Meet the Faces Behind the Innovation

Ilaria Alberti work as Knowledge and Project Manager at the Center for Sustainable Energy (FBK), since 2022.

She is in charge of the scientific communication, dissemination and exploitation (D&C&E) activities within projects, in particular SWITCH, HyCARE, NEWELY, AMON, PROMETEO, AMETHyST, Hy-SPIRE, SYRIUS.

Ilaria supports all units within the center by managing EU projects and related project management activities with a particular focus on hydrogen and batteries and the Horizon Europe funding programme.

Her role strongly involve the modelling knowledge management and internal communication processes within the Sustainable Energy Center and the development of the circular knowledge model with a focus on data management and privacy.

Ilaria Alberti holds a Master’s Degree in European and International Studies from the University of Trento. Previous working experiences include financial project management of European projects at Eurac Research in Bolzano, and strategy and impact management at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an independent body of the European Union located in Budapest.

Matteo Bordin is a researcher at the Center for Sustainable Energy, working in the HyRES Unit.
His main field of activity is the synthesis, characterization, and testing of advanced materials for water electrolysis, developed through plasma-based physical vapor deposition (PVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD).

Working at FBK since March 2025, he participates in several national and European research projects focusing on different aspects of water electrolysis, all closely related to the synthesis of advanced materials.

Other research interests include materials for environmental and energy-related applications, particularly in the field of photochemistry.

Elena Crespi is a Researcher at the Center for Sustainable Energy (SE) since Aprile 2022.
She is working in the HyRES Unit, where she is involved in European research projects and industrial consultancies, primarily concerning the production of renewable hydrogen with electrolysis systems. Her focus is mainly on low temperature PEM electrolysis, and her activities are mainly related to experimental testing and characterization of electrolysis cells and short-stacks. Other research interests include system integration analyses and definition of control strategies, and techno-economic analyses.
Elena is an Energy Engineer and earned a PhD in Energy and Nuclear Science and Technology from Politecnico di Milano in 2022, with a thesis on analysis, modeling, and optimization of fuel cells and flexible electrolysis systems for electricity grid balancing.

Mattia Duranti is a researcher specialized in energy storage and conversion systems. Starting with a Master degree in Energy Engineering, he obtained his PhD on Materials Engineering studying alternative electrolytes for semi-organic flow batteries.

After several experiences in industry and academia, he is now working on safety and sustainability of large-scale battery technologies at the Center for Sustainable Energy in FBK.

His work focuses on the integration of safe and earth-abundant materials in batteries and on the development of innovative energy storage technologies, such as flow batteries. He is involved in technical activities like the design, modeling and testing of components and the engineering of entire energy storage systems, as well as project development and coordination.

Gloria Gottardi, physicist, has been working as researcher in FBK since 2001, expert in thin film deposition and surface treatments by low-pressure plasma-assisted techniques (PECVD and PVD). In 2005 she was post-doc research associate at the Chemistry Department of Rutgers University – NJ, USA, where she specialized in the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technique. In 2021 she joined the SE center of FBK as senior researcher and scientific advisor for advanced materials. Her expertise mainly concerns surface treatments and the development of innovative nano-structured materials by low pressure plasma assisted techniques (PECVD and PVD) and ALD, as well as their chemical-physical characterization by various analytical techniques (e.g. XPS). Her research interests regard functional materials (catalysts, protective coatings, barrier coatings, TCO, carbon-based materials, …) both for academic research and technological support activities, mainly for energy-related applications.

Technician in the Batteries and Electrification Technologies (BET) Unit

Dr. Matteo Testi (male) holds the PhD in Physics at the University of Trento (2017) on novel materials and methods for solid-state hydrogen storage technologies. He holds a master’s degree in materials science from the Università Ca’ Foscari of Venice (2012). He has expertise in numerical multiphysics and multiscale simulation tools (COMSOL, EES, DynaLISA), system control software (LabVIEW), and chemical laboratory procedures, as well as developing control strategies for prototypes and physical systems. He is involved in different European projects. For dedicated laboratories in FBK, he designs and develops (hardware and control software) specific instrumentation for characterising microscale samples for hydrogen storage applications. He contributes and supports the definition of the scenario for hydrogen mobility. Currently, he is the head of the HYRES unit (Hydrogen Technologies and Resilient Energy Systems) and the technical referent for hydrogen and fuel cell activities in the SE centre of FBK, overseeing the types of equipment and the realisation of auxiliary infrastructure for experimental activities. He coordinated two European projects (AMON and SWITCH) and the activity of the Hy2Tech project in the IPCE framework.

Sandro Zorzi is a researcher at the Center for Sustainable Energy, working in the HyRES Unit as an expert in Materials Science and Engineering.
His main research activities concern the study and development of nanoengineered advanced functional materials, particularly for energy applications.
Since joining FBK in 2024, Sandro Zorzi has been involved in several Italian and European research projects, including GRAAL and INNOPHY, as well as in scientific collaborations with international universities, both on-site and remotely.
His research focuses mainly on the development and characterization (structural, chemical, and functional) of catalytic and electrocatalytic materials produced by physical and chemical vapor deposition techniques (PVD, ALD, and CVD).
Additional research interests include materials characterization using synchrotron X-ray and neutron-based large-scale facilities, such as SANS, XPS, and XAS.
Sandro Zorzi holds a PhD (Doctor Europaeus) in Science and Technology of Bio- and Nanomaterials (IND-22).
He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.