pollution Monitoring, Recovery and Recycling). His current interests includes analysis of seawater contamination from both microplastics and heavy metals, studying the impact of such pollutants on fitoplancton by non-invasive optical techniques. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 papers and proceedings on International Journals, and four book chapters. He has been speaker in about 20 International Conferences (some of which as Invited). He is Referee of international Journals as IEEE Journal of Display Technology, Biomedical Optics Express, Scientific Reports, ACS Photonics. He received awards from OSA (Optical Society of America) and from Light: Science $\&$ Applications (Nature Group) for two outstanding papers, and from SIF (Italian Society of Physics) as Young graduated in Physics for his master's thesis.