Wikipedia

Alessio Zaccone

Alessio Zaccone (born 7 September 1981, Alessandria) is an Italian physicist.[1][2]

Alessio Zaccone
Born(1981-09-07)September 7, 1981
Alma mater
Known for
  • Krausser-Samwer-Zaccone equation
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics, Chemistry
Institutions
Thesis (2010)
M. Morbidelli
Other academic advisors
Eugene Terentjev, Hans Jürgen Herrmann

Career and research

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After a PhD at ETH Zurich,[3] he held faculty positions at the Technical University of Munich,[4] University of Cambridge[5] and at the Physics Department of the University of Milan.[6] In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge.[7]

Zaccone contributed to various areas of condensed matter physics.

He is known for his work on the atomic theory of elasticity and viscoelasticity of amorphous solids,[8][9] in particular for having developed the microscopic theory of elasticity of random sphere packings and elastic random networks.[10] With Konrad Samwer he developed the Krausser–Samwer–Zaccone equation for the viscosity of liquids.[11] With Eugene Terentjev he developed a molecular-level theory of the glass transition based on thermoelasticity, which provides the molecular-level derivation of the Flory–Fox equation for the glass transition temperature of polymers.[12]

He is also known for having developed, in his PhD thesis, the extension of DLVO theory that describes the stability of colloidal systems in fluid dynamic conditions based on a new solution (developed using the method of matched asymptotic expansions) to the Smoluchowski convection–diffusion equation.[13] The predictions of the theory have been extensively verified experimentally by various research groups. Also in his PhD thesis, he developed a formula for the shear modulus of colloidal nanomaterials,[14] which has been confirmed experimentally in great detail.[15] In 2020 he discovered and mathematically predicted that the low-frequency shear modulus of confined liquids scales with inverse cubic power of the confinement size.[16]

In 2017 he was listed as one of the 37 most influential researchers worldwide (with less than 10–12 years of independent career) by the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research published by the American Chemical Society.[17] In 2020 he was listed among the Emerging Leaders by the Journal of Physics published by the Institute of Physics.[8]

As of October 2023, he has published well over 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, h-index=40.[1][6]

In 2021 he led a team that theoretically predicted and computationally discovered well-defined topological defects as mediators of plasticity in amorphous solids.[18] This discovery has been later successfully confirmed independently by a research group led by Wei-Hua Wang and Walter Kob.[19]

In January 2022 he proposed an approximate solution for the random close packing problem in 2D and 3D,[20] which received multiple comments online.[21][22][23][24]

In May 2026 he showed that a simple nonlinear differential equation mathematically can describe key dynamics of global population growth over the past 12000 years, which also includes the exploration of future scenarios [25]. According to the worst-case scenario described in the paper, the global human poulation could halves by 2064 [26]

Awards and honors

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Selected publications

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References

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  1. 1 2 "Google Scholar profile".
  2. ↑ "Researchgate profile".
  3. ↑ Alessio Zaccone at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ↑ "Faculty appointment at TU Munich".
  5. ↑ "Faculty appointment at University of Cambridge". October 2015. Archived from the original on 2022-04-16. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  6. 1 2 "Webpage at Unimi" (PDF).
  7. 1 2 "Election to a Fellowship of Queens' College, University of Cambridge". 2 December 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 "IoP Journal of Physics Emerging Leader".
  9. 1 2 "Alessio Zaccone elected as Gauss Professor".
  10. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Scossa-Romano, E. (2011). "Approximate analytical description of the nonaffine response of amorphous solids". Physical Review B. 83 (18) 184205. arXiv:1102.0162. Bibcode:2011PhRvB..83r4205Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.83.184205. S2CID 119256092.
  11. ↑ Krausser, J.; Samwer, K.; Zaccone, A. (2015). "Interatomic repulsion softness directly controls the fragility of supercooled metallic melts". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 112 (45): 13762–7. arXiv:1510.08117. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11213762K. doi:10.1073/pnas.1503741112. PMC 4653154. PMID 26504208.
  12. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Terentjev, E. (2013). "Disorder-Assisted Melting and the Glass Transition in Amorphous Solids". Physical Review Letters. 110 (17) 178002. arXiv:1212.2020. Bibcode:2013PhRvL.110q8002Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.178002. PMID 23679782. S2CID 15600577.
  13. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Gentili, D.; Wu, H.; Morbidelli, M. (2009). "Theory of activated-rate processes under shear with application to shear-induced aggregation of colloids". Physical Review E. 80 (5) 051404. arXiv:0906.4879. Bibcode:2009PhRvE..80e1404Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.80.051404. hdl:2434/653702. PMID 20364982. S2CID 22763509.
  14. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Wu, H.; Del Gado, M. (2009). "Elasticity of Arrested Short-Ranged Attractive Colloids: Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Glasses". Physical Review Letters. 103 (20) 208301. arXiv:0901.4713. Bibcode:2009PhRvL.103t8301Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.208301. PMID 20366015. S2CID 1461005.
  15. ↑ Whitaker, K. A.; Varga, Z.; Hsiao, L. C.; Solomon, M. J.; Swan, J. W.; Furst, E. M. (2019). "Colloidal gel elasticity arises from the packing of locally glassy clusters". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 2237. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.2237W. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10039-w. PMC 6527676. PMID 31110184.
  16. ↑ Zaccone, A.; Trachenko, K. (2020). "Explaining the low-frequency shear elasticity of confined liquids". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 117 (33): 19653–19655. arXiv:2007.11916. Bibcode:2020PNAS..11719653Z. doi:10.1073/pnas.2010787117. PMC 7443959. PMID 32747540.
  17. 1 2 Savage, Phillip E. (27 September 2017). "ACS I&ECR Influential Researcher". Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. 56 (38): 10515. doi:10.1021/acs.iecr.7b03758.
  18. ↑ Baggioli, M.; Kriuchevskyi, I.; Sirk, T. W.; Zaccone, A. (2021). "Plasticity in Amorphous Solids Is Mediated by Topological Defects in the Displacement Field". Physical Review Letters. 127 (1) 015501. arXiv:2101.05529. Bibcode:2021PhRvL.127a5501B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.015501. PMID 34270321.
  19. ↑ Wu, Z. W.; Chen, Y.; Wang, W.-H.; Kob, W.; Xu, L. (2023). "Topology of vibrational modes predicts plastic events in glasses". Nature Communications. 14 (1): 2955. arXiv:2209.02937. Bibcode:2023NatCo..14.2955W. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38547-w. PMC 10209080. PMID 37225717.
  20. ↑ Zaccone, Alessio (2022-01-12). "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in $d=2$ and $d=3$". Physical Review Letters. 128 (2) 028002. arXiv:2201.04541. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.028002. hdl:2434/904044. PMID 35089741. S2CID 245877616.
  21. ↑ Chen, D.; Ni, R. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3"". arXiv:2201.06129 [cond-mat.soft].
  22. ↑ Charbonneau, P.; Morse, P. (2025). "Amorphous Packings of Spheres". Packing Problems in Soft Matter Physics. pp. 109–141. arXiv:2201.07629. doi:10.1039/9781837673940-00109. ISBN 978-1-83767-146-5.
  23. ↑ Blumenfeld, R. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3", Physical Review Letters {\bf 128}, 028002 (2022)". arXiv:2201.10550 [cond-mat.dis-nn].
  24. ↑ Till Kranz, W. (2022). "Comment on "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3"". arXiv:2204.13901 [cond-mat.soft].
  25. ↑ Zaccone, Alessio; Trachenko, Kostya (2026-08-01). "Global population crisis scenarios predicted by a general nonlinear dynamical model". Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. 209 118542. arXiv:2502.19063. doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2026.118542. ISSN 0960-0779.
  26. ↑ "Humanity headed for population collapse by 2064 if environmental chaos spirals, new study warns". 2026-05-26. Retrieved 2026-05-27.
  27. ↑ "Swiss National Science Foundation Professorship" (PDF).
  28. ↑ "Physics Department, TUM | 2014-07-22". www.ph.tum.de. Retrieved 2022-01-21.
  29. ↑ "University of Cambridge press release". 6 October 2017. Archived from the original on 19 April 2022. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
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